Suicides are a growing problem in the United States. In a new report released this month by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the CDC concluded that suicides have increased more than 25 percent between 1999 and 2016.
Chapter 6: Cantillon Effects in Skyscrapers
Money makes possible the good things in life: our ability to trade with one another and the ability to form groups to work for beneficial purposes, as well as saving, investing, economic growth, and development. Without some form of money, advanced society would not be possible. However, as we saw in the previous chapters, increases in the supply of money, which mainstream economists now view as indispensable, are really the source of many evils of economic life.
Chapter 3: Do You Have a Theory?
We don’t really know what starts the speculative bubbles. — Jesse Abraham and Patric Hendershott, “Bubbles in Metropolitan Housing Prices”
Chapter 4: How To Get Milk
Economists understand very little about how technological progress occurs. — Alan Greenspan, “Testimony of Chairman Alan Greenspan”
Before we leave the topic of the problems and blessings of roundaboutness of production and the structure of production, it will be very useful to see a natural, concrete example of it in action. It then will become easier to understand the unnatural cases involving malinvestments and the skyscraper curse.
Chapter 5: Chantillon Effects
It makes very little difference how new money is injected. — Scott Sumner, TheMoneyIllusion
In previous chapters, I described economic growth and development as a process whereby lowering time preferences leads to an accumulation of savings that are invested in more-roundabout production processes, which in turn increase future consumption possibilities, labor productivity, and wages and incomes.
Chapter 2: The History of the Skyscraper Curse Reexamined
You could probably go back in history and find examples of the skyscraper curse in structures such as the Egyptian pyramids and medieval cathedrals. Here the review is confined to modern buildings, but we will expand our time horizon to examine records prior to and after the original Skyscraper Index (1907–99). We will also reexamine the one record-setting building, the Woolworth Building, that Andrew Lawrence considered a failure of the index because no curse occurred. As a result of this reexamination, the Skyscraper Index appears more reliable than previously thought.
Section 1: The Skyscraper Curse
Chapter 1: What Is the Skyscraper Curse?
The skyscraper, that unique celebration of secular capitalism and its values, challenges us on every level. It offers unique opportunities for insightful analysis in the broadest terms of twentieth-century art, humanity, and history. — Ada Louisa Huxtable, The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered
People have been seeking to discover the cause of the business cycle since the dawn of capitalism. For an even longer time people have sought a magic crystal ball that predicts the future. This book provides some insight for both quests.
Introduction
The Skyscraper Index expresses the strange relationship between the building of the world’s tallest skyscraper and the onset of a major economic crisis. This relationship only came to light in 1999 when research analyst Andrew Lawrence published a report noting the odd connection between record-height buildings and noteworthy economic crises — that is, the skyscraper curse, a relationship that dated back nearly a century. Without a theory to support it, journalists largely dismissed Lawrence’s report as the fun story of the day.
