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Posts tagged “Economics”

Sep 7, 2026
21 min

The Map Used to Run the Other Way

A chart of temperature against national income is one of the tidiest things in economics, and it is real. It is also impossible to read the way it invites you to, because among former colonies the same thermometer used to point the other way.

Data Economics History

Aug 9, 2026
16 min

How Scandinavia Actually Pays for Itself, and What Others Can Learn From It

In 2025 Denmark's top tax rate started at 1.24 times the average wage. In the United States, 8.73. Both countries have a top bracket; the word does entirely different work in each. Denmark raises 25.0% of GDP from personal income tax, the highest in the OECD, and 0.06% from social contributions. Read every labour tax together and Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany and France land within 1.56 points of each other.

Data EconomicsPolicy

Aug 7, 2026
17 min

Calories In, Calories Out Is True. It Explains Almost Nothing.

Ten countries put more than 3,700 calories a day on the shelf per person. Their food supply varies by 5.8 percent. Their adult obesity rates run from 14.1 percent to 40.7 percent. Across 168 countries, calorie supply accounts for 5.7 percent of the variation in obesity. Energy balance is an accounting identity: true in every country, which is exactly why it cannot explain why they differ.

Data Health Economics

Aug 5, 2026
20 min

The Payback Period Assumes You Are Paying It Back

Divide a degree's median debt by its graduates' median earnings and you get the price of that degree in years of salary. Across 31,941 US programmes the median is 0.59, about seven months. That sum is correct. It is also a price, not a deadline, and it quietly assumes a ten-year repayment schedule that about one federal loan dollar in five is actually on.

Data Economics Education

Jul 31, 2026
17 min

A Quarter of the Median County's Income Is a Transfer. Nearly Half of That Is Paid to a Provider.

BEA defines personal income as the income received by, or on behalf of, all persons. Everyone quoting a county income figure says the first half. In the median American county transfers are now 26.2% of personal income, and nearly half of those are medical benefits paid to providers rather than handed to the people they are counted for.

Data EconomicsPublic Policy

Jul 30, 2026
22 min

A Third of the World's Labour Laws Still Assume You Work Saturday

Forty hours is five eight-hour days. Forty-eight is six, and in 2012 a third of the countries with a working-hours law still legislated one. The world's labour codes agreed most closely in 1949 and have drifted apart ever since, and the number that standardised turns out not to be the number that sets the outer limit.

Data Economics History

Jul 29, 2026
21 min

Nobody Quit. Nobody Was Unemployed Either.

Every month the world reads two numbers and decides how the job market feels. One of them counts people who left a job even when they walked straight into another one. The other counts only people who are still actively looking, so it loses anyone who gives up. Both numbers are real. Neither measures the thing we use it to measure.

Data EconomicsWork

Jul 29, 2026
15 min

The Survey Found Indonesia's Business Owners. It Just Couldn't Count Them.

Two in five Indonesian workers work for themselves, and there are ten million more of them than a decade ago. The world's best-known entrepreneurship survey records the opposite: a fall of roughly three quarters. It turns out the survey found them. What broke was the step that decides whether a business counts.

Data Indonesia Economics

Jul 20, 2026
9 min

The Benefit That Costs Less Than It Delivers

A US food program hands families more groceries than taxpayers pay for. The difference is quietly covered by the companies that make infant formula, who compete to be the one brand the program buys. It is one of the more clever pieces of design in the safety net, and almost nobody talks about it.

Data Economics Nutrition

Jul 11, 2026
8 min

The Cheapest Degree Abroad Isn't the Best Deal

A master's in the USA costs about thirteen times one in Greece. But sticker price is the wrong ruler. Once you divide the cost by what you would actually earn, the bargain ranking reshuffles, and the cheapest countries stop being the best deals. Mexico looks cheap and is one of the worst.

Data Education Economics