Questions tagged [economics]
Economics is the analytical study of the costs and benefits of producing, distributing, and consuming goods and services. This tag should not be used for personal finance questions, nor for most questions about expensive items, e.g. exorbitantly priced houses, autos, jewelry. It can be used for current events, and in historical contexts.
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Was whaling the biggest industry in 1903?
In a podcast with Joe Rogan, Jimmy Carr made the claim that:
Whaling was the biggest industry in the world in 1903.
However, some people in the comment section dispute this, claiming that Carr meant ...
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Does an Arrow 3 cost more than 10 times less than its closest US equivalent (SM-3 Block IIA)?
According to the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, an Arrow 3 costs $2,200,000, while a Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) Block IIA
costs $36,387,000.
Both of these are 21 inch (fit in that tube diameter) ...
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Does Hamas divert humanitarian aid donations towards the military budget?
In order to better understand how Hamas operates, I was trying to look up how they manage their budget. It seems there's suspicion that some of the international humanitarian aid goes towards the ...
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In what way do developed countries drain trillions of dollars from developing countries? [closed]
On the advice of the monitors, I have reposted this question on Economics SE.
According to the Guardian, rich Western countries drain large amounts of money from poor countries, much more than they ...
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Could world hunger be ended for 40 billion USD per year?
The World Food Program USA claims that 345 million people around the world:
are experiencing the most severe levels of hunger including starvation. These are the people the U.N. World Food Programme ...
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Were Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers asking for reduced liability invoking the unprecedented testing schedule?
According to RebelNews, Canadian MP Anthony Housefather said
It's because these documents were signed at the beginning of the pandemic when everybody was desperate for vaccines, when companies were ...
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Is the Greek Orthodox church worth 700 billion Euros?
This Wikipedia list puts the Greek Orthodox church's net worth at 700B Euros in 2011 (about 974B USD), above any branch of the Catholic church or other religion. Its source is France 24, but I am not ...
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Did Biden say that the Boeing-Air India deal will support 1 million jobs?
This Business Insider India news report is one of many that claim that Biden said that a $34 billion dollar Air India order for 220 Boeing planes will support 1 million US jobs, and that many of those ...
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Is 70% of the world economy weather-sensitive?
Several sources make varying claims that 70% of the global economy is sensitive/dependant on the weather:
Frogcast: Participative fundraising
70% of the world economy is weather sensitive.
JOM: ...
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Is Israel exporting 100s-of-Millions, or Billions, USD of arms per year?
A multi-annual chart on the "trading economies website suggests Israeli arms exports have a "total insurable value" of hundreds of millions of USD per year.
However, this story on the ...
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Did Lincoln say, "When we buy steel made in America, we get the steel and the money too"?
In "Industrial Policy Comes Full Circle" (Dec. 15), Clyde Prestowitz (Wall Street Journal, 2022-12-11, 2022-22-15 print edition p. R17):
Lincoln said: "I don't know much about tariffs, ...
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Is money being spent globally being reduced by going cashless?
There is a scenario going around the Internet (Google link showing extent of reach) saying the following (with possible slight variations which I haven't spotted yet)...
Why should we pay cash ...
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Did Elon Musk pay more in taxes than every politician in the world combined?
A tweet claims Elon Musk paid more in tax than every politician on earth combined:
Which, if correct, is extraordinary.
So, did he?
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Does an “average-sized” power station pay over a quarter billion pounds per day when unable to generate electricity?
Given the war in Ukraine and associated sanctions on Russia and reciprocal withholding of supply, Europe is facing a gas shortage.
The UK imports very little Russian gas, but because of the reduced ...
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Has wholesale electricity price in France increased to €1000 per MWh, up from €85 per MWh?
This broadcast ...
France to restart all nuclear reactors by winter amid energy crunch • FRANCE 24 English
... says:
The wholesale price for 2022 was €85 per MWh and the price for 2023 has gone up ...
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Has the oil industry made $1 trillion dollars of profit a year for 50 years?
A headline in the Guardian on July 21 2022 claims the following:
Revealed: oil sector’s ‘staggering’ $3bn-a-day profits for last 50 years
[Note that $3 billion/day is roughly $1 trillion per year.] ...
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Did the Russian government have a 20 billion Euro budget surplus in the first half of 2022?
Various German media outlets (including the Tagesschau) have reported, that the Russian state has made a 23 billion Euro surplus in the first half of 2022.
Despite the sanctions, Russia achieved a ...
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Did the percent of humans living on < $2/day drop from 94% to 8.6% since 1820?
In a recent Vox article, the author claims (without citation):
In 1820, some 94 percent of humans lived on less than $2 a day. Over the next two centuries, extreme poverty fell dramatically; in 2018, ...
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Has Russia pegged the ruble to gold in the sense that U.S. dollar was before August 15, 1971?
Some sites like this one, this one, this one and some social media posts like this one refer to news articles saying that Russia has linked ruble to gold at 1 gram = 5000 roubles.
Also Forbes seems to ...
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Is their tax bill the single biggest cost of living for most households in the UK?
Mark Littlewood wrote an opinion article in The Telegraph [unpaywalled alternative] atacking the UK's Conservative Party.
He claimed:
For most households, the single biggest cost of living is their ...
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Is the current crisis in the Sri Lankan economy caused by a decision to mandate organic farming?
The Sri Lankan economy is currently having something of a major crisis. This BBC report points out they are about to default on major international loan payments:
Sri Lanka crisis: Government ...
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Did the USA increase oil imports from Russia after the Ukraine invasion?
According to Zhao Lijian of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China (RDCY)
[...] Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Mikhail Popov said, in a contrasting ...
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Is it true that the Bennington College endowment is low because they declined donations to maintain academic independence?
Some (possibly dubious) college Q&A web sites (e.g. this one) make the claim that
Bennington has a paltry endowment of $3.5 million, the result of a historical philosophy - now recognized by its ...
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During the disintegration of the Soviet Union, was there a surge of child allergies in Tajikistan because people hoarded soap?
The Hesitant U.S. Rescue of the Soviet Economy Wilson Quarterly (Fall 2016):
By November 1990, Professor Graham Allison of Harvard University had become alarmed at the deterioration of the Soviet ...
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Were a large fraction of US Dollars in existence printed since 2020?
For many months now I have heard claims on the internet and radio that some large fraction of USD "in existence" were printed since 2020. The percentage ranges between 40 and 80%.
Is it a ...
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Did Burj Khalifa cause the surrounding malls and shops to increase revenue?
Wikipedia claims:
The concept of profitability derived from building high density developments and malls around the landmark has proven successful. Its surrounding malls, hotels and condominiums in ...
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Is over 96% of Moderna's revenue from their COVID-19 Vaccine?
In a recent YouTube video from "The Lotus Eaters", one of the anchors states that "During the previous quarter, Moderna's earnings on their shares were 4.97 billion overall, and the ...
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Does the mass of human made objects exceed the entire biomass on the planet?
An article in Nature, "Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass" in 2020 has recently gained some attention on social media (see this Twitter thread) possibly because of a striking ...
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Will there be more than 11 million job openings related to Data Science in India by 2026?
This Career Outlook for Data Scientist article claims that analyst predict that there will be more than 11 million job openings by 2026 in the field of data science.
Does this claim makes sense given ...
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Is the UK lorry driver shortage unrelated to Brexit? Do EU countries have equal or greater shortages?
UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps claims that Brexit is not one of the causes of the UK lorry driver shortage which is causing shortages of food in supermarkets and shortages of fuel in petrol ...
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Does Norway spend $29,726 on child care per toddler annually?
I would like to verify the following chart (e.g. take Norway) in a New York Times article:
(Note that multiple references in the article appear to define a toddler as being 0-2 years of age. They say ...
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Is the UK experiencing wage growth for people on low incomes?
In a TV interview with Andrew Marr on 3 Oct 2021, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that UK wages were growing for people on low incomes. The interviewer (Marr) said that wasn't true - Johnson ...
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Did China shut down a port for one COVID-19 case and did this closure have a bigger impact than the blocking of the Suez canal?
Journalist Fabian Kretschmer claimed in a DW interview (at 1m56):
For every case you have to shut down a factory, you have to shut down a port. In May, for example, they had to shut down the Yantian ...
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Is the local purchasing power in Cuba as low as shown in the following page?
This page shows a list of countries with some data from them, one of them being the "local purchasing power index".
Cuba is in the last position of this with a 1.28 in purchasing power ...
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Is China's GDP data politically manipulated?
In 2010, a World Bank economist denied that China's GDP figures were politically manipulated:
Is the data manipulated by the authorities to meet political objectives? My answer to it, at least ...
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Are these claims about the changes in the economy during Obama accurate?
An image was recently posted on politics about how the economy changed under Obama. While that question was not asking about the validity of the claim itself, instead focused on the validity of ...
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Did Milton Friedman say that nothing was so permanent as a temporary government program?
According to the Adam Smith institute (and numerous other pages):
Milton Friedman used to say that nothing was so permanent as a temporary government programme.
Did he actually say this? And if so, ...
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Has the distribution of income and wealth in the USA got much more skewed towards the rich in the last 4 decades?
I recently asked this question about a statistic quoted by Kurt Andersen designed to illustrate the current wealth distribution in the USA in his book Evil Geniuses. It provoked a great deal of (...
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Would the median household income in the USA be $140K and mean net worth $800K if wealth were evenly distributed
In his book (Evil Geniuses) about how the USA got where it currently is, Kurt Andersen speculates about how far wealth and income inequality has risen in the last few decades.
He attempts to visualise ...
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Has any US official said that the economy cannot be "fixed" if the pandemic is not "fixed"?
Context
A week ago or so, Romania observed a conflict between the central authorities dealing with the pandemic (who want more restrictions) and the local authorities in a county (who want fewer ...
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Do companies who go public lower their R&D spending as a result?
Eric Ries talks in an interview with Ezra Klein about how there are studies that show that when a company goes public, it usually lowers their R&D spending afterwards. Is this is accurate ...
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Is an egalitarian inclination largely genetically determined?
A 2017 study titled A Genetic Basis of Economic Egalitarianism
seems to have concluded that:
We use Minnesota Twin Study data from 2008, collected from samples of monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs ...
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Does "The Great Reset" seek to abolish property rights? [closed]
The Great Reset is a plan by the World Economic Forum, imagined by a gentleman named Klaus Schwab.
The plan is somewhat controversial, with some media outlets portraying it as an agenda to abolish ...
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Is only 13% of the UK economy and only 8% of its businesses involved with european Union trade?
CAPX recently published a pro-Brexit opinion piece by John Longworth who headed a pro-Brexit pressure group. He argued that the UK were being held to ransom and were being treated like a "vassal ...
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Is solar power the cheapest form for utility companies to build?
A recent Popular Mechanics article claimed
In a new report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says solar is now the cheapest form of electricity for utility companies to build. That’s thanks to ...
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Did the wealth gap shrink under Trump (pre-pandemic)?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wealth-gap-shrinks-11601420393
According to an op-ed piece by the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, the Federal Reserve has published a report (https://www....
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Are farm bankruptcies in the US "at highs not seen since the Great Depression"?
A June 29 Vox article quoted a Democratic party notable saying:
“Trump’s failed trade war wreaked havoc on industries across the country. Farm bankruptcies are at highs not seen since the Great ...
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Was it ever cheaper to starve slaves and replace them than to provide them with food?
In a recent opinion piece in the Guardian, historian David Olusoga makes this shocking claim about slavery in the 17th Century British Empire:
The system [Hans Sloane] witnessed and wrote about was ...
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Do 37% of people in the UK believe that their job either makes no difference or makes the world worse?
According to David Graeber:
They discovered that people in the UK, 37% agreed that if their job didn't exist either it would make no difference whatsoever or the world might be a slightly better ...
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Did David Ricardo make £1M from the Battle of Waterloo?
Mark Skousen (2008):
He was a speculator par excellence, allegedly making a million pounds sterling in 1 day following the Battle of Waterloo.
Madsen Pirie:
He went into a banking house and made a ...
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