Data Factories Within Reach of the Hamptons?

Squaring New York State’s stringent green-energy law with the looming demand for power-intensive data and AI centers is going to be hard enough most places, but especially on Long Island. There, long-standing grievances against the electric utility, now known as LIPA, that date back at least as far as rejected nuclear-plant aims from the 1960sContinue reading “Data Factories Within Reach of the Hamptons?”

More Productive = Less Political

I was encouraged to find an article stressing the importance of U.S. labor productivity in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, produced by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. (The CFR’s agenda includes national competitiveness.) The piece, produced by a former member of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and a formerContinue reading “More Productive = Less Political”

Climate Push Has But Marginal Utility for Economics

Another Zeitgeist piece from the New York Times today denigrates traditional economics, which is to say the price mechanism for allocating resources. This time, it’s about climate and carbon, and the target of sorts is Nobel laureate William Nordhaus, long a favorite among left-of-center economists. Nordhaus, you see, early on proposed a carbon tax toContinue reading “Climate Push Has But Marginal Utility for Economics”

Sociology’s Un-economic Impulse

In the agitated state of modern societies, a rebellion against “neo-liberalism” heralds some preferred order, usually a form of ostensibly democratic socialism. Inherent in this movement is a rejection of economics, which is the study of allocating scarce resources. This is a startling proposition, coming off a generation or two in which economics has beenContinue reading “Sociology’s Un-economic Impulse”