Tag: economics

  • The Coal Century

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    The other day I misread a poster on the road that “The Cool Century” for “The Coal Century”. That is the origin of today’s title. The origin of today’s piece, however, is Bloomberg, which looked at the impact of some new environmental regulations on the coal industry vis-a-vis dozens of coal power plants. Basically, you…

  • Context for the Baltimore Riots

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Baltimore is going crazy, if you haven’t heard. So the LA Times put together a set of maps putting the riots in context. They look at the racial makeups of the neighbourhoods with the violence along with median income and education. Credit for the piece goes to Jon Schleuss, Kyle Kim, and the LA Times…

  • The Growth of Urban Walmarts

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s piece comes via my co-worker and is about the growth of urban Walmart stores. The article is from NPR and includes a nice series of small multiples of store locations in three select cities: Washington, Chicago, and Atlanta. In full disclosure, I live about two blocks from one of the urban Walmarts in Chicago. So…

  • Friday Baseball Drinking

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Your humble author is out of town today. And unfortunately he is not watching a ball game. But if he were, he would be drinking a beer. And even more unfortunately, his favourite team and favourite ballpark has the most expensive beer. And most unfortunate, the other two teams he is perhaps most likely to…

  • Sex, Drugs, and Rock Oil

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    North Dakota’s economy has been booming because of shale oil. Most of that economic growth has been centred on what was the small city of Williston, North Dakota. Economic growth often leads to population growth, however, and that can at times lead to growth in less than wholesome economic activities. The National Journal took a…

  • A Fishy Popularity Contest

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Pardon the title, but don’t mind the graphic. Sometimes ranking charts tell the story well. The Wall Street Journal has a graphic supporting a larger article about fish. And while I am not sure that I understand the reason behind the colours, they do make it quite clear that catfish is not nearly as popular…

  • Lee Kuan Yew Built Modern Singapore

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Lee Kuan Yew died this weekend. He is lately responsible for designing and implementing the policies that transformed Singapore from a poor fishing village to a commercial hub. The transformation came at a price of course. Singapore enjoys limited free speech and the country is effectively a one-party state, with the one party now controlled…

  • The American Shopping Mall

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    This past weekend Al-Shabab, the Al Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, threatened shopping malls in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This threat carries a certain amount of weight given the deadly attack Al-Shabab launched against the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya a few years ago. So what to look at today?…

  • Income Growth Gap

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    The Recession was not great for the 99%. It was, however, good for the 1%. How good? Well as data put together by the Economic Policy Institute indicates—and as reported by the Washington Post—it was very good. In only 1 of 49 states did the 99% fare better than the 1%. One state’s data was…

  • Income Peak Map

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today’s post looks at peak income for the middle class. The Washington Post looked at peak median household income for each county in the United States. And for 81% of counties, that peak was over 15 years ago. The really nice features of this piece are not actually the map, which is a standard choropleth…