Economics Dictionary
This economics dictionary and lexicon is a work in progress, so please pardon the dust — I’ll be adding to it over time. The goal is to democratize the esoteric language of economics, and arm more people with the tools to understand policy decisions — and identify bad ones.
Economic literacy ought to be a core life skill taught in schools. How is one to succeed in a system one cannot even begin to fathom unless born into wealth, or unusually driven to acquire it?
See also:
| Term | Definition | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 3% service charge | There's a loophole allowing businesses to pass on the credit card processing fee to their customers | Credit card companies eat up 3% of our whole economy, just to exist. |
| banking regulations | Banks are required to follow the law to ensure a fair monetary and economic system for all. | * Sarbanes-Oxley* Dodd Frank * Durbin Amendment |
| Big Philanthropy | There are concerns about the concentrated control of philanthropic capital by the world's oligarchs as applied in the direction of their own interest, vs. a more broadly distributed economy in which progress is shared and philanthropic capital is distributed more broadly and locally within the affected sectors and regions. | Recently, I spoke with Morris Pearl, who in 2014 retired as a managing director at BlackRock, the asset-management firm, to become chairman of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy advocates for higher taxes on the rich, which was organized in 2010. (The membership now numbers about two hundred and includes Norman Lear, the TV producer, and Leo Hindery, Jr., a private-equity executive who has for years supported closing the carried-interest loophole.) I asked Pearl whether philanthropy mitigated the need for reform. *“We need to make collective decisions by our elected representatives on how to spend our money,” he said. “It’s not up to each individual person to decide how to spend the money.”* |
| bitcoin | ||
| carceral state | A shift from handling the problems of homelessness and poverty via the social safety net and social democratic policies of wealth redistribution, to removing state funds from social services and criminalizing aspects of being poor —relegating the problem of income inequality to a police matter. | Compare cost of incarceration vs. cost of affordable housing, rehabilitation, treatment, and crime prevention expenditures |
| carried-interest loophole | ||
| Common Core | Sweeping educational reform program proposed by the Gates Foundation that advanced very quickly through the federal government and all 50 states with the effect of enacting new testing requirements for most grade school students. | |
| corporate tax rate | Corporate myth that the corporate tax rate is too high. | Classic example of “lying with statistics.” Warren Buffet claims it's a myth. |
| credit rating | ||
| cryptocurrency | ||
| demand curve | ||
| demand-side economics | ||
| derivatives | ||
| estate tax | see dropdown | |
| Ethereum | ||
| fiscal policy | ||
| food stamps | 47 million Americans rely on food stamps. Forty. Seven. Million. | |
| GDP | see dropdown | |
| global poverty | Gary Haugen: Everyday violence is what thwarts our efforts against global poverty | |
| inflation | ||
| interest rates | ||
| Kahn's multiplier | ||
| Keynesian economics | ||
| Kronos Effect | ||
| Laffer Curve | ||
| Living Wage gap | The Atlantic: State map & calculator | |
| means testing | ||
| middle class | ||
| monetarism | ||
| moral hazard | Principle-Agent problem | |
| negative externalities | ||
| negative interest rates | ||
| Phillips curve | graph of the equation showing a trade-off between employment and the rate of inflation | |
| portfolio diversity | ||
| poverty traps | ||
| Reaganomics | ||
| redlining | The practice of downgrading the creditworthiness in particular urban districts —often in downtown cores —that had the historical net effect of relegating “low-income” black borrowers to abandoned city centers that withered in value vs. the more affluent, developed suburbs the “white flight” became privy to during the same time period. | Many of the borrowers had migrated from the South to the North during and after Reconstruction, and found themselves either unable to secure home mortgages or hoodwinked into essentially fake housing contracts designed to fleece them of payments for some years before revealing that no equity had accrued and no recourse available to the “buyer” (these deals would make subprime mortgage stinkers looks like paragons of virtue, by comparison) other than forfeit occupancy and start afresh somewhere else.White real estate moguls became enriched during this time —it was something of a cultural truism that one “had to be dim” to not become wealthy from the fruits of this exploitation. |
| Say's Law | theory that all income is automatically spent | disputed by Keynes |
| single player | Medicare for All -- a public health care option with health insurance at an affordable price | Backed by Bernie Sanders and other Democrats |
| stagflation | little or no economic growth combined with inflation | |
| stimulus | ||
| supply chain | ||
| supply-side economics | ||
| tax avoidance | ||
| tax inversion | The practice of relocating an American company's headquarters overseas in order to take advantage of tax loopholes allowing them to keep profits offshore and avoid paying U.S. taxes. | Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on how to handle disloyal corporations: deprive them of the benefits of their citizenship. |
| Taylor's rule | theory showing the trade-off between interest rates and the rate of inflation | |
| trickle-down economics | ||
| unemployment | ||
| welfare | ||
| white-collar crime | Criminal acts of fraud, theft, insider trading, racketeering, gambling, and other financial schemes on the part of finance, business, and government professionals of high status and respectability. | financial torture devices of the rich* Comcast dumping hazardous waste http://consumerist.com/2015/12/15/comcast-hit-with-26m-penalty-for-dumping-hazardous-waste-and-revealing-personal-customer-info/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow* Martin Shkreli's Ponzi scheme life http://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2015/12/17/why-martin-shkreli-arrested/* Wells Fargo* Steven Cohen pays $135m for insider trading http://www.nasdaq.com/article/steven-cohen-sac-reach-135-million-insidertrading-settlement-20161130-01241* Enron* Ponzi* Koch Brothers* what the robber barons of yesteryear got away with (JP Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilts) |
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