The vast majority of broad-based tariffs flow through to domestic prices.
A careful study of the China '18 tariff implementation suggests that roughly 80% of the tariff rise flowed thru to prices, it's just most of the impact was *before* the policy was implemented.
Thread.
Alright tell me a movie that made you stare blankly at a wall for 20 minutes after it finished. One that you couldn’t stop thinking about and made you question everything.
Extremely interesting:
Huge & comprehensive study on the impacts of cash transfers (UBI) in the US finds almost no impact on everything tested - Work, Education, Health 😔.
They gave 1,000 low income people in IL and TX $1,000/mo for 3 years, & gave a control group $50/mo... They studied everything - did blood draws, had a custom mobile app to study time usage, had credit reports/bank balances.
The $12,000/yr was substantial - a 40% increase in household income, and not taxable.
What happened?
Work:
-People worked a little less (2% decrease in labor market participation, labor hour reduction of 1.3-1.4 hrs/wk), decreasing their non-transfer incomes. Every $1 transferred reduced household income by $0.20.
-They spend that time on leisure
-No impact on starting or helping to start a business :( though people stated on the survey that they would be more likely to start a business
-so... the negative effect on labor supply was not offset by other productive activities and people also did not get better jobs
Education:
-people in their 20s getting the transfer had a 2% increase in enrolling in post-secondary education
Health:
-The cash generated major benefits to stress and mental health in the 1st year but by the 2nd year there was no improvement noticed over base
-People used more medical care ($20/mo) - spending more on hospitalizations, ER, dentists.
-People also spent more on alcohol and painkillers
-Overall there was no effect on physical health (measured via survey, blood tests, health records)
-No impact on exercise or sleep
-There were major benefits to food insecurity, but only in the 1st year. By year 2, participants were as food-insecure as before the transfers.
There's something both libertarian and socialist about UBI that I liked... cash gives the freedom to choose what you want to consume! But that also makes it a rather blunt tool and it just does not seem to work for this audience.