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Post 1:

Hello everyone,

I listened to a NPR Planet Money podcast called "Economists challenge maxim: For inflation to go down, unemployment needs to go up" by Willa Rubin. The podcast focuses on the correlation of unemployment and inflation. (Rubin, 2023). Rubin, 2023, talked about Bill Phillips and how he came up with the Phillips Curve in 1957. Essentially Phillip came up with the concept that when unemployment was low inflation went up and when unemployment was high inflation went down. ( Rubin, 2023). This became a standard in economics for decades.

Economists are now rethinking this theory of codependence inflation and unemployment. As Rubin, (2023) put it "What made him stop believing? It was inflation. It stayed low for decades. Even as unemployment took some wild swings, inflation didn't really budge until recently."

For my part, I don't think there is a single answer to inflation. If there a simple easy answer everyone would be doing it. We have came to an unprecedented time. I don't feel as we have fully recovered from the pandemic. The supply chain is not fully stabilized. Inflation is dropping in the present, but it spiked in the near past. I would raise minimum wage nationally. Many companies are already paying wages above minimum wage, but they use that higher rate as leverage. If someone is making $15 an hour a business can say what more do you want we are paying double the minimum wage. The buying power of that money has changed drastically the last few years. We need to take a look at the real wage. "The real wage is the wage rate divided by the price level." (Krugman, 2020).

Post 2:

Good Evening Everyone,

I selected NPR's Planet Money podcast - Prices fall, unemployment rises and Boomers have all the houses.

What important new things did you learn?

In 1981, the median age of repeat home buyers is thirty-six years old and now thirty-eight is the median age to buy a first home. What might explain this is that the prices of the home market is expensive. 1.9 million people at the moment receiving unemployment benefits (Woods, 2023). Fed is probably thinking about when it's deciding whether or not it should be raising interest rates again because increased interest rates, if it slows the economy, could actually increase unemployment (Ma, 2023).

Did the topics discussed in the article or podcast relate to your personal experience in any way? If so, how? If not, how do you believe it could?

Boomers in particular, they're just doing much better in this housing market than younger buyers. So first-time homebuyers who are younger, they used to make up a bigger share, but, like, they just cannot compete with the older repeat buyers right now. Fifty-three percent of repeat buyers actually did use the proceeds from the sale of their home towards the down payment for their next home (Gonzalez, 2023). I was twenty-seven when I purchased my first home. If I had chosen to stay in my first home for a longer period of time (due to personal reasons) in order to build more equity, I am confident that I would have sold my first home. If I had purchased my dream home, I would still be residing in it to this day.

How does this new knowledge relate to unemployment, inflation, or other macroeconomic measurements that are being explored in this unit and how they impact the entire economy?

Higher levels of unemployment might motivate the Fed to lower rates and spur economic growth, while low levels of unemployment might motivate higher rates to curb inflation (Johnston, 2023).

Based on what you learned, what action(s), if any, do you think the government, or society, should take?

The actions the government should take is job creation. There could be tax incentives for businesses to hire new employees. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) is a Federal tax credit available to employers for hiring and employing individuals from certaintargeted groupswho have faced significant barriers to employment (IRS, 2023).

There a lot of individuals who are creative, knowledgeable and can start their own business. Society can help encourage entrepreneurship, job training to develop new skills, and financial literacy.