I don’t think it’s a coincidence that movements like expressionism, impressionism, and abstract art took off after the invention of the camera. Photorealistic paintings are impressive, but once they are duplicating what a camera does, they’re less interesting.
We’re due for similar movements in other fields to emerge as reactions to AI. Like writing in a way totally different from how an AI would write- ideally better than an AI would write, but even writing worse than an AI can be interesting if it is at least different.
It’s still early days for both AI and our reactions to it. But since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, what is the good new essay or book that you’re most confident was not written by AI, one that was written in an almost deliberately extra-human manner?
When visiting a large county park the other day, I noticed a sign for “Amateur Radio Field Day, Public Welcome.” I have always had great respect for amateur radio operators, for their technical prowess and for their service in emergencies when other forms of communication go down. So, I wandered over to see what was happening.
There were maybe half a dozen large screened in gazebo type tents. In each gazebo there were one or two men seated before some radio apparatus on a table, with a couple other guys sitting in more of a spectator role, chatting away. Someone had used a potato cannon to shoot a fishing line over the top of a tall tree, which was then used to pull up a rope, which was then used to pull up a long antenna wire. There was also a tall standalone antenna mast, held erect by three guy wires staked to the ground.
What were these guys doing? There were mainly doing what hams mainly do, which is reaching out across the continent and across the globe, to make contact via radio with other amateur radio operators. Some were doing it by voice communication, using single side band (SSB) technology for more efficient transmissions. Some were using a computer interface to turn their transmissions into a digital format, which could be transmitted and received more effectively. The guy on the other end would have matching software to turn the numbers back into words.
And there was one guy doing it the old-fashioned way, listening to “beep, beep, beedily beep” Morse code coming in, and transcribing that to letters and numbers. The Morse code beeps can cut through radio clutter more strongly than voice signals, allowing more distant contacts with relatively low power. Which is kind of a bragging point.
The special thing about so-called short waves used by hams is that they can reflect or refract from the underside of charged layers high up in the atmosphere. Your signal can bounce off those layers and come back to earth hundreds or thousands of miles away. Before the Internet, this was actually a big deal. The only other ways to communicate back then with distant people were snail mail, telegraph, or long-distance telephone, which was super expensive and grid dependent. I put together a short-wave video kit around 1970, and it was pretty amazing to hear a station broadcasting from Ecuador, not to mention Radio Moscow. Voice of America and BBC short wave broadcasts helped to keep the ideal of freedom alive in Soviet occupied Europe for many decades.
The guys in the park (I didn’t see any women operators, although I know they exist) were enthusiastic and friendly. When I mentioned I have a grandson who seems interested in technology, a man pressed on me an envelope filled with electronic components, and a small circuit board, encouraging me to help my grandson solder the parts into the board to make a short-wave receiver for Morse code. I thanked him sincerely, but said I might wait till my grandson was seven or eight before embarking on this project.
I am something of a techie myself, with a professional career in chemical engineering. But I found myself far out-geeked by these gentlemen. They would be certainly eager to help in the amount of emergency, but that’s actually a very rare event. It seems much of the thrill is simply the technology itself. To truly understand antenna theory, and even to design and build your own radio, are marks of distinguishment in that crowd. What I found most interesting from a psychological point of view was that when they do connect with someone 1000 or 10,000 miles away, they usually do not stop to chitchat about things like, how’s the weather where you are, how long have you been doing this, etc. No, nothing of normal human interest, it’s just: dutifully log the other party’s location and call sign, and move on to make the next contact.
My takeaway: as I’ve done maybe once a decade, I peered into my soul to assess whether I wanted to invest the time and money into pursuing this hobby. I could crank up my aging brain to pass the technical exams required to get an amateur radio operator’s license. But to set up a working short-wave radio and antenna, and get proficient at using it, would take a lot of effort. And in the Internet age, reaching out and touching someone on a different continent in real time just is not the rush that it used to be. As a responsible citizen, the emergency preparedness aspect is of interest to me. However, there is a newer, alternative class of radio called GMRS, which I think may be more realistic for most emergency situations. My encounter the other day with the hams did cause me to reengage with GMRS, and I may write a blog post about that in the future.
The brilliant content creator economist Matt Hill has posted a video “How Piracy Accidentally Created AI” to the @EconNerds channel on YouTube.
The video is so funny (and smart!) that I encourage you to sit back and watch it all the way through. Around minute 2, he gets to the topic of online piracy.
The @EconNerds channel on YouTube has over 100 engaging videos like this to help you learn economics. You can also find Econ Nerds updates on X/Twitter
I summarized our findings in a previous blog “Summary of You Wouldn’t Steal a Car,” but Matt’s video is more fun and quite technically accurate, so now everyone can just watch it.
Imagine my surprise the other day when I noticed that $1000 had been transferred from my bank account to some nonprofit, without any knowledge or approval on my part. It turned out that an acquaintance, with no access to my banking credentials, had done this. They wanted to make a charitable donation, using a direct bank transfer rather than a credit card, to save the charity the 3% fee charged by Visa/Mastercard. I had written them a check some months back, and they accidently entered the routing number and account number from that check of mine, instead of their own account information.
Was this some unique, gross security lapse by the bank? Or can anyone drain money from your bank account from anywhere, simply knowing your routing and account numbers? After all, these numbers appear on every check you write.
In the old days, someone armed with those two numbers could print fake checks for your account and forge your signature. Sadly, the same principle holds true now in the age of electronic transfers.
The ACH network, which powers most bank-to-bank transfers, bill payments, and direct debits, was historically designed on the assumption that initiating a pull was authorization enough. Someone with your numbers can:
Set up a fake “bill pay” or utility payment pulling from your account
Add your account as a payment method on PayPal, Venmo, Amazon, or similar platforms
Set up recurring ACH debits through many merchant processors
Ouch. It seems there is really nothing you can do to prevent this, other than closing your existing account if you are worried, and opening a new account with different numbers.
The main mitigation method is to set your account to notify you every time there is an electronic transfer, and notify the bank immediately (call, and follow up in writing or bank’s message system). Start documenting all aspects of this dispute process, in case of litigation. Or at a minimum, look through every month’s statement soon after it appears, to check for shady transfers. Close or restrict the account if appropriate.
As I understand it, if you notify the bank within 60 days of when they sent the monthly statement, your max liability is $500. Beyond 60 days, you are toast – the money is just gone.
There is a slightly murky provision for limiting liability to $50 if you notify the bank within two days of you learning of the fraud (as long as that is within the 60-day window noted above). The application of this 2-day rule is clear if you are getting real-time notifications of transfers. But, say, if you slit open a printed statement the day after receiving it in the snail mail, perhaps three days after it was sent, notice a fraud and call the bank immediately, it is less clear whether you get dinged $50 or $500. If you are a good customer, I’m guessing the bank would make it $50.
All this is powerful motivation for using credit cards or Venmo/Zelle instead of paper checks. Bad guys can’t withdraw from your Venmo or Zelle unless they have your login information. With a credit card, you generally don’t get charged anything for a fraudulent transaction on your credit card (assuming you report it in reasonable time) – – plus you can usually get 2% or more cash back.
Here is a graphic that compares the size of the initial public offering (vertical axis) and the total company market cap (size of circle) of SpaceX to everything that has come before:
Elon Musk’s space launch/AI conglomerate spin-off SpaceX went public on Friday. Retail investors were all over it like a pack of starving dogs, driving up prices of SPCX from its opening $162 to $192 as of the close Monday. This has been grand theater, with Musk serving up signature visions of gargantuan total addressable markets, while investors are in fact getting crumbs of a money-loser. In the restaurant biz, this is known as selling the sizzle instead of the steak.
Let us pause for a reverent moment to savor the grand vision used to sell SpaceX: making humanity multiplanetary by dramatically lowering the cost of access to space. It extends beyond launch services into global communications (via Starlink), space infrastructure, in-space manufacturing, resource extraction, transportation, and ultimately a potential Mars economy—expanding from billions to trillions of dollars in theoretically addressable markets. Ooh, ahh, who would not want a piece of that?
Well, there are some problems here. It is hard not to splutter when trying to explain it, it is so bad for investors. I will just call out three issues I see:
( 1 ) Governance: You Own It But Can’t Influence It The IPO float represents roughly 4-5% of total shares, so we the people only get a sliver of the company. But it gets worse. Public shareholders receive Class A shares with one vote each, while Musk holds Class B shares carrying ten votes each, giving him approximately 85% voting control. More unusually, the company bylaws explicitly prohibit shareholder proposals — meaning investors cannot even put advisory resolutions to a vote. This is governance subordination beyond what even Zuckerberg imposed on his investors.
( 2 ) Valuation: Priced for Perfection Without Profits There is no price/earnings ratio because there are no earnings. At $2 trillion, SpaceX trades at approximately 20 times REVENUE. That price/sales is not unheard of for a small, fast-growing software company with almost no capital requirements (think: early-stage Amazon, Google, Palantir, etc.). But it makes no sense to apply it to a capital-intensive hardware and infrastructure business with negative GAAP earnings. Starlink is growing rapidly but requires continuous heavy capital expenditure to maintain and expand its satellite constellation. And SpaceX faces meaningful competition for orbital launches from Blue Origin, ULA (for military missions), maybe Rocket Labs, and the Chinese (for non-West payloads). And, if you dig into it, over 90% of their proposed addressable market is not space at all, but enterprise AI (!!). SpaceX pitches a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion, with AI opportunities alone accounting for $26.5 trillion. This is essentially the entire global GDP of the planet for a single year, and I guess they assume their pitiful Grok will claw back lots of market share from Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. As we said, priced for perfection.
( 3 ) Unbuilt Revenue Streams SpaceX has announced contracts to provide AI compute services to other companies — potentially a significant revenue source — but the data centers required don’t yet exist. Investors are therefore paying partially for infrastructure that is neither built nor generating revenue, on a timeline that remains speculative.
OK, but we have seen shares of Musk’s other baby, Tesla (TSLA), remain at uniquely high price/sales and price/earnings, seemingly indefinitely. So, investing in SpaceX is much like investing in that shiny yellow metal called gold: there will never be conventional earnings payback, but there might well be some greater fool out there who will pay more for my shares than I did. This really comes down to a psychological head game, not fundamentals. Gold has in fact done very well over the years, and the pros learned the hard way not to short TSLA, not matter how unsupportable its price is.
Final comments on index fund buying to drive up the share price – one of the bull drivers for SpaceX has been the prospect that the huge company market cap (around $2 Trillion) would force index funds like NASDAQ and S&P500 to buy boatloads of SPCX stock, driving up the price. But it turns out this will not be such a big factor. These indices only take into account the publicly traded shares, not locked-up, non-traded founder shares. So, we are looking at around $100 billion in traded SPCX shares, not the full $2 billion, which is mainly shares controlled by Musk and venture capital. $100 billion is only about 0.15% of the total S&P500 market cap of about $70 trillion. This means fund purchases of SPCX should not by itself drive down prices of other companies.
It is true that inclusion in Nasdaq-100 and Russell indexes will force automatic buying of around $25 billion in SPCX shares from funds tracking those indices. That seems like a significant driver, but (a) everyone knows this, so it is already factored into today’s prices, and (b) index fund purchases will be offset by billions in sales from VC’s as they sell shares when their lock-up periods expire in a few months.
Side comment: Historically, the major indices have had a little gravitas about what companies to include. The Nasdaq-100 typically requires at least a 3 month “seasoning” period for an IPO to trade, and then waiting till the next regularly-scheduled reconstitution. Thus, it might take around six months for an IPO to make it into the Nasdaq-100 index. For SpaceX (and presumably for Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs), NASDAQ changed the rules to allow REALLY big IPOs to be included within 15 days. (This means that some other company will get booted from the Nasdaq-100). Russell caved even further than NASDAQ, with almost immediate inclusion in the Russell 3000.
Staid Standard and Poor’s alone has maintained its dignity here, refusing to compromise on its principles. For inclusion in the S&P 500, a company must be publicly listed for at least one full year, must show positive GAAP earnings in the most recent quarter and positive cumulative earnings across the trailing four quarters (this is going to be tough for a cash-burner like SpaceX), and at least 10% (not 5%) of its shares must be publicly traded. So, no S&P listing for SpaceX in the near future.
It’s feeling like the late ’90s, with an impressive new technology pushing tech stocks and the broader US market to all-time highs. Retail investors are using new platforms to get in on the action, tech companies are doing more IPOs to take advantage of the higher stock prices, and other companies are trying to boost their stocks by saying they are pivoting to the new technology (though often they aren’t really changing).
The excitement drives valuations to record levels:
Shiller CAPE Ratio
In the ’90s, the internet really was a transformational new technology that would enable lots of profitable new companies. But the market got ahead of itself, a bubble that led to a crash- the S&P fell by almost half, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ fell by over 3/4 and took 15 years to recover.
History rhymes, but it doesn’t repeat exactly. I don’t currently expect a big crash driven by AI stocks; it helps that unlike in the ’90s, many of the big players are currently profitable. But I also don’t expect the NASDAQ to keep posting 20+% returns every year.
If the AI bull market doesn’t end in a dramatic crash, how will it end? It’s already shrugged off a war. A US recession is unlikely this year, though plausible next year.
The end I see slowly approaching comes from crowding out. What Robert Solow said about computers in 1987 is true about AI today: you see the AI age everywhere except the productivity statistics. There’s only so much money to go around in markets when productivity growth is unexceptional and savings rates are falling.
We’re already seeing the war hit certain markets (if not US stocks). Iran’s gulf neighbors are now putting lots of money into missile defense, money they now won’t be spending on data centers or gold (down 16% from pre-war), and everyone else has to spend more on oil.
Interest rates have been rising- partly due to central bank attempts to fight inflation, partly due to ongoing high rates of government borrowing, and partly due to financing the AI buildout itself. Higher rates make it more expensive for companies to invest in the physical AI buildout, and make investors discount future AI revenues more while making bonds a more attractive substitute for stocks today. 10-year TIPS now yield 2% over the inflation rate, a sharp contrast to the 2021 stock boom when they yielded less than inflation. If I were older I’d be loading up on TIPS, and even at 38 I’m starting to get tempted.
Trying to call the top exactly is a fool’s errand, but if I were feeling foolish, I’d point to the big upcoming IPOs. SpaceX just filed for an IPO that would be the biggest ever both for the amount of money raised ($75 billion) and the total company valuation ($1.77 trillion). This shatters the previous records for the biggest overall raise ($29 billion raised by Saudi Aramco when it went public in 2019) and the biggest raise by an American company ($18 billion raised by Visa in 2008). OpenAI and Anthropic are likely to follow with IPOs that would also break the previous records- making 3 companies each trying to raise more than the $45 billion raised by the entire US IPO market in 2025. Even if the process of going public doesn’t reveal any flaws in the companies, that money has to come from somewhere- and it takes up a substantial proportion of all net inflows to US stocks in a typical year (IPOs plus new money into existing stocks).
In short- where will the money come from? What are investors going to sell in order to buy into these IPOs? Technically they could do it all with cash, but I think it’s at least plausible that they start selling other stocks. The selling pressure will continue after the IPOs as employees of the newly-public companies see their stocks vest and other early investors become able to sell off.
I’m not trying to time the market. Even if this is a ’90s re-run, we could easily still be in the 1998 buildup, not the 2000 peak and crash. But I am diversifying. US stocks are currently the world’s most expensive. Investors value US stocks that highly because there’s a real chance that US companies are profitably building the technologies that will drive the future. But there’s also a real chance they aren’t– and if that state of the world comes to pass, I’d prefer to own a significant chunk of bonds, foreign stocks, and real assets.
Somewhere in the vast metropolis that stretches from Boston to Washington lives a friend of ours with a long-term dream. To protect her privacy, I will not give her name or town. For over thirty years she has wanted to do some form of homesteading, where you raise most of your own food, plus some extra to sell for cash. She and her husband contemplate moving someday to a rural area in the South, where they could buy cheaper land in a warmer climate to raise goats or pigs or cattle, and grow more extensive crops.
However, that move just never happened (so far), what with the usual limitations on jobs and finances. She decided a few years ago, though, to not just keep putting food production off forever. She is doing what she can, with considerable help from her husband, on an urban/suburban lot of just over a quarter acre. He constructed numerous raised beds in an area that was formerly just grass, and had many trees taken down to admit more sunlight. She sprouts seeds into plants indoors, to get a head start in the spring.
It started about ten years ago, with just two raised beds. Now the garden area looks like this:
….
Those are pictures I took near the beginning of May. By the end of May, the gardens had exploded:
Plantings there include potatoes, onions, squash, peas, peppers, garlic, tomatoes, strawberries, arugula, and lettuce. The brassicas such as cabbage, broccoli, kale, and cauliflower are covered with a tent; otherwise, cabbage moths can decimate these plants. In a rock bed they have horseradish and comfrey. They have four blueberry bushes. The next big project would be an asparagus bed.
For livestock, they put in chickens about four years ago. In the foreground is a self-contained coop with about 8 birds, and behind it is a second coop with a run behind it, which houses about 18 birds:
They are raising dual-purpose chickens, which are pretty good egg layers, and OK for meat. (There are some breeds that are champs at laying eggs, and others like Cornish Cross whose purpose in life is to grow to eating size in an astonishing 8 weeks). All told, they get some 7-10 dozen eggs a week, spring/summer/fall. This is enough for them to eat and have plenty to sell or give away. In winter, with the cold and shorter daylight, egg production drops to 1-2 dozen/week. To transform a walking, clucking bird with feathers into breasts and drumsticks is a task I will gloss over here, but that is something that homesteaders also must do.
The main ongoing work with their chickens is filling the 7-gallon waterers every couple of days, and throwing a scoop of feed onto the floor of each coop every day. These birds get a “salad” of greens at least once a week, for variety. Here is a shot of the “girls” eagerly pecking away at their dinner; I see at least one egg on the ground in the background:
Chicken poop is pretty nasty, but it is managed by a deep bed system. There are several inches of straw in the bottom of the coops and the run. The birds continually dig around in the straw and mix it. That seems to dilute and dry the poop enough that the “farmers” only need to change out the litter a couple times a year. It just goes on the compost pile, to become fertile planting soil.
Chickens seem to be the most popular animal for budding homesteaders. They are called the “gateway animal”, to get you started/hooked. They tend to require little management, and are versatile eaters, so you don’t need to feed them just purchased grain. Some homesteaders feed them select table scraps, and even raise worms to feed the birds. If you have a large yard or pasture, you can put chickens in a movable “tractor” coop during the day, to forage for insects and greens in the fresh grass under the tractor for that day’s position.
Regulations on selling slaughtered meat are onerous, but it is easy to sell fresh eggs. In their township, chickens are allowed, but no roosters. (No one wants to hear crowing at 3:00 AM). So, our friend’s chicks that hatch out as males end up going to “freezer camp” just before they fully mature. Livestock such as goats and pigs are legal. Our friend wanted to raise a couple of pigs (pigs can also put on weight at an impressive rate, mushrooming from a 50-pound piglet to a harvestable 400-pound hog in 6-7 months). Her husband, however, declined to support that odiferous project.
Growing food is one thing, preserving it for later eating is another. She wrote me:
I can everything. Fruit, jams, veggies, potatoes, meat, fish, and meals. I have chili in jars, along with lamb stew, and onions for Frech onion soup. I make spaghetti sauce too. Yes, I’ve canned our own homegrown chicken.
Since [the storage room] stays cool in the winters (60ish F) I can store hard skin squash and keep fresh potatoes for frying or baking til January or February. I also dehydrate herbs/veggies and meat and fruit. Some veggies don’t can well, they get mushy like zucchini.
“Canning” in this context does not mean sealing into metal cans like you see in stores. It usually means putting the food in special glass “Mason” jars, heating them in a hot water bath (or, better but more work, in a pressure cooker) to sterilize the contents, then sealing them with a lid. Seems like a lot of work, but I am told by friends from the old South that canning your vegetables was a normal household activity there well into the 1960s or so.
Finally, our friends have a beehive on loan from a neighbor. Zoom in to see the bees going in/out at the bottom:
I found it inspiring to see what this couple was able to accomplish in the way of food sufficiency in a quasi-urban setting, and I wish them well in their quest to relocate to where they can grow their own red meat and hear their rooster crow.
According to Claude: Windows 11 includes a built-in “Windows Scan” app (free in the Microsoft Store) that lets you scan documents directly to PDF — simple and reliable for everyday use. “Adobe Scan” offers a free mobile companion but also works via browser. For more features, “NAPS2” (Not Another PDF Scanner 2) is a popular open-source option with batch scanning, OCR, and direct PDF export. “IrfanView” with its scan plugin is another lightweight choice. For advanced control, “VueScan” offers a free version with core functionality. Most modern all-in-one printers also bundle free scanning software compatible with Windows 11.
Why I Chose “Scan Document to PDF”
My HP scanner software seemed pretty snoopy, not localized to my own PC. Not that I have anything dire to hide, but I’d rather not have my private affairs shooting off to a server who knows where. So I tried the built-in Windows “Scan” function for scanning documents on my trusty ink-jet printer/copier/scanner. It would run pages through the feeder, but then freeze up.
I’ve had mixed experiences with free software, often it gratuitously installs crap-ware on your PC. But surely not Microsoft… so I downloaded the free “Windows Fax and Scan” app mentioned by Claude. It did work, but was a bit clunky and limited. You have to first save a file in some graphic image format like PNG or JPEG, then go to Print, and choose “Microsoft Print to PDF”.
But then, I installed another free Microsoft app, “Scan Document to PDF”. That seems like a sweet spot here. It seamlessly scans to PDF, but has a good deal of extra functions that are intuitively accessible. It can save files as images like jpg if that is what you want. You can activate OCR to make a scanned document searchable. You can scan individual pages, and decide which ones to bundle into a pdf file. You can brighten or rotate pages, etc.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR “SCAN DOCUMENT TO PDF” ON WINDOWS 11 PC
( 1 ) Click Start icon, to left of Search bar at bottom of Windows screen. Click on Show All, for a list of all programs. Scroll down to Scan Document to PDF and click.
( 2 ) Check scan settings showing on left hand side. Can adjust them here, or by clicking Profiles button. Paper Source: Glass for one sheet on scanner, or Feeder for auto feeding pages. Resolution: Suggest 300 dpi. Bit Depth: Color for a color scan, or usually Grayscale for a black & white final document (sometimes gives better resolution than the “Black & White” setting).
( 3 ) Click Scan button (top left) to initiate scan. (Note: on the side of that button is a dropdown for options like setting up Batch Scans.)
( 4 ) Scanned pages will show on screen. To save them all as one PDF, click the Save PDF button. Default pdf file destination is /Downloads/ folder. (To save only selected pages into the final PDF, click on the dropdown on side of that button)
MORE OPTIONS
( 5 ) BEFORE SCANNING: (A) You can set up a different Profile of scan settings (scanner device, feeder, resolution, etc.) by clicking on Profiles button. (B) Click on OCR button to make final pdf searchable (not just a static image).
( 6 ) AFTER SCANNING: (A) Click Import to import pages from existing PDF, that you can then add to newly scanned pages. (B) Click Image button and select a page to crop, brighten, rotate, make black&white, etc.
This person is buying the pills direct from the supplier, in consultation with a doctor. It is amazing. Resurrection. The Great Stagnation is over. Go get this stuff. It’s funny how many people are already on it, but it doesn’t come up until you initiate a conversation.
As a behavioral economist… it’s pretty wild. Folks were eating things that part of themselves wanted to eat and part of themselves did not want to eat. And, instead of getting rid of the junk food, or somehow training people out of overeating, we’ve chemically quieted the desires.
I feel like the healthy people could have done more on choice architecture, in the old days (pre-2025). It was hard for the people trying to lose weight to avoid junk food. I’m not trying to introduce the boot of the state into kids’ birthday cakes but just pausing to reflect on how many people died because of our choices. Humans are supposed to just walk past an aisle of candy bars? (My parents explicitly and intentionally trained me from a young age to never buy anything at the “check out aisle” because it’s always going to be a stupid impulse purchase. As an adult, I buy a chocolate bar at check out about once a year and feel like I’m getting away with robbing a children’s hospital.)
Here’s Paul pondering these issues 2000 years ago (shortened by me): Romans 7:15-19 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. … For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
Joy: I think on net glp1 will increase fertility relative to not having it. It seems like good news for folks reaching their (reportedly) desired number of children. But I would not count on it to turn any country around to get back to replacement.
The vast majority of business majors across the US are required to take two or more Economics courses. You can look across the spectrum. All of the top 20 business schools require two or more econ classes. In fact, Wharton is the top-ranked business school and their business program is actually an *economics* program. They don’t have finance/accounting/business degrees. Instead, they have an Economics degree with the various business concentrations. Again – the top business school in the country is an Economics program.
What about at the other end of the spectrum? I live in Florida. Every single Florida state school requires both Micro and Macroeconomics for business majors. These schools include everything from Florida State University to the local Florida state college down the road. I didn’t look at other state-run higher education systems in other states. There are a lot of states…
I teach at a private Catholic university. We’re listed in something called ‘The Newman Guide’ which recommends 17 Catholic schools. Many of these are liberal arts schools, but the list also includes Catholic University of America, which is an R1. Most of these schools also require two or more Economics classes in their Business major programs. The only exception is University of Dallas, which has Economics in the core curriculum.*
So, overwhelmingly undergraduate business programs across the country require two economics courses. But, why? The students are often not happy to be there, and I’ve even heard business professors demean the math as performatively rigorous and superfluous. They argue that plenty of people get rich or are otherwise successful without all of the quantitative skills that economics leverages.
I think that the fear of math is both a red herring and a scapegoat. Rather, Economics confronts students with the liberal arts – whether they like it or not. Be careful. Liberal Arts are not the same as Humanities. They include argumentation, the ability to write and communicate, clear and consistent logic, and, yes, even math. Accounting can tell you how to keep track of the money, but it doesn’t include a theory for when you should produce more or less in contrast to your competitors. Finance does better since it has the time value of money and ‘with vs without’ analysis. That’s closer to marginal thinking. But finance lacks a theory of markets outside of portfolio theory and arbitrage.**
