Category: Politics
-
Why Non-Correlations Tell Us More Than Correlations Do
Most readers here will know the problem with correlation and causation: post hoc ergo propter hoc (it came after therefore it was caused by). It’s one of the classic logical fallacies. Suppose you find that people with good teeth have higher lifetime incomes. Are the good teeth the cause? Or is there some other factor…
-
1098 Naysayers: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
The Sky-Is-Falling Crowd says that 1098’s income tax will be immediately extended to lower earners. If you’re so sure, here’s a chance to make a buck on your certainty. Fifty bucks, actually. Here’s the bet: If, as of April 15, 2014, Washington-state taxpayers with incomes below $200,000 (individual filers) or $400,000 (joint filers) are paying…
-
1098: If Millionaires Vote With Their Feet, They Apparently Don’t Care About Income Taxes
All the gnashing of teeth and tearing of breasts about “the most productive members of our society” voting with their feet and abandoning our state if we institute an income tax has always seemed a little … overblown. Turns out it is. If it was true, you’d expect to find a much smaller percentage of…
-
Government Is So Inefficient and Poorly Managed
The Office of Management and Budget reporting on tracking for Recovery Act funds: Of the 74,244 prime recipients required to file last quarter, just 352 failed to file a report last quarter — that’s 99.5 percent participation. Of the 352 who failed to file, 89 percent of them — or 312 — were first-time non-reporters.…
-
Is Gerrymandering the Flocking Problem?
My regular readers will know that I’m fascinated by systems with “emergent properties” — systems where a few simple rules that individuals operate by result in complex and surprisingly organized behavior by the group — group properties that don’t seem to have any obvious direct relationship to the simple rules. Birds flocking is a great…
-
Who Owns Congress? A Campaign Cash Seating Chart
I’ve been meaning to write up a post on this but haven’t found time. And it pretty much speaks for itself, so I’ll just give it to you and you can do with it as you will. Congressional Seats by Top Donors to Each Seat It’s pretty clear who wins that X vs. Y encounter:…
-
Liberty, Freedom, and Wealth: Americans Say Power to the People!
It drives me batty to hear so-called conservatives and libertarians prattling on about liberty and freedom without seeming to realize or even consider what seems fairly obvious to me: for the vast majority of people, liberty — the freedom to do what you want to do from day to day, year-in and year-out, and in the…
-
Who Does the Senate Listen To? The Poor, the Middle Class, or the Rich?
Here’s an analysis that’s somewhat dated, but that I came across and found interesting. Data from Larry Bartels (PDF). At least during that time period, Senators of all stripes (in aggregate at least) simply ignored the opinions of low-income people. The correlations aren’t just small; they’re negative across the board. Democrats at least pay attention…
-
What’s Wrong with Free Markets: “The ‘Wisdom’ of the Crowds”
This may seem obvious to many, but it’s been very clarifying for me. People often argue against the free-market system — which is based on the idea of rational actors — by saying “people are obviously not rational actors!” But that’s a stupid argument. It misses the point. Nobody thinks that everyone, always, makes rational…
-
Am I Channelling David Stockman, or Is He Channelling Me?
He could have written my last two posts, or I could have written the script for this: Media Player | WBUR and NPR – On Point with Tom Ashbrook. The Stockman interview starts at 12:03. It would be uncanny, if both of us weren’t simply stating the obvious. He got two things wrong — it’s…
-
The Republican Debt Binge: Was It the Democrats’ Fault?
I’ve asked my good friend Steve many times over the years to explain the graph in my previous post: How can he rant on so much about federal debt while continuing to champion policies that seem to have resulted in a stunning, spectacular thirty-year runup in federal debt (except under Clinton), as compared to a…
-
The Reaganomics Strategy: A Legacy of Debt
I’ve laid this out before, but I wanted to give it its own post so I could refer to it — notably in my next post. The Reaganomics Strategy is a brilliantly effective (and profoundly irresponsible) political strategy. It goes like this: Borrow money from our children and from abroad, and use the money to…
-
Family of Four on $11K a Year: 19 Million Americans Live On That
Update, 4/16/15: A friend points out that this post misrepresents what’s reported in the linked Census data table. From the Census definitions (PDF), emphasis mine: Receipts from the following sources are not included as income: capital gains, money received from the sale of property (unless the recipient was engaged in the business of selling such property);…
-
Government is Not the Problem. Bad Government is the Problem.
And the solution to bad government is … good government. A lot of people — maybe even most Americans — think that making government smaller will make it better. But that reminds of the time when I a little kid that I got in trouble for pouring water out of a glass down a heat…
-
Must. Make. Gubmint. Smaller.
Hard Pressed, Cities Take Ax to Once-Sacrosanct Firehouses – NYTimes.com. Related posts: Guantanamo Chief Prosecutor on Guantanamo Proofiness! Krugman: “while we were arguing about NAFTA, Sauron was gathering his forces in Mordor” It’s About Bloody Time. Sheesh. Did I Mention Mentioning that It’s the Health Care Costs, Stupid?
-
State Taxes and Prosperity, Revisited
Iyer asked in the comments to a recent post on state taxes and prosperity whether the picture would change if we looked at a different period (1996-2006), because 2007/08 was so anomalous. For many data series, it’s very easy (as demonstrated here) to cherry-pick periods that seem to “prove” a given thesis. Far better to…
-
Washington 1098: Will the Wealthy Leave the State?
Update: It turns out, millionaires don’t care about income taxes. You’re a Washington business owner making $500,000 a year. You have millions, maybe tens of millions, in the bank. You live in a big, gorgeous house on the water on Mercer Island, with sunset views and your sailboat and powerboat out front. You and your…
-
On That New York Mosque
Michael Bloomberg: The simple fact is, this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship, and the government has no right whatsoever to deny that right. And if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the…
-
Do Lower-Taxing States Grow Faster? No.
Following up on yesterday’s post comparing state tax rates and prosperity (answer: higher-taxing states are more prosperous [or vice versa. <g>]), I wondered about the same comparison with prosperity growth. Again I used median household income, because it’s a good measure of widespread prosperity, a.k.a. The American Dream. Here’s the story: In aggregate, there’s no…
-
Are Low-Taxing States More Prosperous? No. QTC.
Regular readers will remember my posts comparing prosperous countries — tax rates versus prosperity and prosperity growth — and will remember that they’re largely uncorrelated: lower taxes don’t correlate with faster economic growth. (See Related Links at the bottom of this post for much more.) But what about states? Are low-taxing states more prosperous? I…