Category: Politics
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Bush/McCain Economic Advisor Sez: Raise Taxes
Douglas Holtz-Eakin was Chief Economist for the Council of Economic Advisers from 2001-2002. He was Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003-2005. He was John McCain’s chief economic advisor during the presidential campaign. In the WSJ, he says Obama “should call on Congress to pass a comprehensive reform of our income and payroll tax…
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Will the Right Kill the Republicans? Ask the Whigs.
I’m as curious as anyone about the long-term effects of hard-right Republicans on the Republican party. Will their zealotry result in the party’s rupture and collapse? This led me to look at the two significant national parties from America’s history that have collapsed and disappeared: the Federalists and the Whigs. The Federalists came apart because…
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To claim “objectivism” at 20 is predictable. To claim “objectivism” at 60 is plain idiocy.
Apologies to Churchill for the ripoff. No apologies to Ms. Rand. I remember quite clearly at age 13 saying to my mother and my sister, “why can’t people just be objective?” Pretty amusing in hindsight. Related posts: We Should Make Janitors Work Longer Because Lawyers Are Living Longer Two Thirds of Tea Partiers Want to…
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Teenage Moms and Welfare Incentives
Bryan Caplan has done yeoman’s duty for us all by reviewing “all the major research on the response of fertility to economic incentives.” He finds a “striking contrast” between two types of literature: In the “birth subsidy” literature, researchers usually find fairly large effects in the expected direction.ย In the welfare literature, in contrast, most…
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One Completely False Statement in Superfreakonomics
Then there’s this little-discussed fact about global warming: While the drumbeat of doom has grown louder over the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased. This “fact” is true…but only if you calculate forward from 1998–one of the two hottest years in history (2005 was hotter). It’s not…
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Most Regressive Taxes? My Home State ๐
I’m finally getting around to following up on a graph I posted sort of in passing a while back, a graph that to my eyes makes a profound statement about our country and our economic system. It shows total taxes paid–local, state, and federal combined. People making $55-90K (fourth quintile, approx.) pay the same share…
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Socialism and Prosperity: Does One Cause the Other?
Regular readers will find me beating something of a dead horse here, but I felt it necessary to respond to a recent post by Bryan Caplan, who continues to speculate on the putative negative economic effects of “socialism.” >”Lots of developed countries have some significant socialistic elements,” … would be an understatement. Every developed country…
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Best Line of the Week: Not-So-True Conservatives
Okay, so the week happened to be more than two years ago. But it’s the best line of my week: The old formulation defined conservatism as the desire to protect traditional values from the intrusion of big government; the new one seeks to promote traditional values through the intrusion of big government. Related posts: Keynes:…
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“More Investment Needed!” Oh, Really?
Following up on posts here, here, and here questioning the supply-side orthodoxy that more money for the rich results in more investment, hence prosperity for all (see the long-discredited Say’s Law), I give you this (click for source): Between 2003 and 2008, US gross fixed capital increased by about 25 percent, a reasonable number during…
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The American President: Why IQ Matters
In a recent post I pointed out that Humans are Pathologically Nuts. In particular they’re forever playing obvious win-win games as if they were zero-sum or worse, and everybody loses as a result. Now I come across this study (PDF) showing that there’s a significant correlation between lower IQ and that very type of irrational…
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Humans are Pathologically Nuts: Proof Positive
I’ve often commented that if human beings are the (or a) result, it wasn’t a very intelligent designer. The most telling demonstration I’ve seen recently is a series of experiments conducted between 1959 and 1962, reported in wonderfully readable form in Morton Davis’s Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction. I recommend this book not only for…
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“The Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.”
“The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.รขโฌย –Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.) Read the Report. Related posts: True Conservative Values, and Torture The Strategic Value of Torture Businesses Constrained by Lack of Investment? Oh, Maybe Not. Even Fox Sez…
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The Strategic Value of Torture
Jim Manzi discusses torture here. I find the discussion uncomfortably cold-blooded, but it has the accompanying virtue of clear-headedness and cutting to the crux (unlike those from his compatriot Johah Goldberg at The Corner). The important (extra-moral) question is not torture’s tactical value, but whether it achieves America’s strategic goals. That’s a damned good question–it’s…
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More Popular than Republicans: China, Venezuela, and Legalized Marijuana
You can see the polling data here, here, and here. Related posts: Congressional Republicans’ Approval Ratings in Freefall. Dems Hold Steady. Polling the Pollster Pollers: Obama Still Strong It’s Working: Pubs’ Polls Plummeting Why nominating Clinton would be a Very Bad Thing Everything Sez: “Obama Landslide.” What Gives?
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NoNoNoNoNoNoNo! There Is No Global Warming!
The Cato Gang really went off the edge recently with their ad (pdf) in the New York Times, claiming that: temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now.1,2 … The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to…
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Want Prosperity and Stability? It’s About Wages and Salaries
What caused the Great Depression? What caused the current…whatever it is? According to James Livingston, the roots of both lie in shares of income. When not enough people are getting not enough wages and salaries–and when a large share of income is derived from financial investments, not work–we’re in bubble land, and things fall apart.…
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Businesses Constrained by Lack of Investment? Oh, Maybe Not.
A while back I pointed out that in 2007, only 9 percent of U.S. privately-held businesses cited a shortage of investment money as a constraint on their growth. In response to a rather maniacal comment on that post, I went looking to see what things are like today. Answer: about the same. The National Federation…
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Drill Here Drill Now! Oh….Wait…
It’s now clear that the McCain/Palin shout-outs for more domestic drilling were not, in fact, tawdry and childish pitches to get votes from jingoistic know-nothings. They were, in fact, calls for an energy policy that would lead this country into a future of responsibility, prosperity, and well-being. The free market is speaking… Related posts: Economist…
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Seattle’s a Happy Place! Outstate Washington, Appalachia: Not So Much
Showing that great minds think alike, my friend Steve also noticed the new national survey of well-being from Gallup. Though he only seems to have read an article about it, and based on that he wonders:
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Finally! The Filibuster Explained
“Why doesn’t Harry Reid make them filibuster? We’ve got a majority in the Senate. Why do we need a 60-vote supermajority? Reid should make Republicans pay the political price for obstructionism: standing up there reading the phone book before C-Span and the world. What’s the gig?” I’ve probably googled this question half a dozen times…