Category: Uncategorized

It’s worth taking a minute to look at this one. Related posts: How The Great Moderation Destroyed the Fed’s Credibility Red States Sucking the Federal Teat Businesses Constrained by Lack of Investment? Oh, Maybe Not. Rick Perry Got a D in Principles of Economics Recessions Are Nature’s Way of Keeping the Little Guy Down

Responding with only limited time to do so to a very interesting discussion prompted by a Bryan Caplan post: Obviously, indeterminism (i.e. developmental noise making identically-gened twins different from each other) does not satisfy as an explanation of free will. The weather system does not have free will. Need to look elsewhere. Just to point…

Scott Sumner at The Money Illusion has a very interesting (followup) post on Utilitarianism–the doctrine (as here described on Wikipedia) that “the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all persons.” In other words, aggregate utility or…

Sigh. I stepped into a pissing match over on my friend Mike’s Facebook page, and since I don’t feel right continuing to piss on his wall, I’ve moved it over here. It all started with Mike posting this photo with the fairly innocuous and flippant comment, “This doesn’t look like a man shake to me.”…

It's true, this idea came along as Will Wilkinson was rather frantically back- or re-pedaling from a previous everything's-going-so-WELL post of his, said pedaling being necessary because Felix Salmon pointed out that the original post made no sense at all: Will’s argument, it seems to me, seems to rely on the peculiar idea that we’ll…

Between 1970 and 2000, GDP per person rose by 64% in the United States and by 60% in France. In America, this came about because productivity per worker rose by 38% and hours worked per worker rose by 26%. In France, it came about because productivity rose by 83% while hours worked fell by 23%.…

Here’s how we’ve been doing versus the socialist welfare states over the last thirty-five years: I had no idea what results I’d find. (Though I’ll freely admit that I hoped to see Reagan and the Bushes looking rosy-cheeked.) Not so much. Zealots will tout the biggest plus year (Reagan) and biggest minus (Clinton), but that’s…

Even after his conference call with supporters yesterday (I’ve only seen a brief recap of the call), the question  remains: why? Why did he quit, and why now? His explanations still just don’t feel satisfyingly explanatory. Party unity? Getting poverty firmly on the agenda? Here’s what I would like to believe: He saw that he…

Buffett testified to Congress on Monday. Why isn’t the blogosphere talking about this? Short story, Buffett is foursquare behind the estate tax. He points out that the basis step-up at death (cap gains taxes just go away) is a huge gift to survivors, 99.5% of whom pay no estate taxes. “If people insist on renaming…

Lane Kenworthy takes up the tax-rates-on-the-rich-versus-GDP-growth discussion (hat tip to Free Exchange for the pointer). His key point: more important than top marginal rate, is the effective rate that top earners pay. The post is also quite interesting in concentrating on  the GDP-growth effect of taxes on the top 1% of earners. Unfortunately this chart…

Since The Economist chose not to publish my incredibly cogent response to a recent “Economics Focus” column, I’ll share it with them (and you) here: The new (improved) Gilded Age Dec 19th 2007 The very rich are not that different from you and me; or less different, perhaps, than they used to be The article…

The NYT Magazine‘s cover story this week is “The Moral Instinct” by Steven Pinker. (Full disclosure: He’s my idol; I am such a groupie for this guy.) Here’s one of the things I like about the article: He cites five “spheres” of morality devised by psychologist Jonathan Haidt: not harming, fairness, loyalty, respect for authority,…

Megan McArdle nicely skewers the Naturalistic Fallacy today, responding to an article in Reason, quoting Lew Rockwell: Reason quoting Rockwell: “Wishing to associate with members of one’s own race, nationality, religion, class, sex, or even political party is a natural and normal human impulse.” Megan: Anyone who has ever observed a two-year-old knows that lying,…

This one came as quite a surprise even to me. In general, among developed countries, those with higher taxes over the last thirty years have higher GDP per capita today than lower-taxing countries. I think the graph speaks for itself. Related posts: Government: BAD? — Part 3: Taxes and GDP Growth Supply Side: Are We…

Update: For those who prefer the (in this case unequivocal) aggregate opinions of economists and econometricians who have studied this subject, I recommend this review of those experts’ efforts. Their conclusions resoundingly debunk the faith-based spending-and-taxes-kill-growth belief system (even as some of those experts continue to cling to it in direct contradiction of their own…

Are government, taxes, and spending really such irredeemably bad things?

Is equity investment of Social Security funds in private/personal accounts "risky"? Or will it save the system? What should true conservatives be in favor of? Many of the arguments on both sides are based on wrong assumptions or form specious conclusions.The first question, on equity investments: Would long-term, well-diversified equity investments provide higher returns than…