Asymptosis: Always Approaching

Asymptosis: always approaching

  • The Economic, Political, and Intellectual Equivalent of Bloodletting

    Colorado: Tax-slashing proposals scare GOP, Democrats By IVAN MORENO Associated Press Writer Businessmen gather at an empty Denver Broncos stadium, with an ominous warning: The more than 70,000 vacant seats around them represent the number of state jobs that would be lost if three tax-slashing and debt-cutting measures are approved in next month’s election. While many states…

  • 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…

  • Religious Knowledge of a Devout (and Morally Committed) Atheist: 100%

    My results on the latest Pew survey: Here’s how you did on these 15 questions (excerpted from the larger U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey) compared with a nationally representative sample of 3,412 adults. Read the Full Report Your responses on the quiz do NOT affect the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey’s results. Take the test here. Or…

  • 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…

  • Damn this guy sounds like me

    But way way way way richer. I’m rich; tax me more Congress should let the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans and use the additional tax revenues that are generated to invest in infrastructure and research. – Los Angeles Times. Related posts: This Time Mankiw’s Just Plain Lying. And He Knows It. Republicans,…

  • 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);…

  • Why Is This Traffic Stopped??

    Update from the comments, Nov. 3: Harold gives us this brilliant link. Completely contradicts my surmise below. Definitely watch the video. Being cursed with a curious mind, when I’m driving — especially on the highway — I’m always wondering about the hydrodynamics of traffic. Here’s an interesting insight: With cars moving fluidly in a tight…

  • Does the Liberal Arts Model Deliver Life Success? National Success?

    My friend Steve wonders at all the college students who study Lithuanian folk dancing and the like, and wonders whether they shouldn’t study something useful instead, and pursue less remunerative interests when they’re past their prime earning years. This makes some sense to me, theoretically. But here’s what’s weird, something I’ve been wondering at myself…

  • 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…

  • Stockman: How the GOP Destroyed the U.S. Economy | The Big Picture

    The headline speaks for itself. The author is one of the smartest financial bloggers in the game, author of Bailout Nation. I can’t resist quoting this: I suspect brain damaged partisans of the left suffer from somewhat different cognitive deficits than brain damaged partisans of the right. I would add that the brain damaged partisans of the…

  • Washington State Income Tax (Initiative 1098): Who’s Affected?

    Updated. See below. Again, Aug 12. There’s been some debate going back and forth recently on how many Washington State taxpayers will be affected by the proposed income tax. The two sides have done a good job of providing the source data (you can follow their links), but the debate’s been inconclusive because: 1. Single filers…