Asymptosis: Always Approaching

Month: October 2008

  • Economist Readers: Obama Landslide

    Yeah, The Economist endorsed Obama. They're sane; what else could they do? But it's their readers' endorsement that really speaks volumes. It's true that people who read The Economist are a bunch of effete intellectual elitists. You think Sarah Palin has ever cracked its socialist covers? Not likely, toots. But still. They are probably the…

  • Why to Love America

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  • Republicans Create Opportunity? Yeah, Right.

    Republicans constantly proclaim that inequality is the price of prosperity. If things are more unequal, there’s more incentive–and crucially, opportunity–for people to better themselves. Everyone benefits from that. Except it’s not true. Let’s think about Joe the Plumber, who made $40K in 2006 but would like to buy the plumbing business he works for–for a…

  • The Tidal Wave is Hitting the Beach

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  • Mankiw’s Right: Money’s Not the Incentive

    Subtitle: Pipe Dreams Greg Mankiw makes more than a quarter-million dollars a year. We know that, because he's expecting to pay the 2-4% payroll tax surcharge under Obama's tax plan, on any extra dollars he earns. He's also planning to leave his children more $3.5 million dollars (the current inheritance tax exclusion) when he dies.…

  • McCain’s Steel Ceiling: Who Loves Ya, Baby?

    As of today, electoral-vote.com has seventeen states going for McCain. Check out how the electoral votes shake out on my friend Mike’s site (dark blue is >10% lead for Obama, lighter blue >5%, and so on; white is EVs from tied states): There’s an almost flat line of almost impregnable red states. It may not…

  • All Cashed Up with Nowhere to Go: What Caused the Depression(s), and What to Do About It

    I’ve been meaning to post about this great two–part article by James Livingston (H/T to Mark Thoma), on the causes of the Great Depression and the current…whatever it is. Livingston’s explanation for both cases (in my words): There were oceans of money with not enough productive uses available (like, investments in physical plants and wages–things…

  • Europe vs. U.S.: Family Time Versus Four-by-Fours and Two-by-Fours

    Finally! Someone has come back at me (well he didn’t know he was talking to me) with the key, perhaps-trumping argument on my Europe vs. US longatribes. I gave this argument away in a previous post, hoping someone would pick it up, but have yet to hear it well enunciated elsewhere. Summary of my arguments:…

  • Study Sez: Rich States Are Full of Swingers

    No, I’m not commenting on their sexual mores. I’m talking swing voters. A new study (PDF) by Joe Stone and Steve Hayes suggests that most or all of the market-crash-fueled movement to Obama in these closing weeks is likely to be in rich states. If you’re thinking battlegrounds/close contests, that means Colorado, Virgina, and Nevada.…

  • Reagan, Bush, and McCain: Selling America First

    This 2003 article by Warren Buffet–explaining in his usual pithy manner how we’re frittering away our future well-being by borrowing abroad and selling off our assets–got me looking once again at our country’s long-term financial position in the world. And once again, I came across one of those profound inflection points at–you guessed it–1980. The…

  • Milton Friedman Caused The Great Depression

    Yes, yes, I know he was only 17 when the market crashed. But still. As Friedman pointed out quite accurately, inept (excessively tight) monetary policy caused the downturn to go much deeper and last much longer than it should have. Pretty much everyone will stipulate to that. And hence–here's his logical non sequitur–government and the…

  • How to Avoid Regulation: Smart Regulation

    Every economist agrees that regulation has the potential to stifle economic growth. But every economist also agrees that we need regulation to make markets efficient (and relatively stable). Given those two givens, free-market advocates should be jumping into the fray, proposing smart, targeted, easily manageable, surgical regulation, that obviates the need for heavy-handed, clunky, hard-to-manage…

  • Pro-Growth Republicans III: Yeah, Right.

    Following up on previous posts here, here, and here, yet some more debunking of this myth (Update: yet more here and here): Various have shot spitballs at this chart, but add it to all the others in previous posts–showing that over the long haul, Democrats deliver prosperity and Republicans don’t–and the notion that Republican policies…

  • Fareed Zakaria for President

    I just came across Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad at my mother's house, read it, and came away wildly impressed. His basic thesis is that what we want is constitutional liberalism (classic sense of liberalism, as in Milton Friedman's usage, though not necessarily via his prescriptions)–not a priori,…

  • I’m Patriotic: I Pay Taxes

    Don Pedro says it better than anyone else I’ve heard, with this woulda-coulda-said-it response for Biden: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If…

  • McCain’s Big Stick

    Sad. What a missed setup: Senator McCain, I’m glad you mentioned that line from Teddy Roosevelt. Because that’s exactly the point. The reason we can’t address the problems in Afghanistan, the reason we can’t act in desperate moral situations like Darfur and Congo, is because, quite simply: The big stick is in use. And because of all the big…

  • Teddy Roosevelt on “the true conservative”

    From his “New Nationalism” speech. 1910. The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens…

  • Seeking “Conservative Polling”

    I am astounded–well actually, not really–that I'm now getting a bunch of visitors to my site who arrive after searching for some variation of "conservative polls." The frantic efforts at self-delusion out there really shouldn't surprise me, but they do. Related posts: Polling the Pollster Pollers: Obama Still Strong Everything Sez: “Obama Landslide.” What Gives?…

  • “Pro-Growth” Republicans. Debunked. Again. Some More.

    A while back I posted some comparative numbers for postwar economic indicators, Dems versus Pubs. Clear results for the clear-eyed. Brad Delong has even more. Just one here, for your delectation: How dare these people call themselves conservatives? Related posts: Conservative “Intellectual” “Ascendancy” Conservatives Love to Point Out that Personal Incentives Matter Pubs Don’t Cut…

  • The Problem Was Not Deregulating. The Problem Was Not Regulating.

    Most economists agree: deregulation is not what caused today’s problem. (The repeal of Glass-Steagal, for instance–the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowing commercial banks to act as investments banks, and vice-versa–wasn’t the cause. It might even be one of the reasons things aren’t worse than they are.) What’ they’re not saying: not regulating is what caused the problem.…