Month: August 2012
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The Luddite Fallacy Fallacy
I’ve spent a lot of time considering (here, here, here, and here) the notions of technological unemployment and the Luddite Fallacy: the idea that technologically driven productivity — machines — will replace, are replacing, human labor. I’d like to revisit that here. My basic conclusion: the Luddites were obviously wrong at the time. But they’re…
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Laffer: Laughable As Always
R Davis spends a whole lot of words (and numbers) explaining why Arthur Laffer’s latest WSJ editorial is false and ridiculous, but those who think about data — at all — really only need to read one line. Laffer’s key error — which a high-school statistics student could spot — is to: compare growth in…
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No, Conservatives Aren’t Happier — Any More
My small effort to ameliorate the disparity in Andrew Gelman’s headline: 1.5 million people were told that extreme conservatives are happier than political moderates. Approximately .0001 million Americans learned that the opposite is true. Andrew is commenting on Jay Livingston’s great takedown of David Arthur Brooks’ recent column asking “Who is happier about life — liberals or conservatives?”…