Author: Asymptosis
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Best Line of the Week
From the inside, ideology usually looks like common sense. From The ideology that dare not speak its name — Crooked Timber. Related posts: Innovation and Market Constraints: The Case for Artificial Selection Line of the Week Age, Wisdom, Sagacity, Common Sense, and Republicanism Controlling What You Say: Who’s Worse? Cutting Taxes Creates Growth: Yeah, Right
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Why To Have Kids
Bryan Caplan posts part of the preface from a book he’s writing (which I’m much looking forward to reading), titled Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. My thoughts on the subject: Genetic inclinations toward having children aside (as Daniel Dennett explains quite clearly in Freedom Evolves, we’re at at totally different level of “design” here,…
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This Time Mankiw’s Just Plain Lying. And He Knows It.
He shares this with us today: Federal outlays and revenues as a percentage of GDP What he doesn’t say, but knows very well: the “baseline” is Bush-era shucking and jiving–hiding hundreds of billions of dollars off the budget. The Obama budget that’s being compared includes everything in full daylight–even though Obama knew that Mankiw et.…
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The Economics of Netflix
Tyler Cowen points to a calculator to see if you’re saving money using Netflix. But as he says, the per-DVD cost isn’t really the issue. Personally, I’ve canceled my Netflix subscription three times. But never again. Reason for canceling: the movie I have is never the movie I want to watch. They sometimes end up…
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S&P 500 Earnings: The Most Depressing Graphic I’ve Seen This Year
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
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Free Will. Again. Some More.
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…
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Win-Win Utilitarianism: The Greatest Good For the Greatest Number
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…
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Shakespeare Authorship (sigh): They’re At It Again
Yet again, we have Supreme Court justices giving credence to the wacky notion that William Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the plays of William Shakespeare. Reported in the the WSJ. It just goes to show that even supreme court justices who have long histories of probity and prudence can issue totally loony opinions. (cf…
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Joe Thinks Obama’s an Appeaser, and FDR Caused The Great Depression
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.”…
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The Global Great Depression: Then and Now
Barry Eichengreen and Kevin H. O’Rourke give the global perspective. Just look at the pictures and read their last paragraph. Viz: The X scale is in months. Bottom line: While U.S. indicators hold hints of promise, the world as a whole is looking worse than it did in the Great Depression. The good news: policy…
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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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Small is Beautiful? Maybe. But Big is Bad.
At least this headline holds true for banks. Steve Randy Waldman, as so often, gives us cogency–in this case on why big banks are a problem. My favorite part (and my emphasis): Scale breeds agency problems. Earning an extra five basis points on $100B in assets amounts to $50M in extra income a year, a…
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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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Banks? Who Needs ‘Em?
James Livingston once again sheds serious light on our current situation, as illuminated by the Great Depression. Condensed: Economic recovery was actually going gangbusters ’33-’37. It wasn’t because banks started lending; they didn’t. The government (Reconstruction Finance Corporation) was doing the lending. We should try doing the same thing now. More detail on those four…
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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…
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Home-Work: Increase GDP by a Third?
I wrote recently about the fact that non-remunerated work — anything that doesn’t involve a money transfer — isn’t included in GDP. So painting your mother’s house, fixing your car, or cooking dinner isn’t reflected in that key measure of our prosperity and well-being — even though that work quite clearly contributes greatly to our…
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An Open Letter to Robert Barro
Robert J. Barro is Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the third-ranked economist in the world, according to RePEc. Dear Professor Barro: I’m compelled to write after following your…
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Republicans, In Lockstep, Oppose Largest Tax Cut in History
Yeah, that’s the one: the one Obama just handed them. The compromise stimulus plan includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bush’s first two years of tax cuts amounted to $174 billion. A second batch in 2004 and 2005 cost $231. And those were thought to be…