Asymptosis: Always Approaching

Tag: Economics

  • Immigrants: Pay for My Retirement! Please?

    Everyone agrees: the problem with Social Security is that we’re going to have (already have?) too many old people and not enough young people. Since killing off old people like me is not an option, what we need is more hardworking young people. Americans aren’t putting their shoulders to the wheel by creating more little…

  • Who’s Fiscally Responsible?

    This is old news, but here are the latest figures. Federal Debt: 1940–2019: (Updated 1/31/2010) Yet another of those telling inflection points in 1980. (With a brief respite in the late nineties.) The red line–Gross Debt–is the scary (and actual) one; it includes loans from government trust funds (mainly Social Security) that will have to…

  • Another Free-Market Straw Man

    I get so tired of reading these pointless free-market commentaries that do nothing but state the obvious and grind the axe. Today's find: William Easterly's Financial Times article, "Trust the development experts – all 7bn of them." Easterly ridicules a recent (rather impressive, though judicious and occasionally mealy-mouthed) World Bank report on development, arguing that…

  • Europe vs. US: Who’s Winning?

    Update June 2012: See data through 2010 here. People love to cherry-pick statistics to show that the US, or Europe, is winning the growth game. That got me curious: if you look at all the possible growth periods, who’s ahead (most)? Short answer: no clear winner.  The results look pretty random. Over the longest periods,…

  • Government: BAD? — Part 3: Taxes and GDP Growth

    Do higher taxes result in slower growth? That’s the basic assertion made by tax-cut advocates. If we lower taxes, we’ll grow faster and all boats–rich and poor–will rise. It’s a great idea. Too bad it’s not true. Few will disagree that in the short term (generally), tax increases impede growth. But over the long term…