The Unbroken Window

Why are there 31 gallons in a barrel of beer, but 42 gallons in a barrel of oil?

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President Coolidge kept a raccoon as a pet inside the White House. I picked that up by rereading Burt Folsom’s wonderful book, The Myth of the Robber Barons.

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I’ve gone 30 days without tuning into news, so I missed this report when it originally aired on 60 minutes. Proponents of minimum and living wage increases often point to the fact that the cost of living is high in many cities, so that the “low” level of the minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour) [...]

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Mark Perry illustrates how easy it is to be “charitable” when it is not your own money you are giving away:
1. Between 1998 and 2006, the Bidens’ adjusted gross income (AGI) averaged $236,000 per year, and their average annual charitable contributions averaged just $283, or only $5.44 per week. That compares to an average annual [...]

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It is well known that Paul Krugman has morphed from Nobel Prize winning columnist into something else. Nonetheless, it is still fun to analyze what he is saying when he pretends to be wearing his economist hat. Take for example the issue of whether or not we should be worrying about having a debt to [...]

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What a bunch of fools. The money quote on the success of the tax increase vote:
It was a victory for public employee unions who were the spearhead of the campaign for the taxes and raised enough money to outspend the opponents.
Yep, politics is about doing what is best for “the people” so long as by [...]

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Can you worry that the world is running out of oil and at the same time worry that oil and other fossil fuels are bad for the (external) environment? I remember filling up my tank in Massachusetts a year or so ago when gas hit $4.00 when I overheard someone arguing to the effect of, [...]

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Jonah Rockoff just published a paper looking at early 20th century research into the impacts of class size on student performance. His conclusion is similar to what contemporary research on class size tends to find – that there is extremely mixed evidence of the impact of class size on performance.  His review of early 20th [...]

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A number of environmental organizations spend a majority of their resources lobbying in Washington (e.g. the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Parks Conservation Association, etc.).  In a recent mailing I learned that upwards of 90% of my annual monetary contributions to these groups are used to lobby and [...]

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The average nominal price for a share of stock on the New York Stock exchange has been about $35 since the Great Depression. Read more about why here (gated).

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