Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Politics on Jul 21st, 2014
Courtesy of Vox. 1. “We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we’re willing to fight for it.” 2.”We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth.” 3. “We believe that the Internet shouldn’t be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real […]
Posted in Politics on May 29th, 2014
I find all of the hand-wringing about the President’s use of Executive Power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel plants a bit annoying (that’s not the right word). We know that Executive Agencies like the EPA, FDA, FCC, etc. have a great deal of power, and the real difficulty with that power is […]
Posted in Central Planning, Politics, You Can't Have it Both Ways on May 22nd, 2014
From Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: Almost one in ten of China’s richest one thousand people sits in the National People’s Congress – a body of almost 3,000 lawmakers. Their average net worth is four times the average net worth of the richest politicians in the United States Congress, despite the fact that the […]
Posted in Politics on May 12th, 2014
Talk about Straw manning it. Hilariously, Matthews links to the highly debatable Cook paper where the 97% claim comes from. But that’s not really the point. The point, yet again, is that for such an enlightened, leading, scientific, research and data oriented website as Vox claims to be, is totally and horrendously disingenuous when it […]
Posted in Central Planning, Classical Liberalism, Economics Problems, Extended Order, Politics, Standards of Living, Voluntary Society on Dec 19th, 2013
The federal government collected $350 billion from corporations in corporate income taxes last year. Economists have long understood and explain that the US federal (and state) corporate income tax rates are at the same time both too high and too low. Why do we say this? Well, the tax rate is, at the margin, very […]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Competition, Corporatism, Economic Illiteracy, Economics Problems, ethical foundations, Government Thuggery, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Market Failures, Methodology, Politics, Religion, Voluntary Society, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 10th, 2013
The “left” sees the last 34 years as a revival (was there ever a VIVAL?) of laissez-faire dogmatism. Some folks like myself see it as almost the diametric opposite. Of course, some of this could be “settled” by empirical evidence. The number of pages of regulations? The dollars spent complying with regulations? The number of […]
Posted in Education, Politics, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 9th, 2013
Readers should be on alert, this is me confirming my biases. I am sure, too, that this research is only the case in Eastern Europe, never could imagine the same result holding here in the good ol’ U.S.S. of A. I found this interesting in light of last Friday’s post. School, what is it good […]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Politics, Regulation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 9th, 2013
Last week, former CEA Chair and current Harvard economist Greg Mankiw points us to yet another rhetorical flourish by the Commander in Speech: The CEA Fact Checkers Miss One In his speech yesterday, President Obama said, Now, we all know the arguments that have been used against a higher minimum wage. Some say it actually hurts low-wage […]
Posted in Fun Facts, Government Gone Wild, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Politics, Transportation and Infrastructure, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 5th, 2013
When the objective historians go write down the legacy of this President, they are not going to talk about health reform (even if the ACA failed, it does capture the fact, and I think it is a fact, that reform is needed – I happen to think it lies in the deregulatory side coupled with […]
Posted in Central Planning, Macroeconomics, Politics on Oct 15th, 2013
Gosh I hate being a retired blogger. Without being pulled too far into a semantic swamp, let me assure our readers that the only way for the US Government to default formally (ignore that inflation might be considered a regularly occurring default by some) in two days is for the US Government to WANT to […]