Excellent JS Mill quotes on the market for ideas
21 May 2017 Leave a comment
in liberalism Tags: free speech, JS Mill, political correctness
Age distribution of party voters in 2014 NZ election
21 May 2017 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, Public Choice
Source: Sankey charts for swinging voters.
Friedman on Capitalism vs. Poverty
21 May 2017 Leave a comment
in economics
In a previous post, I wrote about Hayek’s claim that capitalism reduces economic inequality. Milton Friedman makes the same claim about capitalism and inequality in “Free to Choose.” This claim was quite plausible in the early 70s, less so today. There’s an irony here, which is that the data upon which Friedman and Hayek relied to show that capitalism reduced or didn’t exacerbate inequality were taken primarily from the post-war period of strong unions and active government, the very economic phenomena they were trying to curtail.
Anyway, even if they’re wrong about inequality, Hayek and Friedman can still claim that capitalism benefits the poor – the claim taken up recently by so-callled bleeding-heart libertarians such as John Tomasi and Jason Brennan. Here’s Friedman, from Free to Choose:
The main bit:
“I do not know any exception to the proposition, that if you compare like with like, the freer the system, the better off the ordinary poor…
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Learning from the United Kingdom about the Laffer Curve, Dynamic Scoring, and Class-Warfare Taxes
21 May 2017 Leave a comment
in economics
As far as I’m concerned, no sentient human being could look at what happened in the United States in the 1980s and not agree that high tax rates on upper-income taxpayers are foolish and self-destructive.
Not only did the economy grow faster after Reagan lowered rates, but the IRS even collected more revenue (a lot more revenue) because rich people earned and reported so much additional income.
That should be a win-win for all sides, though there are some leftists who hate the rich more than they like additional revenue.
Anyhow, I raise this example because there are politicians today who think it’s a good idea to go back to the punitive tax policy that existed in the 1970s.
Hillary Clinton proposed big tax hikes in last year’s campaign. And now, as reported by the U.K.-based Times, the Labour Party across the ocean is openly embracing a soak-the-rich agenda.
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ayan hirsi ali on her burning salman rushdie’s book
21 May 2017 1 Comment
in economics of religion Tags: political correctness
Freakonomics 2 (Can you put a price on looks?)
21 May 2017 Leave a comment
in labour economics Tags: economics of beauty
A feminist religion?!
20 May 2017 Leave a comment
in economics of religion, liberalism Tags: Age of Enlightenment, political correctness
The Great Immigration Debate — Now the Great Peri-Borjas Debate
20 May 2017 Leave a comment
in economics
Fun to watch a public spat between two immigration economists, Giovanni Peri and George Borjas, with others chiming in on one side or the other. As Giovanni pointedly told me last year, I am not an economist. But I am a statistician (and, for what little it’s worth, was an econ minor in college), and equally importantly, “I know where some of the bodies are buried,” and I claim to be able to add some value to this debate. By the way, since I know both parties to this debate, it will be more comfortable to me to refer to them by first names.
First, some background: In 1980, Fidel Castro, essentially said to the U.S. president Jimmy Carter defiantly, said “You want Cubans? Well, I’m going to give your Cubans!” (China’s Deng Xiaoping also said to Carter, “You want Chinese immigrants? Excellent. How many millions do you want?”…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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