Economic productivity is about growing the size of the pie. I sometimes point out that no matter what your goal–spending increases, tax cuts, greater support for the poor, environmental protection–that goal is easier when the economic pie is growing. When the economic pie isn’t growing, after all, then all priorities have to pit potential winners…
As expected, I really enjoyed the Institute for Liberal Studies’ UBI debate between myself and Chris Freiman. Chris was definitely the least enthusiastic UBI supporter I’ve debated. All the way to the point of, “Given all the truly promising ideas we have, and the downside risks of the UBI, perhaps I shouldn’t even publicly defend…
As you know, I go back and forth on the question of affirmative action for college and professional-school admissions, and even after I thought I’d settled on a view (i.e., give some preference to minorities among those equally qualified for admission), it still keeps changing. After I read the long New York Times piece below […]
Randomized Controlled Trials: Could you be any more scientific? The book I’m now writing, Unbeatable: The Brutally Honest Case for Free Markets, insists that the randomistas of the economics profession actually have a thinly-veiled political agenda. Namely: To get economists to humbly serve the demagogues that rule the world instead of bluntly challenging their unabated…
Ireland’s effort to remove old-fashioned family values from its constitution suffered a double defeat Saturday as voters rejected the amendments on offer as maddeningly vague and threatening to property rights… In final results announced Saturday night, the amendment to change the constitutional definition of family was rejected by 67.7 percent of voters. The proposed changes […]
See Choices and consequences in the real “game of life”: From falling in with “bad apples” to choosing a major, economists decipher how early decisions shape long-term outcomes by Jeff Horwich, Senior Economics Writer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Excerpt:”The research on Minnesota students from Nath, Borovičková, and Leibert (discussed above) finds that while…
A lot of readers and heterodox colleagues have sent me this link to Bari Weiss’s interview with Harvard economics professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr., often accompanied by big encomiums. Despite my unwillingness to watch long videos, I did watch all 77 minutes of it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t mesmerized, or even much interested. There are interesting […]
It will not matter what was agreed in 1840 if the coalition cannot get our children back to school. Most children do not attend school regularly. Nations that do not educate the next generation are doomed to fail. In the 3rd term last year most Pakeha pupils, 52%, did not go to school regularly.…
In some countries, like Norway, your income tax forms are public information, so any one can look up what anyone else earns. In a US context, income is mostly considered to be private information, unless you are a public employee or an executive at a public company. Would it be a good thing to have…
I suggest, Men and women tend to think alike in societies where there is Close-knit interdependence, religosity and authoritarianism, or Shared cultural production and mixed gendered offline socialising. Gendered ideological polarisation appears encouraged by: Feminised public culture Economic resentment Social media filter bubbles Cultural entrepreneurs. Here is the full piece, currently the best piece on […]
Correlations between spouses Extraversion: r= .005Neuroticism: .082Height: .227Weight: .154Education: .5Political party: .6 “Mates tend to be positively but weakly concordant on personality and physical traits, but concordance of political attitudes is extremely high” pic.twitter.com/BmdpySfakh — Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) February 10, 2024
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Recent Comments