On arguments from authority
22 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, liberalism, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: climate alarmism, conjecture and refutation, philosophy of science
US post-war economic booms compared
22 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, economic history, macroeconomics, politics - USA Tags: Edward Prescott
Source: Edward Prescott
The Great Enrichment since 1979 in the USA
22 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in income redistribution, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: capitalism and freedom, poverty and inequality, The Great Enrichment, top 1%
Over the past one-, two-, and three-decade periods, both middle class and poor households have experienced noticeable gains in living standards. Their gains are slower than those experienced by middle-income families in the earlier post-war era, but the gains are well above zero.
In 1980, in-kind benefits and employer and government spending on health insurance accounted for just 6% of the after-tax incomes of households in the middle one-fifth of the distribution. By 2010 these in-kind income sources represented 17% of middle class households’ after-tax income
…The broadest and most accurate measures of household income are published by the CBO. CBO’s newest estimates confirm the long-term trend toward greater inequality, driven mainly by turbo-charged gains in market income at the very top of the distribution. The market incomes of the top 1% are extraordinarily cyclical, however. They soar in economic expansions and plunge in recessions. Income changes since 2007 fit this pattern.
What many observers miss, however, is the success of the nation’s tax and transfer systems in protecting low- and middle-income Americans against the full effects of a depressed economy.
via Gary Burtless
Cease-fires and peace talks make it worse
21 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in laws of war, liberalism, politics - USA, Rawls and Nozick, war and peace Tags: ceasefires, crusader foreign policies, Give war a chance, noninterventionist foreign policy, peace talks
The political divisions of North America since 1750
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, politics - USA Tags: maps
Robert Lucas on Social Security entitlement reform
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Robert E. Lucas Tags: ageing society, entitlement reform, Social Security reform
I now know why incumbents are so keen on reforms that limit donations and campaign expenditure
20 Feb 2015 1 Comment
Who was the first president of the United States?
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - USA Tags: American history, constitutional history, constitutional law
What happens when a metropolitan area has way too many governments – The Washington Post
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, Federalism, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: local government
The OECD, in a report on the "Metropolitan Century" we’ve just entered, found across all of its member countries that when you double the number of municipalities per 100,000 residents within a single metropolitan area, regional labour productivity falls by 5 to 6 percent.
In short: the more little governments you have, the less productive the entire local economy is.
via What happens when a metropolitan area has way too many governments – The Washington Post.
The anti-vaccination movement is drawn equally from across the political spectrum
20 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: anti-vaccination movement, antiscience left, Green Left, opinion polls
Share of US federal budget for foreign aid – average guess 26%
19 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, politics - USA Tags: ODA, rational ignorance
Al Gore Buys CA Shoreline Mansion…Awkward
19 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
Al Gore has snapped up an ocean front property in California. Obviously, rising sea levels are not any time soon for him when it comes to putting his money where his mouth is. The only explanation is that Mr. Gore does not actually believe his predictions of doom.
Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito/ Santa Barbara CA -area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.
The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.
Some of the most memorable images from Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, are the graphics that show how rising ocean levels will dramatically alter our planet’s coastlines. As Greenland’s ice sheets collapse, Gore predicts that our shores will be flooded and sea-bordering cities will sink beneath the water leaving millions of people homeless. His narration tells the audience that, due to global warming, melting ice could release enough water to cause at 20-foot rise in sea level “in the near future.” Al PT…
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The Un-discussed Foreign Policy Alternative | Coyote Blog
19 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: ISIS, Middle-East politics, non-interventionist foreign policy
Why is there not a third alternative to be at least considered — that there is something really broken in a lot of Islam as practiced today (just as there was a lot of sh*t broken with Christianity in, say, the 14th-16th centuries) and that Islam as practiced in many Middle Eastern countries is wildly illiberal (way more illiberal than any failings of Israel, though you wouldn’t know that if you were living on a college campus). But, that we don’t need to saddle up the troops and try to change things by force…
Yes, I know the first response to all folks like me who advocate for non-intervention is “Munich” and “Czechoslovakia”. So be it. But if we sent in the military every time someone yelled “appeasement” our aircraft would be worn out from moving troops around. And we seem to be totally able to ignore atrocities and awful rulers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
As a minimum, I would like to see a coalition of Arab states coming to us and publicly asking us for help — not this usual Middle East BS we hear that Saudi Ariabi (or whoever) really in private wants us there but publicly they will still lambaste us. Without this support we can win the war but we have no moral authority (as we did after WWII) in the peace. Which is one reason so many of our interventions in the Middle East and North Africa fail.
via The Un-discussed Foreign Policy Alternative | Coyote Blog.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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