Why Do Left-Leaning Economists Ignore IQ Data?
It’s pretty obvious: because it would undermine their entire philosophy. And no, there is no debate among researchers over the genetic, race and class composition of IQ. That debate is only conducted among the political class. Conservatives observe natural laws. Not ideology but natural law. Hierarchy is just letting the best people have the freedom…
Efficiency and equality are dirty words.
Break up the eurozone. That’s what should be done. Why create another even more totalitarian bureaucracy that abuses our freedoms in europe to match the one in the USA? The west is special because no one was unable to consolidate power, and had to rely upon the balance of powers, specialization and trade. China solidified,…
Krugman Watch: What Will Happen With Conservatives In Three Houses Of Government?
Paul Quotes David Frum saying: Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country…
Is The US Any More Or Less Redistributive Than Europe?
On the Economist’s View, a Dr Why, a commenter says In the United States, countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies redistribute income mainly from the rich to the poor, which is politically acceptable. In Europe, countercyclical policies also redistribute income from the German pensioners to the Greek civil servants and the Italian Mafia, which is much…
Why does the right lean toward NGDP targeting?
On Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Nick Rowe asks “Why isn’t NGDP targeting a lefty thing?” and asks why the right seems to support it, instead of supporting inflation targeting. My reply was: Nick, I think you miss the point that from the right’s position, NGDP targeting would require that the government focus its efforts on industrial…
Can We Predict Bubbles? And Don’t We Really Want Them?
Predicting Bubbles on Modeled Behavior: I think we can see and measure booms and bubbles. I just think we’re lying to ourselves when we say we want to stop them. We WANT people to live beyond their equilibrial (‘natural’) value to the world market. Bubbles and credit help us do that. If predicting bubbles meant…
Krugman Watch: Culture Is A Status Economy
The assertion that Europeâs crisis proves that the welfare state doesnât work comes from many Republicans. … The idea, presumably, is that the crisis countries are in trouble because theyâre groaning under the burden of high government spending. But .. the nations now in crisis donât have bigger welfare states than the nations doing well…
Economics is a subset of politics, not the other way âround. In the long run we are all human.
from Modeled Behavior on the Jobs Report …here is the long-run trend on private sector service sector employment. Notice that its just as strong as the last recovery though coming sooner. Not quite as strong as the 80 and 90s. On the other hand goods and government over that period look like this To the…
Jarrow On Predicting Asset Bubbles
In, How to Detect an Asset Bubble, Robert Jarrow, Younes Kchia and Philip Protter describe the method by which asset bubbles can be deduced from the asymptotic behavior of prices. I can just about follow the reasoning, and it make sense – although they don’t explain WHY it makes sense as a series of incentives…
Why 30 Large Companies Paid Only 18% Tax
Rick writes: RE: “One big one is accelerated depreciation that lets them write off equipment faster than it actually wears out. Deductions on executive stock options help. So do tax breaks for research and development and for making products in the United States instead of overseas. Offshore tax shelters play a role, too.” They enacted…
Profit Is Not A Motivator – It’s A Sensation.
On a facebook conversation Ron writes: Capitalism and Socialism have become emotionally charged misrepresentations of their ideals, so I won’t go there. Profit is not a driver, it is a derivative of the current market system. If profit really was a motivator, we wouldn’t have Wikipedia, nor the pursuit of knowledge through the arts and…
Fashion Is Signaling – Of Course ‘Best Dressed’ Means ‘Most Influential’, Not ‘Most Beautiful’.
Vanessa Friedman of the Financial Times writes about her frustration that the ‘Best Dressed Lists’ actually contain the ‘most influential people’, not the best dressed. See Is Kate Middleton best-dressed or best-addressed? So anyone want to join me in a campaign to change âBest Dressed Listâ to âFashionâs Most Influentialâ? It would unquestionably bring some…