Complexity Is a Subsidy
I read this in Jonah Goldberg’s emailed newsletter, the “Goldberg File”, last week. I thought it was really good. The other day Mary Katharine Hamm tweeted a link to one of those utterly predictable stories about how corporations with more lobbyists pay lower taxes or some such. She also remarked “complexity is a subsidy” — [...]
Can Wal-Mart Scale L.A.’s Great Wall of Regulation?
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L.A. Chinatown residents want a Wal-Mart. L.A. won’t let Wal-Mart in to serve them. While Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) has decried Wal-Mart’s “ability to…drive all other competitors away” with rock-bottom prices, many Chinatown residents, suffering for years from gouging by the local markets, would probably say “good riddance.” In what must frustrate the unions most, [...]
EconTalk: David Autor on Social Security Disability Insurance
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David Autor of MIT talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program. SSDI has grown dramatically in recent years and now costs about $200 billion a year. Autor explains how the program works, why the growth has been so dramatic, and the consequences for the stability of the program [...]
Jeff Bezos Is Indulging His 11-Year-Old Self And We Love It
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If you had asked an 11-year-old Jeff Bezos to let his imagination run wild and think of the stuff that he would most dream to have as an adult, he might have said:The world’s biggest bookstore! Maybe even a bookstore that can beam any book directly to your hand in an instant (and movies and [...]
A Guide to Budget Rhetoric
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Arnold Kling offers some perceptive words Congressional budgeting and campaign rhetoric. Because the budget is so far from being sustainable, budget rhetoric needs to be re-interpreted. When their side refuses to cut spending because it would be “cruel,” they are ensuring that future spending cuts will be even crueler. When our side refuses to raise [...]
War on Women: Equal Pay Edition?
The repeal of Wisconsin’s “Equal Pay Act” is much less significant than certain politicians would like you to think it is. And the pay gap overall is much narrower than certain interest groups would like you to believe it is.
Oil Sanctions and the Pretense of Knowledge
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He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chose to impress upon it.
Financial Crisis Amnesia? Or the Perils of the Passive Voice
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Tim Geithner (aka the tax cheat Treasury Secretary) wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, defending the new financial regulations. I think he better illustrated the perils of the passive voice, however.
Create Value, Not Jobs
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The point is, our goal should never be to “create jobs”. Our goal should be to enable people to contribute something valued by other people. The value is the point, not the work. If someone finds a way to provide value to hundreds of millions of people and it requires no more effort from them than batting their eyelashes, that would be a win.
Why Manufacturing Jobs Move Overseas (An Apple Case Study)
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There are many, many reasons why manufacturing jobs are being created in China and not in the U.S. It’s nowhere near as simple as just calling it “greed” and condemning U.S. employers. In a highly dynamic, constantly changing world, is the U.S. producing skilled employees (at all skill levels!) who are willing to quickly change what they do and how they do it?