Book Review: Against Thrift | Shiny Objects
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Megan McArdle artfully skewers an entire genre: books that make us feel bad about buying things.
One of the running themes of the economist Robin Hanson’s excellent blog is that arguments like the ones found in these books are actually an elite-status proxy war. They denigrate the one measure of high-visibility achievement—income—that public intellectuals …
The Top One Percent Includes You
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Carl Haub, senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., has estimated that 106 billion humans have been born since Homo sapiens appeared about 50,000 years ago. That means that the richest one percent in history includes 1.06 billion people. There are currently 6.2 billion humans alive, leaving approximately 100 billion …
The Buffett Rule is Unfair (and I Oppose It)
President Obama is proposing a new principle: the “Buffett rule”
President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.
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Paul Ryan: Restoring the Rule of Law
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Paul Ryan, with a very, very good speech on the importance of the Constitution and on the primacy of the rule of law, in our political and economic system.
Usually, our defense of the Constitution is presented as a defense of America’s founding principles and values, and rightfully so. But our constitutional system is …
In Detroit, Two Wage Levels Are the New Way of Work
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Interesting. Companies that have the freedom to set their own pay and benefit scales are able to create more new jobs than they would otherwise be able to. That’s certainly unexpected.
They are a cornerstone of Chrysler’s unlikely comeback: 900 employees turning out a Jeep Grand Cherokee sport utility vehicle every 48 seconds of …
How Lifetime Benefits and Contributions Point the Way Toward Reforming Our Senior Entitlement Programs
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When you get Medicare and Social Security benefits, you’re not really getting “your” money back. In many cases, you’re getting back far more than you paid in and the whole system isn’t designed to make that kind of math work.
Our recent analyses of lifetime contributions and expected benefits in Medicare show that, over …
Obama’s Job Plan: A Never-Never Bill
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Megan McCardle is annoyed that President Obama wasted her time with a job’s plan that he’s not actually interested in passing.
If the president were serious about providing stimulus, he would pay attention to the work of his old CEA chair, and pay for the jobs bill by decreasing the growth rate of something-or-other …
Can Matt Damon Bring Clean Water To Africa?
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Ignore the too-cute by half photo that gives Matt Damon a halo and give the article a shot. It’s a pretty interesting look at the effort to bring clean water wells to Africa and the unconventional ways that Matt Damon is pursuing this goal.
Still, even after White had led dozens of projects, he …
Once Again, We Cannot Pay For Social Security By Ending the Bush Tax Cuts on High Earners
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You may have seen charts floating around that supposedly show that we could pay for the Social Security shortfall by simply rolling back the Bush tax cuts “for the rich”. Megan McCardle has seen those charts too and she explains why they’re misleading and wrong.
The CBPP gets its figure by taking present values …
Why the Jobs Situation Is Worse Than It Looks
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This article from U.S. News is pretty scary—and depressing.
Today, over 14 million people are unemployed. We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression. Nearly seven people in the labor pool compete for every job opening. Hiring announcements have plunged to 10,248 in May, down from …