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” — [...]
Walk the Prank: Secret Story of Mysterious Portrait at Pentagon
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The portrait of “Ensign Chuck Hord,” a Navy man lost at sea in 1908, may be the greatest—or perhaps only—prank in Pentagon art history.
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 [...]
Comparing MPS and Voucher Per-Pupil Support
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I find discussions of the per-pupil funding level of different types of Milwaukee schools usually turns into a debate on how to make a true apples-to-apples comparison of per-pupil support for the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). While basic differences in MPS and MPCP schools and their cost-drivers make [...]
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.
Regulatory Reform Needs to Be Comprehensive
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The second core problem with the current system is that the more regulation agencies generate, the harder it is for individuals and businesses to comply. In many cases, no one knows for sure how many of the regulations we have on the books are really necessary or effective.
Enough, Already: The SOPA Debate Ignores How Much Copyright Protection We Already Have – Margot Kaminski – Technology – The Atlantic
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I’d say there’s a strong argument to be made that we should be weakening U.S. copyright law—not strengthening it.
Don’t Blame Obama for High Gas Prices
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Why have gasoline prices increased since the start of the year? The simplest explanation is that the price of crude oil has increased. Specifically, the spot price for Brent (North Sea) crude has increased $16 a barrel since January. Given that there are 42 gallons to a barrel, that works out to a 38 cent increase in the price of a gallon of oil. Spot prices for gasoline trade in New York have increased about 41 cents per gallon over the same time frame. So there you go.
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.