Stuff
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I just discovered this 2007 article from Paul Graham. He said something that I’ve vaguely thought of before but I’ve never even come close to articulating it this well.
We all have lots and lots of stuff. We like to think that it’s valuable because we’ll use it one day. It’s not. It’s worthless.
What …
Milton Friedman on Wealth Redistribution
I’m a sucker for Milton Friedman videos and I’m a sucker for people explaining the secondary effects of economic regulations: the unseen that comes after the seen. Friedman does that here, schooling a student on how a 100% inheritance tax on wealth would destroy our society.
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 Rich Can’t Pay For It
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The grand total of the combined net worth of every single one of America’s billionaires is roughly $1.3 trillion. It does indeed sound like a “ton of cash” until one considers that the 2011 deficit alone is $1.6 trillion. So, if the government were to simply confiscate the entire net worth of all …
An example of private property helping the poor
I finished listening to an old EconTalk podcast, during my commute this morning. Russ Roberts was talking to Karol Boudreaux about her fieldwork on property rights and economic reforms in Rwanda and South Africa. They spent the first half of the conversation talking about Rwandan reforms and the second half talking about South African reforms. …
Destroying "Clunkers" for Cash
Does this make you sad, or is it just me? I think there’s something incredibly barbaric and degrading about destroying a perfectly good piece of machinery. A well maintained engine can run for more than a hundred thousand miles. It seems almost sacreligious to just destroy it out of hand.
To receive government reimbursement, …
Who Are the Rich?
David Bernstein talks about the rich:
My friends in this income bracket [$250-380K] tend to have have high mortgages, work 60-80 hours a week, pay 40-50K or more a year for child care (a nanny is necessary when you often work into the late evening–and even day care for two kids in the DC …
Don't Fear the Rich
Who should you fear more, rich people or your local government bureaucrats? That’s an easy question. You should fear the nice lady down at Village Hall. She has far more control over your life than any member of the upper class.
Walter Williams states it beautifully.
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, with about $60 billion …
Working Hard — But Not at Home
Many people like to point out how Americans work harder — and longer — than the rest of the world. Many leftists like to point out that America’s work / life balance is out of whack and that we need to spend more time at home and less time at the office.
Maybe.
But we don’t really …