According to George Zimmerman, he turned his back on Trayvon Martin and was walking away, whereupon Trayvon Martin chimped out and attacked him from rear left. Circumstantial evidence supports this story, (for starters, there is no way a man like George Zimmerman is going to physically attack a man like Trayvon Martin with his fists) and there are no eyewitnesses contradicting it. According to George Zimmerman and eyewitnesses, Zimmerman wound up …
Category: economics
Why the elite is dumb and getting dumber
When recruiting people for administration, administrators very reasonably look for past experience on the administration track. To him that has shall be given, to him that has not, even what little he has shall be taken away. However success at the lowest levels of the administration track is at best a poor indicator of intelligence, and in government, and in large schlerotic organizations choked on red tape, is a strong …
Technological decay
Earlier I argued that technology in the west peaked in 1970, Tallest building 1972, coolest muscle cars, last man left the moon,though it continues to advance in some other parts of the world: Unreasonable expectations points at another indicator. The most advanced plane ever built, the SR71, was built in 1966, retired 1972. One would have expected stealthed mach three fighters and bombers to replace it, but instead, slower, lower …
Why “free†is so expensive
If you are spending your own money on yourself, you care very much how much it costs, and care very much how good what you get is. If you are spending someone else’s money on someone else, aka “freeâ€, you don’t care how much it costs, and you don’t care if it does the recipient good or does him harm. “What if†has found an interesting example of “free†Seems …
The inevitability of murder under government health care
At the age of eighty four, you have a heart attack. The ambulance comes around, it stabilizes you, it takes you, free of charge to the free government hospital, and the free doctors at the free government hospital conclude you need open heart surgery, a stent and a coronary bypass. Now the government can provide the free ambulance, and the free stabilization to everyone. But there is no way it …
Yes, ten percent of Netherlands deaths are murder by government.
Yes, ten percent of hospital deaths in the Netherlands are state sponsored murder, involuntary euthanasia. Rick Santorum is attracting a great deal of outrage for his statement that to control medical costs in the Netherlands, ten percent of patients are involuntarily euthanized – murdered to save on medical costs. The mainstream media is producing a pile of articles claiming that he is lying. “There is not a shred of evidence†…
Warren Buffet doubts gold
Warren Buffet points out that land produces wealth, and gold does not. His argument leads to the conclusion that had a Roman in the time of Caesar invested a talent in land, or deposited some money with the money lenders to earn interest, his descendents would now be worth 1067 talents, or about one trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion dollars, whereas had that Roman buried a talent of gold …
Laffer Maximum
Britain decided to increase income tax on the top one percent of taxpayers to fifty percent. Predictably, revenues from the top one percent of tax payers collapsed. This demonstrates the entirely unsurprising fact that a income tax of 50% plus VAT tax of 20% for an effective tax of 60%, is well above the Laffer limit. I doubt that this came as any surprise to those imposing the tax. More …
The virtuous upper class?
According to Charles Murray in the top 20 percent of citizens in income and education exemplify the core founding of industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religious observance. They raise their children in stable homes. This is not my observation. My observation is that the the higher the socioeconomic status of the male, the better his behavior, but the higher the socioeconomic status of the female, the worse her behavior.
Inflation
Total sales are rising ten percent a year in nominal terms.   Surprise surprise, shadowstats estimates ten percent inflation per year if we use the measure of inflation that was used in the the 1980s.   Hawaiian Libertarian reports that that is pretty much what he is seeing when he puts his money down. So what is the true rate of inflation? There is no one true rate of inflation, since to …