I watched an old 2003 movie, “The Barbarian Invasions†which the right love, because it depicts the ruling progressive left elite as decadent, corrupt, hypocritical, incompetent and destroying the civilization that they rule, and the ruling progressive elite love, perhaps because it is about their favorite topic, themselves.
Taxing beyond the laffer maximum
Why do governments tax beyond the Laffer maxium? You have probably read about the California’s Amazon tax. Amazon said it would flee the tax, promptly did so, and so, predictably, instead of gaining two hundred million, the state lost taxes on something like one hundred and fifty million of income.
Defund the left
The reason the battle in Wisconsin is so bitter is that the Wisconsin Republicans are doing what Reagan attempted to do and failed to do: Defund the left. Previously schools were required to buy health insurance through the teachers union. Being free to shop around for health insurance appears to save over half a million dollars per school The dissenting opinion, The Stratasphere, Public School Spending That is over a …
Poorer, dirtier and shabbier
In the comments, some have disagreed with my proposition that BLS statistics are unbelievable because the US is becoming dirtier and shabbier. Dirtier and shabbier is rather subjective, so reasonable people can disagree.
Quantitative easing comes back again from the undead
QE2 was supposed to end, and it has. However, as it ends, the federal reserve opens up open ended dollar lending to foreign central banks. Supposedly there is no risk, since these are central banks, and we all know central banks always repay their debts.
More fake violence in Greece
A little of the violence is real, indeed more and more of it is real, but the vast majority of it is still imitation violence by astroturf, which I conjecture is imitation riot theater instigated by the government against itself to dramatize its imitation austerity theater. Observe the trash fires at 0:14. Real rioters burn stuff more valuable than trash, and light bigger fires. Observe at 0:24 the group of …
You can’t trust bankers
“You can’t trust bankers†says Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable†Taleb is an econometrician and trader – meaning he makes his money betting on financial instruments, like a professional poker player.
real inflation
There is precision, and there is accuracy. It is unwise to attain more precision than accuracy, for one is apt to fool oneself, and worse still to attain precision at the cost of accuracy. You cannot measure inflation on goods that are changing, without making questionable subjective judgements. Goods that are not changing are stuff like food and fuel. An accurate measure of inflation would not include goods that apt …
billion prices inflation estimate
The billion prices project spiders prices off the internet, and gets results broadly similar to the BLS, about thee percent per year, which surprises me, since over the last three years the BLS has been applying “hedonic adjustments†to all manner of goods where hedonic adjustment is impossible or implausible. Today’s supposedly three percent inflation as measured by the BLS is a lot higher rate of inflation than what the …
Philips curve, stimulus
If stimulus works, if Keynesianism is a good enough approximation to the modern American economy, there should be a relationship between unemployment and inflation, the Philips curve. Higher unemployment should lead to lower inflation, and vice versa. There is no relationship.