Tag: America

  • Journalism =/= Mathematics

    As a math major, law school grad, and economic policy wonk, I’m not sure which aspect of this stupidity by the New York Times horrifies me most. Is it: that people think we do tax at those rates, that some people think we should, that no editor caught the logical flaws before publication, or that…

  • The Greatest Threat Facing Our Country

    The single greatest threat facing the United States is probably not what you think. In the Cold War, the greatest threat was that of an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Most people today would probably say the risk is a terrorist attack involving WMDs. In our worst nightmares, we tend to picture a…

  • Obama, Burkeanism, and Chicago

    Redstate has a post by Pejman Yousefzadeh, Barack Obama: That Burkean Chicagoan [ed.: link updated to an archived link because the original was broken], that I found very interesting and right on the money. I think Obama’s association with the University of Chicago has somehow been widely interpreted as a signal that he is actually somewhat…

  • Starve the Beast

    Economics professor Greg Mankiw shares some interesting thoughts, citing Paul Krugman, on why Bush’s tax cuts may result in smaller government in the next administration than we would get otherwise. This is likely true, no matter which candidate wins. Krugman, however, calls this a “poison pill,” a way of sabotaging a takeover or transfer of…

  • Killing the Economy – One Drop at a Time

    Thankfully, the Republican party, for all its failings in the last few years, has still some concept of fundamental principles of economics. The Senate blocked a windfall profits tax on oil companies, a tax much like many of the taxes that prolonged the Great Depression in America long past its end elsewhere. Thank goodness for…