Assorted Links (3/31/2010)

Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading lately:

Excessive Outrage on Retiree Subsidy Accounting – Business – The Atlantic
www.theatlantic.com
“So as blogged yesterday, the new health care plan changed the tax treatment of a subsidy for…”

Geithner and Bernanke Are Wrong about Fed Power — The American, A Magazine of Ideas
www.american.com
“Letting the Federal Reserve keep a hand in bank supervision and regulation is a mistake.”

Strategic Defaults: Lessons From the Great Depression – Economix Blog – NYTimes.com
economix.blogs.nytimes.com
“A study about debts during the 1930s calls into question current government policies that try to make mortgage payments more “affordable,” an economist writes.”

Taxes Per Person
gregmankiw.blogspot.com
Professor Mankiw crunches the numbers and observes that “The United States is indeed a low-tax country as judged by taxes as a percentage of GDP, but as judged by taxes per person, the United States is in the middle of the pack.”  

Supply and Demand (in that order): Employment Reducing Policy List Updated
caseymulligan.blogspot.com
“The basic tools of supply and demand help immensely to understand and predict everyday events in our world. These days, many of those events are related to the financial crisis — or the Panic of 2008 as I call it. …”

Supply and Demand (in that order): Where’s the Continued Decline?
caseymulligan.blogspot.com
“At the end of 2008, with housing data through Oct 2008 in hand, I predicted that housing prices would continue to fall, but begin to recover in the Summer of 2009 and perhaps as early as Spring (I also …”

The ObamaCare Writedowns—II – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal writes that Democrats blame a vast CEO conspiracy. 

Notable & Quotable – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
Mark Steyn on complications being discovered in the new health-care law. 

EnergyScam – Business – The Atlantic
www.theatlantic.com
“Thank God we have government programs like EnergyStar to help us live a greener lifestyle.”

Kathleen Parker: Too many Democrats are hiding behind Hyde
www.lacrossetribune.com
“Health care is the next-to-last thing I want to write about. The last thing is abortion, so this column is a banquet of tortures.

Eric Schmidt and Ivan Seidenberg: Unleashing American Broadband – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
“Google and Verizon support a policy of minimal government involvement.”


The Ballad of Sallie Mae – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
“A cautionary tale for our times about public subsidy, arbitrary politics and doing business with the government.”


 

Assorted Links (3/29/2010)

Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading lately:

Greg Mankiw’s Blog: David Brooks on the State of Economics

gregmankiw.blogspot.com

“In today’s NY Times, David Brooks has an interesting column on the field of economics. While the column is well worth reading, I think it is more wrong than right. Journalists are fond of writing articles…”

Should taxpayers subsidize underwater homeowners?|KeithHennessey.com

keithhennessey.com

“The Obama administration will announce a major new stock market initiative on Friday that will directly tackle the problem of the millions of Americans who lost money betting on stocks. The government …”

Gary Becker: ‘Basically an Optimist’—Still – WSJ.com

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Nobel prize winning economist Gary Becker says ObamaCare will do serious damage, but the American people will vote for limited government in November.”

Charles Krauthammer – Obamacare’s next trick: the VAT – washingtonpost.com

www.washingtonpost.com

“It won’t be long before we’ll be paying European levels of taxation.

FT.com / Weekend columnists / Tim Harford – At last the con has been taken out of econometrics

www.ft.com

“The ‘identification problem’ muddies any statistical analysis, says Tim Harford”.

Marginal Revolution: Is the mandate penalty large enough?

www.marginalrevolution.com

Tyler Cowen provides some compelling arguments to the effect that healthy individuals will opt out until they get sick. Both Professor Cowen and Megan McArdle argue that the so-called “mandate” probably is not all that enforceable anyway, so this seems to be a nearly ideal setup for adverse selection (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection) to occur on a rather massive scale. I doubt whether the CBO scoring of the Senate Bill which has been passed into law even considered this type of behavior as being within the realm of possibilities!

Can the Individual Mandate Be Enforced? – Business – The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com

“Big Government has written a post suggesting that the individual health care mandate will not actually be enforced by the IRS.  It will be assessed, but if you refuse to pay it, the normal enforcement mechanisms under Subtitle F of the tax code–such as liens and garnishments–may not be employed.”

 

So-called Health Care Reform

I try very hard not to be partisan/political in my blogging, but the spectacle that is Washington, DC has completely taken my breath away this evening.  The only thing that was “bi-partisan” about this 219–212 vote in the U.S. House of Representatives was the opposition to the Senate Bill.  Specifically, all 178 House Republicans voted “no”, and 34 House Democrats voted “no”…  Please read the following articles! 

  • A Way Out of Soviet-Style Health-Care, by Milton Friedman

      “Solzhenitsyn’s prophetic warning about the depersonalization of medicine..”

    • Inside the Pelosi Sausage Factory, by Kim Strassel

        “Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak sold his anti-abortion soul for a toothless executive order.”

      • The ObamaCare Crossroads, Wall Street Journal

          “The vote is really about who commands the country’s medical resources.”

        • The Doctors of the House, Wall Street Journal

          “A landmark of liberal governance whose price will be very steep.”

        • Steven Landsburg's review of Gary Gorton's new book entitled "Slapped By the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007"

          University of Rochester economist Steven Landsburg provides a nice summary of Yale professor Gary Gorton’s new book entitled “Slapped By the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007” (this book is available at http://bit.ly/9VCFB1). Drawing upon the metaphor of Frank Capra’s classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” (see http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0038650), Landsburg notes that “The great crisis of the past few years was just another bank run, pure and simple. The only difference is that this time the banks were non-traditional financial firms like Bear Stearns (as opposed to, say, the Bailey Building and Loan Association) and the depositors were large financial institutions like Fidelity (as opposed to the good citizens of Bedford Falls).”

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          Steven Landsburg’s review of Gary Gorton’s new book entitled “Slapped By the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007”

          University of Rochester economist Steven Landsburg provides a nice summary of Yale professor Gary Gorton’s new book entitled “Slapped By the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007” (this book is available at http://bit.ly/9VCFB1). Drawing upon the metaphor of Frank Capra’s classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” (see http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0038650), Landsburg notes that “The great crisis of the past few years was just another bank run, pure and simple. The only difference is that this time the banks were non-traditional financial firms like Bear Stearns (as opposed to, say, the Bailey Building and Loan Association) and the depositors were large financial institutions like Fidelity (as opposed to the good citizens of Bedford Falls).”