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

The TurboTax Crime Wave

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Rodney Mock and Nancy Shurtz write that when using TurboTax or other tax software, taxpayers deserve the same defense from IRS penalties as Tim Geithner.”  Quoting further from this article, “Taxpayers who utilize a professional tax adviser such as a CPA or attorney can often avoid IRS penalties by alleging reliance on the tax adviser… But for someone who uses commercial software to prepare returns, no such defenses are generally available: The software isn’t considered to be a “professional tax adviser.” These rules have “regulatory capture” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture) written all over them (in this case, by the AICPA; AKA the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants)…

Scientist Uses Physics to Escape a $400 Traffic Ticket

gizmodo.com

“When encountering a tricky problem, it always pays to play to your strengths. Like a scientist from USCD who was issued with a traffic ticket for failing to completely stop at a stop sign. His response? A four-page paper describing how the ticket defied the laws of physics.”

Why Vote? – New York Times

www.nytimes.com

“There’s no good economic rationale for going to the polls. So what is it that drives the democratic instinct?”  With the political season kicking into high gear, here’s what the dismal science has to say about how economists view voting. The short (1 minute) embedded video located at http://www.freakonomics.com/2007/11/06/freak-tv-why-economists-dont-vote also summarizes the New York Times article referenced here.

Why Your Highway Has Potholes

online.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal writes about the new highway bill and says that Americans don’t want to live in Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s car-free utopia.”

The main reason why Americans don’t want to live in Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s “car-free utopia” has everything to do with an important economic concept called the income elasticity of demand, which measures the sensitivity of one’s demand for a particular good or service to changes in one’s income. It is well known that public transportation has a negative income elasticity; e.g., Robert Frank cites a -0.36 income elasticity in his “Microeconomics and Behavior” textbook (cf. http://amzn.to/HRtztx). This implies that for every 1 percent increase in income, the typical consumer’s demand for mass transit declines 0.36%. On the other hand, the income elasticity of the demand for automobiles is strongly positive – 2.46, which implies that for every 1 percent increase in income, the typical consumer’s demand for automobile transit increases 2.46%.

Similarly, health care has a very strong positive income elasticity; Nobel laureate Robert Fogel write that “the long-term income elasticity of the demand for healthcare is 1.6—for every 1 percent increase in a family’s income, the family wants to increase its expenditures on healthcare by 1.6 percent.” (source: http://bit.ly/Z0nTx).

For more information on the topic of income elasticity of demand, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_elasticity_of_demand.

Physics Envy May be Hazardous to Your Wealth | Farnam Street

www.farnamstreetblog.com

“In this talk Andrew Lo addresses the problem of finding the right level of abstraction with which to think about economic phenomena. He compares economics to physics, with some surprising results. In physics it takes 3 laws to explain 99% of the data. In finance it takes more than 99 laws to explain about 3% of the data.”  The embedded 1 hour video featuring MIT finance professor Andy Lo is well worth watching!

Freakonomics » A Bar With Changing Prices

www.freakonomics.com

Wonderful example of the market at work! 🙂

Competition Is Good for Governments, Too

www.nytimes.com

“Companies, as well as people, can vote with their feet if they don’t like the way their state or local government is treating them.”

Wonderful essay by Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw. Quoting from this article, “Whether competition among governments is good or bad comes down to the philosophical questions of what you want government to do and how much you fear government power. If the government’s job is merely to provide services, like roads, schools and courts, competition among governmental producers may be as good a discipline as competition among private producers. But if government’s job is also to remedy many of life’s inequities, you may want a stronger centralized government, unchecked by competition.” Since I fear stronger centralized government, unchecked by competition, my vote is for the first as opposed to the second vision for government…

Rainfall or Rainmaking? Lawyers, Courts, and the Price of Mold Insurance in Texas

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Nerd alert! Finally, forthcoming in the Journal of Risk and Insurance, my paper with Baylor economists Chuck North and Carl Gwin on the political economy of mold in the Texas homeowners insurance market!

The Downside of Cohabiting Before Marriage

www.nytimes.com

“Don’t drift into living together; give it some thought and planning.”

Ducking the Medicare Crisis

www.nytimes.com

“The Affordable Care Act will either be fully paid for or will begin to address the Medicare problem — not both.”  This New York Times op-ed by former Obama administration official (aka “car czar”) Steven Rattner accuses the administration of dishonest accounting in financing ObamaCare.

Getting a Big Tax Refund Means You’re Doing It Wrong

online.wsj.com

“About 75% of individual taxpayers will receive federal income tax refunds, with the average refund totaling around $3,000. From a purely economic standpoint, this makes no sense.”

Time To Pay Your Taxes, Chump

online.wsj.com

“When you pay your taxes, big businesses don’t have to pay theirs.”

Don’t change planes here

economist.com

“EVERY business traveller prefers to fly direct. Switching planes mid-trip is stressful and risky: if your first flight is delayed, you can miss a connection and be stuck for hours.”  Here’s the advice from this Economist article: “…stay away from Newark, San Francisco, LaGuardia, Boston Logan and JFK. Those five airports were considered worst for connections in 2011, with the lowest percentages of on-time arrivals and departures in America.”

How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze . . .

nytimes.com

Amazing story about a forthcoming Linklater film which is arguably the “Fargo” of east Texas…

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

Want to Save the Planet? Turn Right

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Raymond Zhong interviews Roger Scruton, Britain’s foremost conservative philosopher, who offers a traditionalist manifesto to discomfit both the left and American free-marketeers.”

My Life as a Failed Country Gentleman

online.wsj.com

“P.J. O’Rourke on his fields of crabgrass, trout-free trout stream, Federalist-era wiring and dashed dreams of tweedy refinement.”  This essay features P.J. O’Rourke at his finest…

Why Airport Security Is Broken—And How to Fix It

online.wsj.com

“Air travel would be safer if we allowed knives, lighters and liquids on board and focused on disrupting new terror plots. A former head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley, on embracing risk.”

How Big Is the U.S. Debt?

www.youtube.com

The numbers cited by Duquesne University economist Antony Davies in this video are at least one year behind. As bad as things are according to his video, they’re even worse now; e.g., he notes that total federal debt outstanding is $14.3 trillion; however, since we’re clocking annual budget deficits of around $1.4 trillion these days, the current number actually stands at around $15.7 trillion (source: US Debt Clock @ www.usdebtclock.org)). When you add in unfunded federal government obligations (i.e., Social Security and Medicare), professor Davies cites a $50 trillion figure, which represents the present value of 75-year projections that are published each year by the Social Security Administration. Thus the sum total of debt outstanding plus unfunded obligations is north of $65 trillion (or $207,429 for every person currently living in the United States).

I’ll conclude by noting that the official “Summary of the 2011 Annual Reports” published by the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees (source: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM) includes the following caveat: “The financial conditions of the Social Security and Medicare programs remain challenging. Projected long-run program costs for both Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable under currently scheduled financing, and will require legislative modifications if disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers are to be avoided.”

The banker behind RMS Titanic

www.efinancialnews.com

Fascinating narrative concerning the financing and ownership structure of the company behind the Titanic; the ship was operated by a company called White Star Line, which in turn was owned by JP Morgan’s International Mercantile Marine Company. Edward Grenfell, who was a London-based business partner of JP Morgan’s “… would later remark that IMM had been one of Morgan’s “less fortunate schemes”.”

Christie: Government telling Americans to ‘stop dreaming’ and wait for ‘the next government check’

dailycaller.com

Quoting from this article, “New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie said America is “turning into a paternalistic entitlement society” where the federal government is telling individuals to “stop dreaming” and “stop striving,” a message Christie claimed is leading to “a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check.””

Demolishing Paul Ryan

professional.wsj.com

“With the presidential battle begun, the Obama campaign has revived the Cold War nuclear strategy of launch on warning. At any suggestion that a conservative idea might be threatening its ideological fortress, the American left now launches ICBMs of rhetorical destruction.”

Cancer Care Grand Rounds

professional.wsj.com

From an April 2012 Health Affairs journal article entitled “An Analysis Of Whether Higher Health Care Spending In The United States Versus Europe Is ‘Worth It’ In The Case Of Cancer” (cf. http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/31/4/667.abstract), the authors “… compare U.S. oncology spending over the period from 1983 to 1999… with that in 10 European Union countries. Costs were lower overall overseas and grew by 16%, while they grew by 49% in the U.S. Yet U.S. cancer mortality rates are lower, despite higher cancer rates, and “We found that the value of survival gains greatly outweighed the costs, which suggests that the costs of cancer care were indeed ‘worth it’.”

The Real Reason for the Tragedy of the Titanic

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Chris Berg writes that the disaster is often seen as a tale of hubris, social stratification and capitalist excess—but the truth is considerably more sobering.”

Quoting further from this article, “In the run-up to the 100th anniversary of this tragedy this weekend, there’s been a lot of commentary about who and what were to blame. Left unsaid is that the Titanic’s lifeboat capacity is probably the most iconic regulatory failure of the 20th century.” Not only was the Titanic fully compliant with regulatory safety standards promulgated by the British Board of Trade, it even exceeded the standard for the number of lifeboats on board (regulations at the time only mandated 16 lifeboats and the Titanic had 20). However, as the article points out, “The ship had carried 2,224 people on its maiden voyage but could only squeeze 1,178 people into its lifeboats.” The disconnect here was that the assumption behind the regulatory policy was that the purpose of the lifeboats was to ferry passengers to safety to another nearby ship and then go back and ferry yet more passengers. The article concludes by noting, “At the accident’s core is this reality: British regulators assumed responsibility for lifeboat numbers and then botched that responsibility. With a close reading of the evidence, it is hard not to see the Titanic disaster as a tragic example of government failure.”

Romney Trails Obama, but Key Numbers Break His Way

www.rasmussenreports.com

The unit of analysis really matters in political polling (and more generally, for any kind of statistical analysis). For purposes of actually winning an election, “likely” voters is a more appropriate unit of analysis than registered voters or all adult Americans. “Likely” voters is obviously a subset of the other two categories…

The Obama Rule

online.wsj.com

This is a repeat of a policy debate that we had in April 2011 concerning whether we should retain the Bush era tax rates for the “non-rich” (defined as families earning less than $250,000 per year and individuals earning less than than $200,000 per year) and revert back to the Clinton-era tax rates for the “rich”. Congress kicked that can down the road past the 2012 election by basically extending the status quo through December 31, 2012, and at this point if no changes are made to the tax law, then virtually everyone at all income levels is scheduled for substantial tax rate increases, effect January 1, 2013.

It’s important to note that the actual tax burden assumed at various levels of household income depends upon a host of factors in addition to the tax rates that are applied. The March 2011 Tax Foundation article entitled “No Country Leans on Upper-Income Households as Much as U.S.” (see http://taxfoundation.org/blog/show/27134.html) documents that the U.S. already has by far and away the most progressive personal income tax system amongst 24 OECD countries. Quoting from the Tax Foundation article, “…the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. pays 45.1 percent of all income taxes (both personal income and payroll taxes combined) in the country. Italy is the only other country in which the top 10 percent of households pays more than 40 percent of the income tax burden (42.2%). Meanwhile, the average tax burden for the top decile of households in OECD countries is 31.6 percent.” Thus, in the U.S., the current policy is to have “…the wealthiest households in this country pay a share of the tax burden that is one-third greater than their share of the nation’s income.”

Political Word Games

www.creators.com

Hat tip to my former Baylor student Jason Gould for bringing this superb article by Thomas Sowell to my attention!

Burkhauser on the Middle Class

www.econtalk.org

This podcast blew me away; quoting from Econtalk’s description of this podcast “Richard Burkhauser of Cornell University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the state of the middle class. Drawing on recently published papers, Burkhauser shows that changes in the standard of living of the middle class and other parts of the income distribution are extremely sensitive to various assumptions about how income is defined as well as whether you look at tax units or households. He shows that under one set of assumptions, there has been no change in median income, but under a different and equally reasonable set of assumptions, median income has grown 36%. Burkhauser explains how different assumptions can lead to such different results and argues that the assumptions that lead to the larger growth figure are more appropriate for capturing what has happened over the last 40 years than those that suggest stagnation.”

Venezuela After Chávez

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street, Americas columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes that even with Mr. Chávez gone, may live on—and analysts now talk of the possibility of a power struggle between the military and armed civilian factions.”

Who Deserves Credit for the Improving Economy?

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh writes that American households are proving to be more prudent than their government.”

The Myth of America’s Decline

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead notes that rising powers such as China, India, Brazil and Turkey make life more complicated for the United States—but America remains chairman of a larger board.”

The Wrong Way to Help the Disabled

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, James Bovard writes that the proposed 7% hiring quota for federal government contractors is unfair and unwise.”

California Declares War on Suburbia

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Wendell Cox writes that government planners intend to herd millions of new state residents into densely packed urban corridors. It won’t save the planet but will make traffic even worse.”

Complexity Is Bad for Your Health

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Information Age columnist Gordon Crovitz asks: If even Supreme Court justices can’t fathom ObamaCare, where does that leave the rest of us?”

Great article from today’s Wall Street Journal which echoes many of the same points that I made in an August 2009 blog posting entitled “My preferred approach for reforming health care…” (see http://blog.garven.com/2009/08/27/my-preferred-approach-for-reforming-health-care). I especially like the following quote, “True enough, ObamaCare was built on an unworkable foundation. The original sin in health care goes back to the wage and price controls in effect during World War II. The federal government let employers avoid wage controls by adding health insurance as an untaxed benefit for employees. Employer-provided insurance has since insulated most Americans from the cost of care. The predictable result is endless demand for increasingly inefficient services.”

Can This ‘Online Ivy’ University Change the Face of Higher Education?

www.theatlantic.com

“Meet The Minerva Project, the chest-beating, Silicon Valley-spawned, Larry Summers-backed “E-lite” college that just might reshape the worldwide market for education.”

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

Obama v. SCOTUS

www.washingtonpost.com

Quoting from this article by Charles Krauthammer, “The administration’s case for the constitutionality of Obamacare was so thoroughly demolished in oral argument that one liberal observer called it “a train wreck.” It is perfectly natural, therefore, that a majority of the court should side with the argument that had so clearly prevailed on its merits. That’s not partisanship. That’s logic.”

Confusion About Discrimination

www.thepublicdiscourse.com

“Last week, “Vandy Catholic”—a Catholic student group at Vanderbilt University—reluctantly decided to leave campus rather than affirm its compliance with the University’s new “nondiscrimination” policy, which requires religious student groups (but, interestingly, not all student groups) to open membership and leadership positions to “all comers,” without regard to religion.”

‘Second Thoughts’ Grow on Assisted Suicide

professional.wsj.com

“Writing in The Wall Street Journal , Diane Coleman and Stephen Drake write that the risks of mistake, coercion and abuse are too great to warrant conferring legal immunity on doctors or others who assist suicide.”

Oh, for Some Kennedyesque Grace

professional.wsj.com

Quoting from this article, “He (Obama) knows exactly what issues he’s running on and wants everyone else to know. He is not reserving fire, not launching small forays early in the battle. The strategy will be heavy and ceaseless bombardment… his campaign’s central theme: The Republican Party is a radical and reactionary force arrayed in defense of one group, the rich and satisfied, while the president and his party struggle to protect the yearning middle class and preserve the American future. This will be his campaign, minus only the wedge issues—the “war on women,” etc.—that will be newly deployed in the fall.”

How China Made Its Great Leap Forward

professional.wsj.com

One of the co-authors of this WSJ op-ed is none other than the Nobel economics laureate Ronald H. Coase (born 29 December 1910; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase for more information about this truly remarkable scholar. He has been publishing remarkably insightful work since the 1930’s, and continues to do so today, at 101 years of age!

The Real Causes of Income Inequality

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Phil Gramm and Steve McMillin write that any analysis of taxes paid in high tax-and-spend countries shows that the U.S. has the most progressive income tax system in the world.”

When the Almighty Talks Back

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Stanford University’s T.M. Luhrmann writes that the idea that God responds directly to questions and requests is not fringe among American evangelicals.”

The Supreme Court Lands in Oz

professional.wsj.com

“Like the original wizard, Barack Obama doesn’t want anyone to look behind the curtain.”

The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Shelby Steele writes that the absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in their use of Trayvon Martin is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.”

Europe Needs the Bond Vigilantes

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein writes that the EU’s ‘fiscal compact’ is an empty gesture.”

Court Tells Obama To Do His Judicial Review Homework

news.investors.com

“The Fifth Circuit Court seeks an explanation from the Justice Department on whether the Obama administration accepts court reviews of constitutionality.”

How to Replace Obamacare

www.nationalaffairs.com

The authors of this National Affairs article, James Capretta and Robert Moffit, basically argue for 1) a tax credit available to people whose employers don’t offer insurance, 2) better-financed high-risk pools and 3) stronger guarantees of continuous coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. These reforms would fit well with my preferred approach for reforming health care (see http://wp.me/pBo4U-ag)…

The Worst Economic Recovery in History

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Edward Lazear writes that since the second half of 2009, the U.S. economy has grown at a rate of just 2.4%, a full percentage point below average long-term growth.”

What to Do on the Day After ObamaCare

professional.wsj.com

Quoting from this article by University of Chicago economist John Cochrane, “The country can have a vibrant market for individual health insurance. Insurance proper is what pays for unplanned large expenses, not for regular, predictable expenses. Insurance policies should be “guaranteed renewable”: The policy should include a right to purchase insurance in the future, no matter if you get sick. And insurance should follow you from job to job, and if you move across state lines. Why don’t we have such markets? Because the government has regulated them out of existence.”

New Jersey Least Corrupt? Ha, Ha

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Paul Sherman and David Primo write about the flawed methodology behind the recent ‘State Integrity Investigation’ and its quirky results on corruption.”  This very same ‘State Integrity Investigation’ that gave New Jersey high marks for “integrity” also gave passing grades to two states where I have previously been a resident: Illinois and Louisiana. I can’t help but wonder about the integrity of any “study” that assigns my home state of Illinois a C; really? Illinois is (in)famous for its level of public corruption. A recent (12/7/11) New York Times about the sentencing of former governor Rod Blagojevich (see http://nyti.ms/u4M86J) notes that the Blagojevich jail sentencing “…delivered a warning in a state where political leaders — some aldermen, congressmen, and even the governor who immediately preceded Mr. Blagojevich, George Ryan — seemed to be headed off to jail on a regular basis.” Also Louisiana, which was highly overrated in “earning” a “C-”, has a similarly long list of politicians who are convicts; at last count, the list includes a governor, an attorney general, an elections commissioner, an agriculture commissioner, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a State Senate president, six other state legislators, and a host of appointed officials, local sheriffs, city councilmen, and parish police jurors…

No Kindle for Kirchner

professional.wsj.com

“In the age of the iPad, Argentina bans importing books.”  Strange but apparently true… This policy is supposedly all about “protecting” the Argentinian consumer…

Ex Parte Obama

professional.wsj.com

“The president worries the Supreme Court might overturn a law passed by Congress. The Founders were quite comfortable with the idea.”

How Huge Banks Threaten the Economy

professional.wsj.com

“Since the early 1970s, the share of assets controlled by the five largest banking institutions in the U.S. has tripled to 52% from 17%. This has to change.”

Justice Kennedy and the Commerce Clause

www.futureofcapitalism.com

Quoting from this article, “Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein has a new column up at the Hoover Institution Web site, about last week’s Supreme Court arguments about ObamaCare and the history of the Commerce Clause. Professor Epstein describes “the constitutional showdown over Obamacare” as “a real horse race, with a five to four vote to strike the mandate down perhaps now the most likely outcome.””

Baylor Wins NCAA Women’s Championship

online.wsj.com

Quoting from this article, “The title, Baylor’s second, caps off a stellar season for the school: The Bears reached the Elite Eight in men’s basketball and had college football’s Heisman Trophy winner, Robert Griffin III.”

Connected, but alone?

www.ted.com

“As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other? Sherry Turkle studies how our devices and online personas are redefining human connection and communication — and asks us to think deeply about the new kinds of connection we want to have.”  Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. In other words, she knows what she’s talking about. It’s interesting to see someone like Professor Turkle who is so deeply steeped in technology urging us to “unplug”…

Are Student Loans the Next Subprime Debacle?

www.americanbanker.com

“The average student debt upon graduation won t quite reach the level of the average subprime mortgage, but the investment in education will likely be farther underwater than the average subprime house.”  Hat tip to my Baylor colleague, David VanHoose, for pointing this article out to me. The answer to the question, quite unfortunately, is “yes”…

SCOTUS meets Chicago style politics

www.americanthinker.com

Quoting from this article, ” Laws are unconstitutional when they exceed the limitations placed on the government by the people, through the Constitution. The law restrains the government, as the civil and criminal codes govern us. Overturning a law on that basis is not activism, it is law enforcement. Overturning a law because of some imagined right discerned not in the text but in an invented doctrine such as a penumbra does count as judicial activism.”

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

What’s More Expensive Than College? Not Going to College

www.theatlantic.com

“There is a cost to not educating young people. The evidence is literally all around us.”

Stop Panicking About Bullies

professional.wsj.com

“Childhood is safer than ever before, but today’s parents need to worry about something. Nick Gillespie on why busybodies and bureaucrats have zeroed in on bullying.”

Free Market Fairness

professional.wsj.com

“”Free Market Fairness” argues that we needn’t choose between laissez-faire and social justice. The choice is not so simple, or so stark.”

Just reading Obamacare cruel and unusual punishment

www.ocregister.com

Quoting from this article, “It’s not just that the legislators who legislate it don’t know what’s in it, nor that citizens can ever hope to understand it, but that even the nation’s most eminent judges acknowledge that it is beyond individual human comprehension.”

Kirchner Grabs the Central Bank

professional.wsj.com

Quoting from this article, “Under Kirchner presidencies—first Néstor and now his wife Cristina—since 2003, the state has confiscated bank accounts and retirement savings, hyper-regulated many entrepreneurs out of business, abrogated contracts, imposed price controls, and raised import tariffs and export taxes. Vast entitlements, notably in subsidized utilities and transportation, have been used to consolidate power.”

Federal Lending Is as Rotten as Federal Borrowing

professional.wsj.com

“Writing in The Wall Street Journal, George Melloan says that Uncle Sam has a loan for everyone, and many of them are likely to go bad.”

Obama and the Eisenhower Standard

online.wsj.com

“Comparing Obama and Eisenhower, Fouad Ajami writes in The Wall Street Journal that when crafting foreign policy, the late president didn’t ‘give a damn how the election goes.’”

Physical attractiveness and careers: Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful

www.economist.com

“AT WORK, as in life, attractive women get a lot of the breaks.”

White House Burning

professional.wsj.com

“James Grant reviews White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why it Matters to You by Simon Johnson and James Kwak.”

Health Law: What’s Left if Mandate Dies?

online.wsj.com

“Justices in the Supreme Court’s conservative majority said Wednesday that it would be difficult to figure out which parts of the Obama health-care law should survive if one part of it is judged unconstitutional.”

We’re Not France, Yet

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger writes that ObamaCare is the coup de grâce of America’s policy mandarins… Mandarins are the intellectuals who design and order legally enforceable public systems within which the rest of the population resides, or tries to. French policy mandarins are the most celebrated in the world. Their most ardent admirers in America are the people who made the Obama health-care law.”

The Dangers of an Interventionist Fed

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Stanford economist John B. Taylor writes that a century of experience shows that rules lead to prosperity and discretion leads to trouble.”

Obamacare: An Unconstitutional Misadventure

www.hoover.org

“How the individual mandate unravels the core of the health-care law.”

United States’ economy: Over-regulated America

www.economist.com

“All big regulations should also come with sunset clauses, so that they expire after, say, ten years unless Congress explicitly re-authorises them.”

The Trayvon Martin Tragedies

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Juan Williams writes that the recent killing of Trayvon Martin needs more investigation, but where’s the outrage over the daily scourge of black-on-black crime?”

Demand for U.S. Debt Is Not Limitless

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Lawrence Goodman writes that in 2011 the Federal Reserve purchased a stunning 61% of Treasury issuance—and that can’t last.”

The Open-Mic Second Term

professional.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal parses President Obama’s private chat with Dmitry Medvedev.”

Step to the Center

www.nytimes.com

“The Obama health care law represents another stage in the concentration of power.”

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

Even Central Bankers Have Had Enough

online.wsj.com

“The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas calls the country’s top banks a clear and present danger to the economy. This is a member of the financial establishment itself calling for Too-Big-To-Fail banks to be broken up.”

Top Saudi Cleric Issues Fatwa: Destroy Churches | Via Meadia

blogs.the-american-interest.com

“In recent years the king of Saudi Arabia has won plaudits around the world for promoting interfaith dialogs. Those efforts recently received a dramatic setback when the top religious official in Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa earlier this month calling on the faithful to destroy all churches in the Arabian peninsula.”

Obama Is Humbled by the Market

online.barrons.com

“The gas market, that is, for which the president branded himself as a superman. Now he’s desperate to become human again.”

The Hunger Games: Could a real country have an economy like Panem’s?

www.slate.com

Be sure to read this Slate article before y’all head out to see The Hunger Games!

Obama’s tax hikes threaten a new US recession

www.nber.org

I highly recommend reading Harvard economist Martin Feldstein’s Financial Times article (short and concise – just 1-1/2 pages!) entitled “Obama’s tax hikes threaten a new US recession” at http://www.nber.org/feldstein/ft03192012.pdf!

Subsidizing wind and solar because China and Germany are doing it

keithhennessey.com

“If President Obama is going to subsidize industries either because he likes them or because other Nations’ governments are subsidizing them, then we must acknowledge that he is engaged in industrial policy, aka state-managed capitalism, with an open question about whether the managing state is based…”

Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You’re Driving?

www.freakonomics.com

Interesting podcast about “conspicuous conservation” (apologies to Thorstein Veblen, who famously coined the (related) term “conspicuous consumption” more than 100 years ago). This podcast “…centers around a paper by (economists) Alison and Steve Sexton… called “Conspicuous Conservation: The Prius Effect and Willingness to Pay for Environmental Bona Fides.” Why single out the Toyota Prius? how much value do people who lean green place on being seen leaning green? The Sextons found that the Prius’s “green halo” was quite valuable — and, the greener the neighborhood, the more valuable the Prius is.”

The podcast also considers various other examples of “conspicuous conservation”, including a canvas tote bag example (“For about $20 you can announce your environmental bona fides with a canvas tote that says “I’m not a plastic bag.””) and how people frequently install solar panels on the side of their homes facing the street, even if it would be more efficient (in terms of sun exposure) to install panels on the other side of their homes…

What Does the Prudent Investor Do Now?

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Princeton University economist Burton Malkiel writes that at a yield of 2.25%, the 10-year U.S. Treasury is a sure loser and stocks are a safer choice.”

Liberty and ObamaCare

online.wsj.com

Quoting from this article, “The stakes are much larger than one law or one President. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court’s answers may constitute a hinge in the history of American liberty and limited and enumerated government. The Justices must decide if those principles still mean something.”

Obamacare: The reckoning

www.washingtonpost.com

Quoting from Charles Krauthammer’s article (concerning next week’s Supreme Court review of Obamacare), “If Obamacare is upheld, it fundamentally changes the nature of the American social contract. It means the effective end of a government of enumerated powers — i.e., finite, delineated powers beyond which the government may not go, beyond which lies the free realm of the people and their voluntary institutions. The new post-Obamacare dispensation is a central government of unlimited power from which citizen and civil society struggle to carve out and maintain spheres of autonomy.”

Solar Tariff

www.futureofcapitalism.com

Quoting from this article, “It’s bad enough in the first place that the American taxpayers are subsidizing domestic alternative energy companies through these Department of Energy loan guarantees. Now we’re also going to impose protectionist tariffs to shield them from foreign competition?”

Values & Capitalism

www.valuesandcapitalism.com

My new “favorite” blog is Values and Capitalism, which is located at http://www.valuesandcapitalism.com/. According to its “About” page, “”Values and Capitalism” is an initiative at the American Enterprise Institute that explores the moral and material nature of a market economy. The project emphasizes how the free enterprise system both creates wealth and rests upon traditional American values. Our publications and events are intended primarily for college students, with a particular emphasis on engaging Christian students in a discussion on the compatibility of their faith and the system of free enterprise.”

The GOP Budget and America’s Future

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan writes that President Obama’s budget gives more power to bureaucrats, takes more from taxpayers to fuel the expansion of government, and commits our nation to a future of debt and decline.”

ObamaCare’s Flawed Economic Foundations

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Vernon L. Smith note that the individual insurance mandate has almost nothing to remedying costs imposed on the system by those without coverage.”

We Are Ruled by Professors

pjmedia.com

This article is a must read; it reminds me of British historian Paul Johnson’s famous 25-year old essay entitled “The Heartless Lovers of Humankind” (cf. http://www.fortfreedom.org/h11.htm), which is also well worth reading. Johnson notes, among other things, that “…Almost all intellectuals profess to love humanity and to be working for its improvement and happiness. But it is the idea of humanity they love, rather than the actual individuals who compose it.”

Why Prosperity Is Hip, And Raises Living Standards

www.forbes.com

“Since the election of 1800, and even before that in the inspiration for the American Revolution itself, the American people have always voted and fought for economic growth and prosperity.”

Millennials Are More ‘Generation Me’ Than ‘Generation We,’ Study Finds

chronicle.com

“Millennials, the generation of young Americans born after 1982, may not be the caring, socially conscious environmentalists some have portrayed them to be, according to a study described in the new issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.”

Charles Murray on the Growing Cultural Divide

professional.wsj.com

“Economics can’t explain the growing cultural divide between America’s upper and lower classes, says the author of Coming Apart.”

Lies My Newspaper Told Me: Five things Portlanders are wrong about

www.wweek.com

This is a somewhat humorous (and R-rated) essay that I bumped into recently; The 5 “lies” are:

1. Home solar is the wave of the future
2. Eating local will save the earth
3. Hybrid cars will solve our carbon woes
4. Home ownership: your best investment
5. Hands-free cellphones make multitasking effortless

What piqued my interest was the author’s reference to an important insight by the 19th century British economist William Jevons called the “Jevons Paradox”. The “Jevons Paradox” predicts that an “unintended” consequence of technological progress (e.g., hybrid cars and CFL’s) is that increased energy efficiency encourages more (rather than less) energy consumption. So the same person who would otherwise be careful about turning her incandescent lights off and driving her gas powered car less will think nothing of leaving her CFL’s on and driving her hybrid car more. Basically, by lowering the cost of energy use at the level of the individual, the “paradox” is that technological innovations such as hybrid cars and CFL’s may actually increase overall energy consumption by society.

Beyond the Gas Price Blame Game, a Thorny Case of Supply vs. Demand

knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

More on why gas prices are so high, from Knowledge @ Wharton…