Rep. Paul Ryan (R, Wisconsin) gave a talk earlier today at the American Enterprise Institute entitled “The Battle Plan: A Roadmap for America’s Future” which is well worth watching!
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All posts by Jim Garven
The Battle Plan: A Roadmap for America’s Future
Rep. Paul Ryan (R, Wisconsin) gave a talk earlier today at the American Enterprise Institute entitled “The Battle Plan: A Roadmap for America’s Future” which is well worth watching!
Assorted Links (7/20/2010)
Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading lately:
Taking apart the federal budget
www.washingtonpost.com
“(Graphically) Explore the various facets of the government’s budget and see how revenues and spending have changed over time.” Basically, this is a lesson in real world public finance in only 5 slides!
Michael Boskin: Obama’s Economic Fish Stories – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
“Michael Boskin writes in The Wall Street Journal that when it comes to unemployment, the president claims that the stimulus bill was several times more potent than his chief economic adviser estimates. Such statements hurt his credibility.”
Beware Greedy Relatives If You Hope to See 2011
www.businessweek.com
Thanks to a quirk in the federal tax law, the estate tax this year is zero, but starting on Jan. 1 all taxable estates exceeding $1 million will be taxed at the rate of 55 percent. The author of this article notes that the perverse incentives may mean that “Plugs get unplugged, do-not-resuscitate orders are placed. Maybe worse.” Furthermore, there is an empirical literature which shows that monetary incentives influence death rates; specifically, “…a 2003 paper in the Review of Statistics and Economics by Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan and Wojciech Kopczuk of the University of British Columbia…examined the number of estate-tax returns immediately following changes in the law since 1916 and found that death rates change with the estate tax.”
Economics One: Government Policy and the Slowdown
johnbtaylorsblog.blogspot.com
Professor Taylor on the causes of (and the cure for) the slowing economy: “Like many economists, I am concerned about the slowdown in the economy which prolongs the high unemployment rate. I think uncertainty about the growing federal debt and the increased government interventions-from health care to financial markets…-is the cause of the slowdown. In my view the best stimulus right now would be a clear and credible plan to reduce the deficit and bring down the growing debt.”
Labor Pains — The American, A Magazine of Ideas
www.american.com
“Europe’s taxes punish working outside the home, so Europeans don’t work as much as they would otherwise.”
Martin Feldstein: The ‘Tax Expenditure’ Solution for Our National Debt – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
“In The Wall Street Journal, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein says that the credits and subsidies that make the tax code so complicated cost big bucks. Reduce them by third and the debt will be 72% of GDP in 2020 instead of 90%.”
Bret Stephens: Why Hasn’t Israel Bombed Iran (Yet)? – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
“In The Wall Street Journal, Global View columnist Bret Stephens says the military risks of a raid on Iran are large, but the political risks could be even bigger.”
Notable & Quotable – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
“Reuel Marc Gerecht discusses how conversations about Islam in the U.S. have become boring, lightweight, and sometimes inane under the Obama administration.”
Michio Kaku: What We’ve Learned from the Gulf Spill – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
“In the Wall Street Journal, Michio Kaku writes that in the future, relief wells should be drilled simultaneously with the main well.”
Dilbert and the Prisoner's Dilemma game
Unfortunately for Dilbert, he is confused about the prisoner’s dilemma game, which occurs when the players of a game rationally choose not to cooperate with each other even if it is in their best interests to do so!
]]>Dilbert and the Prisoner’s Dilemma game
Unfortunately for Dilbert, he is confused about the prisoner’s dilemma game, which occurs when the players of a game rationally choose not to cooperate with each other even if it is in their best interests to do so!
Merle Hazard' new Greek Debt Crisis music video!
Merle Hazard’ new Greek Debt Crisis music video!
Assorted Links (7/19/2010)
Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading lately:
David Cameron: A Staunch and Self-Confident Ally – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
“British Prime Minister David Cameron writes in The Wall Street Journal that the U.S. and Britain have a clear common agenda: succeeding in Afghanistan, securing economic growth and fighting protectionism.”
You Don’t Have to Pay for Cable TV
www.moneytalksnews.com
“The average cable subscription costs $900 a year, but you can radically reduce that amount and still watch everything you want.”
Leeds: Chew on this: There is no surplus fairy for Social Security
www.statesman.com
Here’s the bottom line from Sandy Leeds’ editorial, published in today’s Austin American Statesman:
“The bottom line is that we’re in trouble. Social Security is woefully underfunded and Medicare is an even larger problem. This is going to increase the amount that we’re going to have to borrow from investors – and there’s no certainty that investors will always be willing to lend to us. Most importantly, we’re never going to solve these problems until the electorate understands the issues and starts to pressure our elected officials into making the hard (but right) decisions. We’re not doing anyone any favors by convincing them that we have “built up a big trust fund.””
Economics One: New Data Show the Debt Problem Is Spending (not Taxes) and Obamacare Worsens the Problem
johnbtaylorsblog.blogspot.com
Quoting from Stanford Professor John Taylor’s Blog (Economics One): “Everyone now seems to agree that the exploding federal debt is a serious problem that must be addressed. But how? The following … charts provide some data to help answer that question.”
Review & Outlook: A Climate Absolution? – WSJ.com
online.wsj.com
“A Wall Street Journal editorial says the global warming alarmists still won’t separate science from politics.”
www.boston.com
Here’s what we have to look forward to as Obamacare starts to come “on line” (Massachusetts passed so-called Romneycare in 2006, and Obamacare structurally closely resembles Romneycare, only on a national as opposed to individual state level)… “The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the state’s already-stressed budgets”.
Studying a Suicide Cluster at Foxconn – The Numbers Guy – WSJ
blogs.wsj.com
“To analyze whether a recent spate of suicides at a set of Chinese manufacturing facilities represents an unusual outbreak, it helps to make the right comparisons.”
Study like a scholar, scholar
Three Million Imaginary Jobs II
Following up on an earlier posting about the Obama Administration’s “jobs created or saved” metric, I’d like to call attention to Greg Mankiw’s posting from yesterday entitled “The CEA’s Impossible Job”. I also learned the following Latin phrase from this article: Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Also, the following two postings about the Obama Administration’s “jobs created or saved” metric which date back to November 2009 are worth a second look:
- In the Battle for Stimulus Jobs, Shoe Store Owner Tells War Story, by Louise Radnofsky (published November 2, 2009
Here’s a practical, step-by-step guide to “creating or saving” 9 jobs for only $889!
- Stimulus and the Jobless Recovery, by Ed Lazear (published November 1, 2009)
“Jobs ‘created or saved’ is meaningless. What matters is net job gain or loss, and that means the unemployment rate.”