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

Jonathan Haidt Answers Your Questions About Morality, Politics, and Religion

www.freakonomics.com

Quoting from this Freakonomics interview with University of Virginia psychology professor Jon Haidt, “Once I lost my feelings of repulsion and anger toward conservatism I discovered a whole world of ideas I had never encountered.”

Is Free Enterprise Really Based on Greed?

www.youtube.com

“In his book “The Road to Freedom”, Arthur Brooks demonstrates how earned success, true fairness and helping those in need are the foundation of the moral case for free enterprise.”  I am looking forward to the upcoming luncheon in Austin (scheduled for May 31) featuring Dr. Art Brooks, who is president of the American Enterprise Institute. If y’all are interested in attending, the registration for this event is located at http://bit.ly/JUOBtR…

Jerry Brown vs. Chris Christie

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Main Street columnist William McGurn writes that more states are realizing that the road to fiscal hell is paved with progressive intentions.”  It’s important to say no because saying yes will very quickly take us down the same fiscal and economic road that the EU is currently traveling!…

Saying No to State Bailouts

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Congressman Kevin Brady and Senator Jim DeMint write that Congress must make plain that American taxpayers will not protect states from the consequences of their economic policies.”

Europe’s Brain-Dead Right

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Global View columnist Bret Stepehns writes that nobody should be surprised if voters also give Angela Merkel and David Cameron the boot at the next ballot.”

Losing Money Isn’t a Crime

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Yale Law Professor Jonathan Macey writes that J.P. Morgan lost $2 billion and will learn from the experience—which regulators rarely do.”

Obama’s ‘Vampire’ Capitalists

professional.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal says write the President a check and escape eternal damnation.”

Lifetime airline passes: Fly anywhere, any time, for life

www.economist.com

“IN THE early 1980s, American Airlines, strapped for cash, decided to start selling passes for unlimited first-class travel for life. At the time, the passes cost $250,000 (around $600,000 in today’s dollars), with a companion ticket available for an extra $150,000 and discounts for older people. The Los Angeles Times explains what happened next…”

The Leverage Cycle: Cause and Cure for the Current Crisis

www.youtube.com

Yale economist John Geanakoplos discusses his “leverage cycle theory” in the context of the global financial crisis of 2008-????; hat tip to Greg Mankiw (http://bit.ly/Kxn01J)…

The Tyranny of Clichés

www.nationalreview.com

“In “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell says that a writer can avoid the heavy lifting of making an original or insightful argument by simply turning his pen on autopilot and fueling it with “ready made” clichés.” Interesting essay from NRO’s Jonah Goldberg on the “meaning” of “social justice”…

Read to your kids (and teach them about money)

cafehayek.com

“The latest EconTalk episode is David Owen talking about how to teach your kids about money. It’s based on his book, The First National Bank of Dad.”

‘Taxmaggedon’ Is a Real Threat

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, former Treasury Secretary John Snow writes that next year’s scheduled increases on dividends and capital gains will retard investment and derail the recovery.” Look’s like we may be “toast”…

The Dimon Principle

professional.wsj.com

Quoting from this WSJ article, “It’s worth noting that once upon a time a $2 billion banking loss was a problem for the bank, not politicians. But in the Dodd-Frank world, the biggest banks have become more or less regulated utilities. One tragedy of J.P. Morgan’s trading loss is that it will become an excuse to give regulators even more power, when what taxpayers really want is a system that ends too-big-to-fail banks, not a plan to revive them.”

Winning the News Cycle, Losing the Race

www.nytimes.com

“The Obama White House has worked to change the subject to social issues. But in a pocketbook election, it helps to focus on pocketbook anxieties.”

College Graduates Face a Long Job Hunt

professional.wsj.com

“Most graduating college students will leave school this spring without a job offer despite an uptick in hiring by on-campus recruiters.”

Disabled Americans Shrink Size of U.S. Labor Force

www.bloomberg.com

Apparently Americans are claiming Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, in record numbers. This helps to explain (at least in part) the shrinking labor force participation rate. See the Washington Post article “Jobs report shows effects of the incredible shrinking U.S. labor force” at http://wapo.st/KwK1yd; this article notes, among other things, that “If the same percentage of adults were in the workforce today as when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 11.1 percent (rather than the current 8.2% rate, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics).”

Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Gives Up U.S. Citizenship Before IPO

www.bloomberg.com

Interesting Bloomberg article about how the co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin, has renounced his American citizenship, a decision apparently motivated (at least in part) by US income tax considerations. The article notes that “Besides helping cut tax bills stemming from the Facebook, the move may also help him avoid capital gains taxes on future investments since Singapore doesn’t have a capital gains tax.”…

The FDR Lesson Obama Should Follow

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Arthur Herman writes that Roosevelt reluctantly unleashed industry to win World War II, thereby laying the groundwork for America’s economic recovery.”

Stimulus Spending Keeps Failing

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Harvard economist Robert J. Barro asks: If austerity is so terrible, how come Germany and Sweden have done so well?”

The Great Human-Rights Reversal

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger writes that the Democratic left has conceded human rights to the conservatives.”

Big &#%!ing Joker

www.nationalreview.com

Interesting article by NRO’s Jonah Goldberg about Vice President Joe Biden; particularly concerning the VP’s tiresome “…literally, not figuratively” rhetoric…

What the Greek Left Wants

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Takis Michas writes that Greece’s left wing wants no reform, but they do want to tax the rich and blackmail Germany.”

America and the Value of ‘Earned Success’

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Arthur Brooks writes that societies that enable individuals to earn rewards based on their effort and merit are happier than those that don’t.”  Quoting from this article, “All surveys show that most Americans still embrace our free enterprise system—today. The crucial test is whether the country is willing to support the hard work and policy reforms that will sustain it. The cost of failing this test will be more human than financial. In our hands is the earned success—and thus the happiness—of our children and grandchildren. The stakes in the current policy battles today are not just economic. They are moral.”

Who Shoulders the Burden?

blogs.worthpublishers.com

Here’s a short video with economist Steve Horwitz that reminds us who sends the check to the government isn’t the same as who’s actually burdened by the tax; while it is true that taxed corporations write the check, the actual incidence of corporate taxation occurs in the form of lower wages for workers and higher prices for goods and services for consumers…

Chronicle of Higher Education Fires Blogger For Challenging Seriousness of Black Studies Depts.

reason.com

Quoting from this article, “Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education… contributor Naomi Schaefer Riley has been fired for a post questioning the intellectual seriousness and validity of black studies departments.” The title of her post is “The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations” (see http://bit.ly/KGpCf9).

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

‘Fair Trade? Its Prospects as a Poverty Solution’

www.amazon.com

“Fair Trade is an enormously popular idea in Christian and secular circles alike. Who, after all, could be against fairness? Victor V. Claar, however, raises significant economic and moral questions about both the logic and economic reasoning underlying the fair trade movement. In this monograph, Claar suggests that, for all its good intentions, fair trade may not be of particular service to the poor, especially in the developing world.”

xkcd: Every Major’s Terrible

xkcd.com

Humor alert: xkcd provides us with a clever cartoon essay concerning how “Every (college) major is terrible”; he suggests that his essay be sung to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Modern Major-General’s Song” from their 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance (go to http://bit.ly/JZTXBM for a listen…); apparently someone has already taken xkcd up on his suggestion (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu1VhsNOwPU)…

Supermoon: the perigee moon of 2012

www.boston.com

Here’s the Big Picture’s photoessay about Supermoon – photos from all over the world!

Why Colleges Don’t Teach the Federalist Papers

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Peter Berkowitz writes that at America’s top schools, graduates leave without reading our most basic writings on the purpose of constitutional self-government.”  The extent to which public education as well as “higher” education has been dumbed down during the course of a generation is remarkable. I attended a rather “average” public high school back in the 70’s and recall reading the Federalist Papers as part of a required course in “Civics”…

‘Paycheck Fairness’ Will Mean a Pay Cut for Men

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Carrie Lukas writes that wage discrimination is already illegal—but so what? Get ready for another phony debate about the ‘war on women.’”

Don’t Worry (About GDP), Be Happy

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, James Bovard writes that with the economy slow and joblessness high, the feds want a new way to measure well-being.”  This is sort of the academic equivalent of “Economists Gone Wild”…

Hollande’s European Reality Check

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Matthew Kaminski writes that despite its election of a Socialist president, expect France to keep its commitment to Germanic discipline when the chips are down.”

Of Course 70% Tax Rates Are Counterproductive

professional.wsj.com

In today’s WSJ article entitled “Of Course 70% Tax Rates are Counterproductive”, Cato’s Alan Reynolds is quite critical of the Fall 2011 Diamond and Saez Journal of Economic Perspectives article entitled “The Case for a Progressive Tax: From Basic Research to Policy Recommendations” (available from http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257%2Fjep.25.4.165). It all comes down to a rather technical discussion concerning the reliability of econometric estimates of the elasticity of taxable income (ETI), which refers to the sensitivity or responsiveness of taxable income to changes in marginal tax rates. As Reynolds points out in his article, you can pretty much drive a Mack truck through the range of empirical estimates of ETI as they vary widely. If taxable income is indeed not all that sensitive to increases in marginal tax rates (Diamond and Saez claim an estimate for ETI = 0.25 in their paper), then you can obtain (as Diamond and Saez do) so-called “socially optimal” tax rates of 73%-83% on the top 1% which would raise tax revenues while having a neutral effect on overall economic growth. On the other hand, if ETI is higher than .25, then the Diamond-Saez marginal tax rate recommendations could have the exact opposite effect – i.e., they could potentially cause substantial losses in tax revenue while reducing economic growth. Reynolds notes that compared with other public finance academic studies, the Diamond-Saez ETI of 0.25 represents a “lowball” estimate. In fact, other studies indicate ETI estimates ranging from 0.62 (from a 2004 paper by Saez) to 1.99 (from a 2000 public finance book edited by Michigan economist Joel Slemrod). Selecting the midpoint of this range (1.3), the application of the Diamond-Saez methodology would then imply a substantially different policy recommendation – in that case, the so-called “socially optimal” tax rates would be more like be 33.9% for all taxes, and below 27% for the federal income tax.

After reading these articles, I am reminded of the famous quote “It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.”

To the Class of 2012

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Global View columnist Bret Stephens advises graduates: Tone down your egos, shape up your minds.”

It’s All Your Money: Taxpayers may be on hook for US Postal Service losses

www.foxnews.com

Quoting from this article, “The USPS is losing up to $25 million dollars a day. Until now, taxpayers have not been on the hook for its mounting losses, but that could be about to change. A bailout recently approved by the Senate would appropriate $34 billion in federal money.” On an annual basis, this is equivalent to a lost of more than 9 billion per year ($25,000,000 x 365 = $9,125,000,000)…

Paul Krugman and the European Austerity Myth

danieljmitchell.wordpress.com

From Cato Institute, “Notwithstanding claims by Paul Krugman and other fans of big government, government spending hasn’t been “slashed” in Europe. Which is unfortunate since that’s exactly what’s needed.”

EU Voters Nix Austerity, Though It’s Not Been Tried

news.investors.com

“Elections in France, Greece and Italy brought new political parties to power that reject budget austerity. Unfortunately, data show there’s been little austerity at all in the EU.”

Obama’s lost cause

www.washingtonpost.com

“Having lost his ability to inspire, what is Obama’s appeal?”

Paul Ryan’s Cross to Bear

online.wsj.com

Hat tip to my friend Kevin Stuart for pointing this article out… I particularly like and appreciate the following quote from this article, “…a “serious but respectful discussion” would have to concede… that conservative Republicans advancing market-oriented answers are as serious about their moral case as liberal Democrats are about theirs.”

The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition

www.youtube.com

Here’s an advance look at GM’s car of the future – The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition…

Divider in chief

www.washingtonpost.com

“Obama stirs fear and resentment to win votes.”

The War Against The Young

blogs.the-american-interest.com

“An analysis of recent jobs figures at Investor.com reveals a disturbing development: the biggest beneficiaries from the economic recovery are Boomers, while everyone else is getting the shaft.”

Julia’s Circle of Life

iowahawk.typepad.com

Here’s Iowahawk’s parody (source: http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2012/05/julias-circle-of-life.html) of the Obama-Biden campaign’s narrative entitled “The Life of Julia” (source: http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia)…

Rory Sutherland: Perspective is everything

www.ted.com

Rory’s TED Talks are highly entertaining, and they also provide important insights into behavioral economics (for more information about behavioral economics, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics)…

The Case Against the Paycheck Fairness Act

www.usnews.com

Quoting from this article, “An analysis of more than 50 peer-reviewed papers, commissioned by the (U.S.) Labor Department, found that the so-called wage gap is mostly, and perhaps entirely, an artifact of the different choices men and women make—different fields of study, different professions, different balances between home and work.”

Memo to the Youth Vote

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal’s Wonder Land column, Daniel Henninger asks: Unless they plan to be union lifers, what’s in an Obama vote for young Americans?”

Notable & Quotable

professional.wsj.com

Quoting from this article, “For the better part of 100 years, and especially in the past five, we have socialized the risks of high finance. All too often, the bankers who take risks don’t themselves bear them. By all means, let the capitalists keep the upside. But let them bear their full share of the downside.By all means, let the capitalists keep the upside. But let them bear their full share of the downside.”

‘Press 9 for More Options’

professional.wsj.com

Quoting from this article, “Putting people on hold for five or 10 or 30 minutes is the antithesis of the philosophy that the customer is king. It’s the height of rudeness. It is telling your customers: Our time is more valuable than yours, so we are going to make you wait and wait and converse with a computer. And by the way, stop rubbing salt in the wounds with the intermittent “your call is important to us,” or “you’re a valued customer,” and “we apologize for the inconvenience.” All lies.”

Pastors Call a Truce on ‘Sheep-Stealing’

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal’s Houses of Worship column, Naomi Schaefer Riley writes in Charlotte, churches are cooperating in an experiment to attract twenty-somethings.”

Who the hell is Julia and why am I paying for her whole life?

www.humanevents.com

In the article referenced below, columnist David Harsanyi writes: “What we are left with is a celebration of . . . how a woman can live her entire life by leaning on government intervention, dependency and other people’s money rather than her own initiative or hard work. It is, I’d say, implicitly un-American, in the sense that it celebrates a mindset we have–outwardly, at least–shunned.”

The ‘Crucify Them’ Presidency

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Potomac Watch columnist Kimberley Strassel writes that Al Armendariz, the EPA official who resigned in disgrace this week, was no outlier among the Obama administration’s regulators.”

College Grads Need Jobs, Not a Lower Loan Rate

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Andrew Biggs writes that young workers who enter the labor force in a recession suffer years of lower wages.”

How to Muddy Your Tracks on the Internet

www.nytimes.com

Good advice from the Personal Tech section of the New York Times… “It’s probably impossible to cloak your online activities fully, but there are steps you can take to make them harder to follow.”

Romney’s Former Bain Partner Makes a Case for Inequality

www.nytimes.com

“A former partner of Mitt Romney’s at Bain Capital argues that more income inequality is good for the economy.”

The Campus Tsunami

www.nytimes.com

“What happened to the newspaper and magazine business is about to happen to higher education: a rescrambling around the Web and online learning.”

How to define a manufacturer: Corporate tax cuts spark controversy

www.youtube.com

“President Barack Obama wants to drop the corporate tax rate from 35% to 28% and move manufacturing to a special category, with a 25% rate. Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston warns this could cause a rush of “manufacturers” looking to take advantage of the lower rate.” (Hat tip to Greg Mankiw (http://bit.ly/IYg0rC))…

The Scream’ Fetches $119.9 Million

online.wsj.com

“One of the art world’s most recognizable images, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, sold for a record $119,922,500 at auction in New York City.”

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

Obama losing rock star status with young

campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com

“Michael Barone on polls showing the Obama enthusiasm deficit among young voters.”

Can Obama Run on His Foreign-Policy Record?

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami writes that the American people may demand more than the killing of bin Laden and the hunting down of Somali pirates.”

Smackdown: Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman on the role and scope of government in the economy

www.youtube.com

“Ron Paul – “Governments aren’t suppose to run the economy, people are suppose to run the economy.” Paul Krugman – “I’m a believer in capitalism.””

A New Age for the Catholic Church in Cuba? From Survival to Planting Seeds

www.patheos.com

This posting by UNC-Chapel Hill sociologist Margarita Mooney provides a fascinating history of the Catholic Church in Cuba since the Cuban Revolution of 1959. I also highly recommend listening to the related “Research on Religion” podcast located at http://bit.ly/JCHiHd…

Forgot Algebra

xkcd.com

“It’s weird how proud people are of not learning math when the same arguments apply to learning to play music, cook, or speak a foreign language”.

Time to make a moral case for free enterprise

washingtonexaminer.com

This article is excerpted and adapted from AEI president Arthur Brooks’ book “The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise”.

Taylor on monetary and fiscal policy history

cafehayek.com

“The latest EconTalk is John Taylor giving his take on the last four decades of fiscal and monetary policy in the United States.” This non-technical, 1 hour-long presentation of the economics of fiscal and monetary policy by Stanford economist John Taylor also provides a very interesting historical narrative of the last 50 years of American economic and political history!

Sitting Out Obama

www.nationalreview.com

Quoting from this article NRO’s Victor David Hanson, “The president has investors scared stiff… the more the government seems to take over private enterprise — the car bailouts, the mortgage industry, student loans, wind and solar partnerships — the more private enterprise is frightened of being the next small guitar company or the next Chrysler creditor.”

Virginia Could Be an Energy Power—If Only Washington Would Let It

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Gov. Bob McDonnell writes that in 2010, Virginia was poised to become the first on the East Coast permitted to produce oil and natural gas offshore—then politics intervened.”

Obama and the bin Laden Bragging Rights

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey writes that it is hard to imagine Lincoln or Eisenhower claiming such credit for the heroic actions of others.”

Education Is the Key to a Healthy Economy

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, George P. Shultz and Eric A. Hanushek write that if we fail to reform K-12 schools, we’ll have slow growth and more income inequality.”

Government doesn’t give tax cuts, it takes more or less taxes

keithhennessey.com

“To make a balanced decision you need to incorporate the harm done by taking money from someone.” Interesting and informative points on the economics of tax cuts from Stanford University’s Keith Hennessey.

While Syria burns

www.washingtonpost.com

“Obama stands idly by and embarasses the nation.” The latest missive from the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer…

Chile’s Cautionary Lesson for Americans

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Americas columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes that a free economy is at risk when a demand for equality is not answered by a defense of liberty.”

Stop Telling Students to Study for Exams

chronicle.com

According to this Chronicle of Higher Education article, I should refrain from telling my students to study for their upcoming final exam, since by so doing I apparently “… communicate to students that the process of intellectual inquiry, academic exploration, and acquiring knowledge is a purely instrumental activity—designed to ensure success on the next assessment.” My bad!

The President Has a List

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Potomac Watch columnist Kimberley Strassel notes Barack Obama’s attempts to intimidate contributors to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.”

Does Government Have a Revenue or Spending Problem?

www.youtube.com

“People say the government has a debt problem. Debt is caused by deficits, which is the difference between what the government collects in tax revenue and the amount of government spending. Every time the government runs a deficit, the government debt increases. So what’s to blame: too much spending, or too little tax revenue? Economics professor Antony Davies examines the data and concludes that the root cause of the debt is too much government spending.”

The President’s Incoherent Economic ‘Philosophy’

www.nationalreview.com

“Whatever he’s for, apparently it’s not a free-market economy.” Quoting further from this article, “The key (to long-term economic growth) is to embrace a strong free-market economy with stable monetary policy, free trade, low marginal tax rates, a tight rein on government entitlement promises and regulations, and narrow deficits. The president’s plan touches on none of this. He has proposed no serious tax reform or deficit-reduction package. He is, at best, reluctant to promote free trade, for fear of offending his union base. And, on entitlements, he has taken the largest expansion in a generation and piled that on top of the unaffordable programs already on the books.”

How the Fed Favors The 1%

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Mark Spitznagel writes that the Fed doesn’t expand the money supply by dropping cash from helicopters—it does so through capital transfers to the largest banks.”

God and Man in Tennessee

www.nytimes.com

“By politicizing our faith, lawmakers are ignoring Tennessee’s true religious roots and threatening the liberties they claim to protect.”

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

Freshman Class President

online.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal argues that President Obama rocks the youth vote by socking taxpayers.”  This is an important part of the news that President Obama didn’t slowjam the other night on the Jimmy Fallon show (see http://bit.ly/Jy1VWe for the YouTube slowjam video for context)…

Congress Finally Takes on the Fed

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, George Melloan writes that the Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest rate policy has punished savers without producing a strong recovery. Two bills in Congress would rein in the central bank.”

How the Swiss ‘Debt Brake’ Tamed Government

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Daniel J. Mitchell notes government spending in Switzerland can’t increase by more than trendline tax revenue, and as a result government debt levels have fallen in the last half decade.”

The Age of Indiscretion

professional.wsj.com

“Daniel Henninger on GSA partiers in Vegas and Secret Service revelers in Cartagena make it clear that discretion is dead.”

Why Women Make Less Than Men

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal Kay Hymowitz writes that in studies from the U.S. to Sweden In studies from the U.S. to Sweden, pay discrimination can’t explain the earnings gap between women and men. Women earn less because they work fewer hours.”

Gasoline-Futures Prices Tumble 16 Cents in Last Week, Due to Market Forces

mjperry.blogspot.com

“The price of gasoline is actually being determined by market forces, specifically an increase in the supply of oil, and not by speculators.”

A Black Box in Your Car?

blogs.wsj.com

Quoting from this article, “The Senate passed a bill in March that calls for “mandatory event data recorders” (or black boxes) to be installed in all new passenger motor vehicles, starting with the 2015 models… The bill… has a privacy provision but gives the government the authority to access the black box in a number of circumstances, including court order, consent of the owner, an investigation or inspection, or to determine the need for emergency responses.”

Coursera

www.coursera.org

“We offer courses from the top universities, for free. Learn from world-class professors, watch high quality lectures, achieve mastery via interactive exercises, and collaborate with a global community of students.”  Coursera has a pretty impressive array of university courses available from places like Princeton, Stanford, University of California (Berkeley), University of Michigan, and University of Pennsylvania, on topics such as computer science, economics, finance, history, humanities, life sciences, statistics, and so forth. They’re all available for free – the only “cost” is the time required to actually sit through a course! :-)…

Obama’s Budget Means a Tax Increase on Everyone

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Glenn Hubbard writes that maintaining the president’s higher spending levels will require raising taxes for all Americans, including an 11% increase on those earning less than $200,000.”

America’s Syria Abdication

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami writes that a no-fly, no-drive zone on the border with Turkey would critically alter the terms of engagement. Everyone is waiting on Washington’s leadership.”

Wal-Mart Innocents Abroad

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Business World columnist Holman Jenkins writes about the allegations that Wal-Mart paid bribes to local bureaucrats to get permission to expand rapidly in Mexico, noting that multinationals in an unfamiliar market face a choice: Play by the local rules or change the rules…”  Coincidentally, a couple weeks ago Texas A&M finance professor Scott Lee presented a very interesting empirical paper at Baylor entitled “The Impact of Anti-Bribery Enforcement Actions on Targeted Firms” (see http://bit.ly/JAafFI); Professor Lee and his coauthors find that firms prosecuted for foreign bribery under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (which is the law that is in play in the case of Walmart) experience significant costs in terms of declines in share values.

Obama’s College Tour

reason.com

“The students and professors may be cheering on campus, but there are plenty of people in the private sector who are getting tired of paying for them.”

America’s entitlement spending problem (part 1)

keithhennessey.com

Interesting and informative exegesis of the Reports of the Social Security and Medicare Trustees (see http://1.usa.gov/hgI6Fr), from Stanford University’s Keith Hennessey…

Solyndra, Inc. and the United States Department of Energy

iowahawk.typepad.com

“Congratulations to this erstwhile “public-private partnership” for showing the rest of us how to isolate energy waste… then supersize it!”

xkcd: Approximations

xkcd.com

Nerd alert: A table of “slightly wrong” equations and identities useful for approximations from the good folks at xkcd.com; I particularly like the algorithm for estimating the world population…

The amazing stock-picking robot

newswires-americas.com

“It’s amazing the Securities and Exchange Commission would have to waste its time shutting down such an obviously fraudulent pitch like this.”

Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores

dailycaller.com

According to this article, the US Department of Labor apparently wants to ban farm kids from doing farm chores. I am glad that these “rules” weren’t in place when my father grew up on a family farm, since the experience was very formative for him and helped instill a remarkably strong work ethic which subsequently set the stage for a wonderful set of educational and work opportunities that my entire family has since enjoyed.

The Inequality Obsession

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Business World columnist Holman Jenkins asks: Why is it in America’s interest to persuade the rich to report less income?”

Natural and Forced Inequality

www.theeuropean-magazine.com

“A country’s decline begins only when initiative and excellence are no longer valued by society. The US middle class is not exploited by the free market but by the rhetoric of redistribution and fairness that has taken hold in America.” Cato’s Roger Pilon opines on the nature and consequences of “natural” and “forced” (or coerced) inequalities…

A 50-State Tax Lesson for the President

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal’s Cross Country column, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore write that over the past decade, states without an income levy have seen much higher growth than the national average. Which state will be next to abolish theirs?”

The Great California Exodus

online.wsj.com

Quoting from this article, “Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states… most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families… the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees.”

The Tragedy of Argentina

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Pierpaolo Barbieri writes that commentators on Greece are drawing all the wrong lessons from his homeland’s tragic default.”

City of Austin studying whether to end outsourcing, despite higher costs

www.statesman.com

“Austin is taking a hard look at whether the city should curtail outsourcing of municipal jobs and appears poised to go the opposite way of communities elsewhere that have turned jobs over to contractors to cut costs.” For a cautionary tale concerning unintended consequences of public policy (in this case, the possible implementation of a “living wage” policy by the Austin City Council) be sure to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ioHIlPgOS4&feature=player_embedded for a compelling story concerning how a similar initiative in our nation’s capital worked out (in this case, “insourcing” the job of escalator repair). Tip of the hat to my good friend Spencer Case for pointing this remarkable video out to me.

Gas Futures Point to Pump Relief

professional.wsj.com

“After a sizzling start to the year, gasoline futures prices are sliding, easing pressures on drivers and the U.S. economy and raising the prospect that prices at the pump could be headed lower still.” Horrors, the “speculators” who were called out recently by various and sundry politicians for driving gas prices higher apparently have changed their minds and now want gas prices to be lower! All cynicism aside, this article notes that the reason WHY gasoline futures prices have fallen 6.3% from their high for the year (reached on March 26) has everything to do with “fundamentals” in the “spot” market for oil and gas. Specifically, “… the price of crude oil that gets refined into gasoline has dropped a similar amount amid easing tension over Iran, the world’s fourth-largest oil producer.”

Why I Donated a Kidney

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Jim Sollisch writes most of us are walking around with a spare part that 90,000 people need.”  This is an inspiring story; perhaps stories like this may raise greater public awareness and interest in alleviating critical organ shortages and improving patient welfare within the constraints of the current social and legal environment; e.g., see Roth et al., “Kidney Exchange” 2004 Quarterly Journal of Economics (available from http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~aroth/papers/kidney.qje.pdf)…

Obama’s Seinfeld Strategy

professional.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal on the President’s call to hang the evil oil speculators, if anyone can find them.”

It’s 1936 All Over Again

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger writes that the Obama 2012 campaign is channeling the ghost of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Depression.”

Cracking Down on Oil Market Manipulation

www.whitehouse.gov

“President Obama announces a new series of steps to strengthen oversight over the energy markets.” 

Last Saturday marked the one year anniversary of the creation by the Obama administration of the “Financial Fraud Enforcement Working Group” (see the MSNBC article from 4/21/2011 entitled “Obama says new task force will examine gas prices”, available on the web at http://on.msnbc.com/JdlbDx). The article referenced above (entitled “Cracking Down on Oil Market Manipulation”) is from the White House blog and is dated 4/17/2012.

While the notion that “high” gas prices result from “price gouging” by a cadre of unsavory and greedy oil companies, energy traders, and speculators makes for a provocative political narrative, it’s really bad economics. As canards go, this one is particularly favored by politicians; indeed (as you can see from the time-date stamps of the April 2011 MSNBC and April 2012 White House blog articles), you can almost set your watch on these kinds of things.

I wrote a blog posting about the economics of “high” gas prices on April 23, 2011 (source: http://blog.garven.com/2011/04/23/is-gas-price-gouging-to-blame-for-high-gas-prices), and many, if not most of the points I raised in that article are as applicable today as they were then (now the geopolitical risk du jour is Iran; back then it was Libya)…

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…

Here’s a list of articles (videos) that I have been reading (viewing) lately:

Watch Bernanke’s ‘Little’ Inflation Capsize U.S.: Amity Shlaes

www.bloomberg.com

“A little is all right. That’s the message Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has been giving out recently when asked about the evidence of inflation in the U.S. recovery.”

The U.S. Is Number One

online.wsj.com

“April 1 is a date that every politician and business executive in America should circle on the calendar. That’s when Japan cuts its corporate tax rate to 36.8% from 39.5%. The United States will then hold the title of highest corporate tax rate, with average combined federal and state profit levies of 39.2%.”

How Much Is Apple Worth?

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, former hedge fund manager Andy Kessler notes that Apple, which touched $600 on Thursday, is still cheap if the company can keep up its torrid growth. If.”

Daniel Yergin: What’s Behind Rising Gas Prices?

online.wsj.com

Quoting from this article, “…election-year politics aside, the forces driving up prices at the pump are very different today than they were four years ago. In 2008, it was primarily the surge in oil consumption in emerging markets, disruptions, and a belief that the world was running short of oil (the so-called peak oil crisis). In 2012, the reason is mainly geopolitics.”

Can Britain Tolerate Christians?

online.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal’s Houses of Worship column, Anne Jolis writes that Britain’s nondiscrimination laws have become a morass of claims and counterclaims affecting everyone from British Airways to small bed-and-breakfast owners.”

Life insurance for the wealthy

money.msn.com

“Gene Simmons, (former bass player for the 70’s rock band Kiss), discusses his new venture that combines low cost loans with ways to finance life insurance policies for wealthy clients.”  Until now, I didn’t realize that Gene Simmons was into financial engineering… This CNBC video is quite interesting – Gene is all about “arbitraging the system”. Seems like a scam to me…

Book Review: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

professional.wsj.com

“Anne Jolis reviews The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines by Michael E. Mann.”

Default and the Nature of Government

professional.wsj.com

I learned a lot from reading this article, which provides an historical perspective on the market for sovereign debt. Especially chilling is Mr. Pollock’s description of European sovereign debt crisis of the 1920s in which “Americans would lend Germany money, so it could pay France and Britain, so they could pay the U.S.” Quoting further, “In addition to promoting their own debt to all possible buyers at all times, governments promoted the World War I loans to the Allies; loans to Germany in the 1920s; loans to developing countries in the 1970s, which defaulted in the 1980s; loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac until they failed; and loans to fellow governments in the European Union up to today.”

The Magician

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger writes that in this re-election year, the U.S. president is making the world and all its troubles . . . vanish.”

The Filter Bubble — What the Internet is Hiding From You

www.farnamstreetblog.com

Interesting and informative review of Elie Pariser’s new book entitled “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You” (cf. http://amzn.to/wX4kqa)…

Goldman Rejects Claims Made by Outgoing Executive

blogs.wsj.com

This is one heck of a way to quit your job – see the http://nyti.ms/x4BPoz op-ed for the GS executive’s “resignation” letter…

5 common credit card mistakes, and how to avoid them

mindyourdecisions.com

The 5 most common mistakes are: 1) not paying bills on time (28 percent of Americans); 2) spending above credit limit (15 percent of college students); 3) paying unnecessary fees (25 percent of college students paid late fee); 4) not paying the entire balance (30 to 50 percent of Americans); and 5) overlooking changes to terms of account.

Vanderbilt’s Right to Despise Christianity

www.thepublicdiscourse.com

“Vanderbilt University has decided that Christian student groups that hold traditional Christian religious views are not welcome on campus. They will no longer be recognized as valid student organizations. Vanderbilt’s reason is that such groups require that their leaders be Christian.”  This article provides an interesting and informative legal exegesis of constitutional principles based upon a case study of Vanderbilt University, with references to various Supreme Court decisions from the past century…

The Bill for ObamaLoans

professional.wsj.com

“The Wall Street Journal reports on a new study that shows 27% of student borrowers have past due balances.”

ObamaCare’s Bogus Cost Savings

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Stanford University’s Daniel P. Kessler writes about the mounting evidence that the health law won’t make care more efficient or affordable.”

Romney vs. Obama on Corporate Tax Reform

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Kevin Hassett and Glenn Hubbard write that by proposing special breaks for manufacturing, Rick Santorum follows the president’s incorrect lead and introduces a significant economic distortion.”

How Biased Is Your Media?: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast

www.freakonomics.com

This is a fascinating podcast; apparently newspaper readers tend to be more liberal than non-newspaper readers, which accounts for why newspapers are often perceived as being left leaning. Basically, (profit-maximizing) newspapers are producing the product that their readers are looking for. If in fact the news media has grown more “liberal” over time, perhaps this is more of a demand-side rather than a supply-side phenomenon…

Get your PQ | Tim Groseclose

www.timgroseclose.com

Tim Groseclose is a political science professor at UCLA; he has devised a very clever quiz for calculating one’s “Political Quotient”…

Obama’s Stimulus Helped Grow Debt, Not Economy

www.bloomberg.com

“Last week’s release of the February employment report set off the predictable partisan squabbling, with Democrats emphasizing the positive (227,000 new jobs) and Republicans the negative (the still-shrunken labor force and still-high unemployment rate).”

Why Are Gasoline Prices High (And What Can Be Done About It)?

american.com

Quoting from this article, “While U.S. policy cannot affect the world price of oil much in either the short or long term (though policies aimed at reducing instability in oil-producing regions couldn’t hurt), policymakers do have other options that might reduce the cost of gasoline, including: tax holidays at the state and federal level; strong-dollar and inflation-control policies at the Federal Reserve; and relaxation, suspension, or simplification of environmental regulations that fragment markets, increase market fragility, and boost refining costs.”

How Housing Policy Caused the Financial Crisis

www.youtube.com

In this video from Reason.tv, the AEI’s Peter Wallison “…argues that the meltdown was largely a consequence of government housing policy that underwrote unsustainable economic activity.”

California’s Greek Tragedy

professional.wsj.com

“In The Wall Street Journal, Stanford professors Michael Boskin and John Cogan write that no one should write off the Golden State, but it will take massive reforms to reverse its economic decline.”

Fear Has Vanished From the Stock Market

blogs.wsj.com

“The stock market’s so-called fear gauge is fast asleep.”  This article correctly points out that the “price” of volatility as given by the CBOE’s “Implied Volatility” index, or VIX, has become extraordinary cheap. VIX measures investor expectations of future short term stock market (S&P 500) volatility, and in early trading today, VIX is trading at around 14.7. From an historical perspective (going back to the inception of this index in January 1990), this level falls within the lowest quartile, which means that 75% of the time, investors expect future stock market volatility to be higher than it is at current levels. It is as if an “eerie” calm has fallen over the stock market. The fact that expected financial market volatility is so low should give investors everywhere pause for thought; hopefully this is not the proverbial calm before the storm…