“On the historical evidence, practically the only time the federal government runs a surplus is when one party holds Congress and the other the White House. While it is probably true that Obama is, as one commenter put it, not a Kenyan but a Swede, that his ideal is to make the U.S. into something […]
Archive for the 'ModernPolitics' Category
Jan16th2012
“Conservatives will also find that Europe is much less open to immigration than the United States, that Europe generally has much lighter taxation of investment income, that few European countries uphold American-style strong separation of church and state, that European countries generally afford accused criminals fewer procedural rights, and that Europe has much less in […]
Jan4th2012
University Of Chicago economics professor, and Paul Krugman nemisis, John Cochrane is now blogging. For those interested, add his blog to your blogroll.
Jan3rd2012
Glenn Greenwald nails it:
The parallel reality — the undeniable fact — is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul: and among the major GOP candidates, only by Ron Paul. For that reason, Paul’s candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions […]
Dec13th2011
“Even among recipients of bachelor’s degrees, 90 percent manage to graduate with less than $40,000 of debt. What happened to the other 10 percent is no particular mystery: they are less likely to come from wealthy families, but they attended pricier schools and paid for more years of tuition (see chart below). Compared with other […]
Dec7th2011
Megan McArdle On Fiscal Stimulus
Published by in Economics, Fiscal Stimulus and ModernPolitics. 0 CommentsMcArdle makes a decent case to be cautious about fiscal stimulus here:
Starts to pick up at the 3 min mark.
Nov16th2011
“As I pointed out just yesterday, many Democrats not only passively acquiesce to Obama’s continuation of core Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, but enthusiastically cheer it as proof that they, too, can be Tough and Strong (manly virtues demonstrated by how many human beings their leader kills from afar). So here you […]
Oct19th2011
The best explanation of why this economic recovery is both taking so long and especially affecting those at the lower end of the economic spectrum was given by economist Bryan Caplan who I quote in full here:
Nominal wages rarely fall - even when there’s high unemployment. Part of the reason is regulation, of course. […]
Oct18th2011
For the record, I agree with every single point David Frum makes here against Republicans in general:
On the most urgent economic issue of the day – recovery from the Great Recession – the Republican consensus is seriously wrong.
It is wrong in its call for monetary tightening.
It is wrong to demand immediate debt reduction rather than wait […]
Oct10th2011
I gotta be honest, I haven’t been following the presidential candidates for 2012 as closely as I’d like, but I also gotta say, this took balls on Rick Perry’s part and for that, he is my current favorite candidate for 2012:
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Sep6th2011
“Warren Buffett has persuaded 68 other billionaires to follow his example and promise to give at least half their wealth to charities. But why hasn’t Buffett proposed also that the very rich make large gifts to the federal government to offset what he considers ridiculously low taxes on their incomes and […]
Jul19th2011
The Progressive Magazine On Ha-Joon Chang’s Book
Published by in Economics, FreeTrade, General and ModernPolitics. 11 CommentsI got back from a five day trip to Chicago yesterday, and as such, was able to catch up on a lot of my magazine reading. A review that caught my attention was Amitabh Pal, of The Progressive Magazine, review of Ha-Joon Chang’s recent book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. For those […]
Jul14th2011
“I’ve written numerous times over the last year about rapidly worsening perceptions of the U.S. in the Muslim world, including a Pew poll from April finding that Egyptians view the U.S. more unfavorably now than they did during the Bush presidency. A new poll released today of six Arab nations — Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the […]
Jul13th2011
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Economics, ModernPolitics, Myths and Taxes. 2 Comments“BTW, progressives like Yglesias often point out that no matter what they say, the GOP is devoted single-mindedly to one goal, and one goal only—lower tax rates for the rich. And I have to agree that that is an obsession of many GOP economists. But then why the strange pattern of state […]
Jul12th2011
“In my opinion, mortgage loan modifications are the biggest macroeconomic mistake of the Obama Administration. I could not tell you whether the stimulus bill helped or hurt. I am skeptical that the health care bill or the Dodd-Frank bill had much effect. But I am pretty sure that I […]
Jun27th2011
“I’m visiting a friend who does due diligence for his private equity fund’s investments in various U.S. companies. As a result, he talks to businessmen every week. For many months now, he has found businessmen complaining about the Obama administration’s criminalization of various failures, many of them small, to […]
