Archive for the 'Personal' Category

Jul30th2011

The Institute For Justice Shows Results

One of my favorite organizations is the Institute For Justice. It is an extremely successful organization that fights against the powers of the government in areas where there are little other organizations doing so. For example, there  is the licensing fight - an especially discriminatory and arbitrary arm of the government that gets little attention […]

May25th2011

Phoenix Area Bloggers?

I’ll be in the Phoenix area tomorrow and Tuesday night through Thursday morning of next week…if any bloggers would like to meet up, send me a personal email.

May7th2011

The Leftist View Of The World

Readers of my blog, especially those who comment frequently, know my good friend Jon. He’s a recent convert to the left and believes in it passionately. A common theme of his world view, and those on the left in general, is the tug of war between the rich and the poor. The powerful and the non-powerful. […]

Apr21st2011

Famous Economists Time

Years ago, I was given the opportunity to meet Milton Friedman in person. It had always been a dream of mine and a picture with him would have been something I would have cherished forever. There was only one problem: it would have cost me $10,000. Even at that price, I still considered it. When […]

Feb1st2011

The Left vs Right Economic Model (aka Europe vs United States model)

My good friend Jon asked an important question: why not prefer the European economic model vs the United States economic model? I didn’t want to bog down his comments section with a long response, so I thought I’d post my longer response here.
Basically, there are two paradigms, two “visions” of an economy. The first, is […]

Nov30th2010

In Defense Of For-Profit Colleges

One of the biggest blind spots of policymakers and pundits is the inability to take target market into account. For example, you can’t just compare the wages of employees at Hilton Hotels vs Motel 6’s and conclude that Hilton Hotels are superior because the employees are paid more. You have to take the companies vastly […]

Jul29th2010

Two Arguments In Favor Of Immigration

With the Arizona (anti-)immigration laws coming into affect soon, I have seen a lot of arguments in favor of immigration by those opposed to the Arizona laws. Most of them are either weak on economics, or miss the point completely. As a strong supporter of immigration, I thought I’d give two of my favorite arguments […]

Mar3rd2010

The Effort To Keep Ethnic Studies Professors Employed

As someone who both grew up in Compton and attends UCSD, I feel compelled to comment on the recent race relation issues UCSD is having.  As most of you have probably already heard, the whole thing started when UCSD students, outside the campus, had a “Compton Cookout”, where participants were to wear “chains, rapper-style urban […]

Feb10th2010

The Problems With Pell Grants

I admit it, I get uneasy feelings when people congratulate Obama for increasing Pell Grants. I don’t see it as the universal positive that many others do. For three reasons.
First, Pell grants are politically cheap. Increasing funding for Pell grants takes little courage and comes with no political cost. Who disagrees with more funding for […]

Jan8th2010

Marginal Difference

Related to yesterdays post, I have previously tried to explain the concept of marginal return and why, because of the already overwhelming flow of educated minorities going into social services fields, the hard sciences may be the place to make the biggest impact - if that is your end goal.
I wrote:
Second, it is inefficient. Minorities […]

Jan7th2010

More On Majors And Why Chicano Studies Is Garbage

A frequent topic of discussion in my family is what university, what major and the return to investment my sister should pursue after finishing high school. My dad is a man of modest means and is the only bread winner in a family of five - 3 children of which, have yet to pursue a […]

Jul27th2009

Limited Governments Best Friend: The CBO

Remember the Democrats claim that by empowering a new panel (the Independent Medicare Advisory Council) to recommend future spending reductions we could save several billions of dollars in healthcare costs? If this was before the creation of the CBO (1974, according to Wiki), such claims would be nearly impossible to disprove. Democrats could get away […]

Jun5th2009

The Clinton Years vs The Bush Years - A Pet Peeve I have

Casey B. Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, made a comment that he should know is disingenuous, he wrote:
the “big spending Democrat” stereotype is incorrect — government spending / GDP fell under Clinton and increased under Bush.
This comparison, used to argue that when it comes to spending there is no difference between […]

May26th2009

The Cultural Argument Against Gay Marriage

Of all the arguments against gay marriage, the religious liberties argument, the reductio absurdum argument, the better safe than sorry argument, and others, the one people have the most difficulty understanding, atleast from my experience in discussing it, is the cultural argument against gay marriage, yet it is one of the ones I find most […]

May23rd2009

Lil Hispanic Pundit

Me and my now five month old baby boy:

Picture was taken in front of the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, California.
More pictures here.

May22nd2009

The Invisible Hand vs Charity

One of the major problems I have with Chicano Studies is its overemphasis on altruistic ventures as opposed to “personal gain”. Becoming a community organizer, for example, is more encouraged than becoming an engineer. This was particularly important to me last year when my sister, being in her junior year of high school, was applying […]