Quote of the day

"I told my husband that "lying" was an unfairly strong word to use about Obama's discussion of Buffett and his secretary's tax rates. That was back when we thought she was making $200K+. But since it turns out she makes $60K, I think "lying" is putting it mildly. (See the end of this post by +Megan McArdle )."

- Virginia Postrel

While the figures are almost guaranteed to be bogus (to be fair, unless his secretary convinced WB to do his taxes for him, WB seems unlikely to have exact figures), the fact remains that WB probably had a lower effective tax rate (but much higher tax PAYMENTS) than his secretary. Whether that is a bad thing or not is not obvious though. The very wealthy still have the option to leave a country, and in a sense countries are competing for them. I believe there was a time when a lot of the English rock stars found it pointless to live in England.

Quote of the day

If Moses showed up as a Republican candidate you'd get headlines like:

"How many drowned during that Red Sea crossing? Cover up?"
or
"Mana from Heaven laced with deadly preservatives"

- Chucklepants

Quote of the day

Cribbed from The Economist:

Inspiration for the € symbol itself came from the Greek epsilon (Є) – a reference to the cradle of European civilisation – and the first letter of the word Europe, crossed by two parallel lines to ‘certify’ the stability of the euro.

Quote of the day

Basically, we don't have any macro models that really work, in the sense that models "work" in biology or meteorology. Often, therefore the measure of a good theory is whether itseems to point us in the direction of models that might work someday.
 Noahpinion

Quote of the day

"I conclude that economics is not yet a science.  Economics is most like a science when people do not care about the outcome of the argument."
- Tyler Cowen

Liberatarianism (or Liberaltarianism) is actually doing well?

It doesn't usually feel that way, especially when you look at poll results, but a good case is actually made here.

Now I think that a lot of gains have been made that are actually being lost, but I suppose one should not forget the gains.

HT MR

Monkey business...

I thought I blogged this before, but it looks like I was only intending to.  I mentioned at a party today a study in which economists found similar behavior to ours in monkeys - areas in which monkeys are not only as irrational as we are in our decisions, they are actually irrational in the same way.

Laurie Santos describes the study in this talk here.  Of course, in order to study how monkeys use money, first they have to be taught to use money in the first place.  And once monkeys understand the value of money, they engage in thievery (as described in the talk above) and even prostitution.

If you don't want to watch the whole video, the Freakonomics guys describe the same experiment here, including:

Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys' true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)

Quote of the day

Unfortunately for the atmosphere, environmentalists stopped carbon-free nuclear power cold in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States and Europe (except for France, which fortunately responded to the '73 oil crisis by building a power grid that was quickly 80 percent nuclear).  Greens caused gigatons of carbon dioxide to enter the atmosphere from the coal and gas burning that went ahead instead of nuclear.  I was part of that, too, and I apologize.

--- Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

How would you like it if your spouse bought THIS?

Another great "Markets in Everything" post from MR.

Hating BP "before it was cool"

Katherine Mangu-Ward gloats a bit here, about an article she wrote in 2006:

For an example of a company apparently trying to single-handedly save the planet through expensive public relations alone, one needn't look farther than the corporate darling of serious environmentalists and greenish consumers alike: BP

BP is first among many companies that have opted to do their environmental penance in the glare of the spotlight. British Petroleum (recently rechristened BP, following KFC's model in removing unsavory words from its brand name) has been much ballyhooed for its commitment to the environment. Most of the ballyhooing is being done by BP itself.

A gas and oil company with $225 billion in revenue, BP is part of an industry that will keep environmental advocacy groups in business for as long at it exists. Yet these days BP is styling itself "Beyond Petroleum" and declaring that it's "thinking outside the barrel." BP's Environmental Team has crafted an elaborate advertising campaign and rebranding effort, recently expanded to the Web. Its goal: to convince the world that a company that sucks dead dinosaurs out of the earth, turns them into gasoline, and delivers that gas to SUVs can also be environmentally friendly enough to use a green and yellow sunburst (or is it a flower?) as its logo....

One might be forgiven for wondering how BP is managing to take in hundreds of billions in oil and gas revenue, apparently in its spare time.

I've never been a big fan of finding scapegoats, but in this case it seems like there was some definite negligence involved. Of course, we'd all like to think this isn't a necessary cost of our need for energy....

OK, I understand....

Courtesy of Marginal Revolution, which also points out that California is the seventh most risky debtor in the world (Venezuela, Argentina, Pakistan, Greece, Ukraine and the Emirate of Dubai are even worse), explains the mathematics of CDOs so YOU can understand it, and how to give somebody crabs.

Interesting point for entrepeneurs

MR points to an item by Paul Atkins that indicated Apple Computers was considered too risky to do an IPO in some states.

A soul is a terrible thing to waste....

....but to promise it in exchange for a computer game is pretty reasonable.

The April Fool's joke made the point that nobody actually reads those online agreements. Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.

Don't try this at home!

MR always has the best links, and this one to "20 Homemade Things That Shouldn’t Be Home-Made" is well worth a look. The scaffolding and the child seat are especially cringe-inducing.

Other recent posts and links by MR include hiring an evil clown to stalk your children, porn magazines for the blind, the fact that a fat "freak" of the past who toured the world because of his size would look unexceptional today, John Cleese explaining the advantages of extremism, and a look-back at last years "hard" words from the New York Times (Maybe next year's will be out soon?).

Not to mention an interesting look at the unexpected directions causality can take.

Update: And, of course, unconventional but respectable names for beer.

Quote of the day

"Applying for my first job, I realized I had to be creative in listing my few qualifications. Asked about additional schooling and training, I answered truthfully that I had spent three years in computer programming classes. I got the job. I had neglected to mention that I took the same course for three years before I passed."
- Chi Flat Iron

Best idea EVER.....

Marginal Revolution points out the service every man should have...appropriately enough called Manpacks.

Yes, you too can have socks and underwear delivered to you on a regular schedule now, to avoid that all-too-familiar nothing-in-the-drawer-without-holes-in-it syndrome.

The question is: now that this is available, will men continue to get married?

Health R&D

Interesting graph suggesting our non-military government research spending is VERY heavy on health compared to that of other countries.

Hagging in the Marriage Market

This post modeling how a small change in sex ratios (20:20 -> 19:20) can have large effects on what people might do to hook up is interesting, even though I'm pretty sure lifetime companion decisions aren't actually made that way.

Although I'm not sure the way we do it actually gives better results.

A Christmas Carol on the Defense

Finally somebody thinks to defend poor Scrooge.

HT Volokh Conspiracy

Quote of the day

Every industry or occupation that has enough political power to utilize the state will seek to control entry - Stigler