Broback's Blog

Let me open by saying I am an “old” (52) white guy, and if you live in a state that rigidly enforces age discrimination laws you probably think twice about hiring my ilk, and I don’t blame you. Thanks to the legislation put in place the incentives are stacked against me. One of the essential […]

[Read more →]

Most of my friends have patiently endured through my ongoing diatribes where I express dissent with the local politicians and misc. authoritarians who cheerfully embrace fees, taxes, and polices that all conspire to force the less financially fortunate from their cars. “Mobility Apartheid” has been my catch-phrase in these dialogs. I didn’t realize how the […]

[Read more →]

I know a real, live, person who used to enthusiastically offer up this jaw-dropping statement. (Really.) It came to mind immediately when I watched this high-I.Q., Harvard-educated scribbler essentially make the same (tearful) assertion in the clip below. Scroll to about 15 seconds from the end to see what I mean. While I believe that […]

[Read more →]

My friend Steve finds a good quote from Einstein. I’ve been cataloging many of the professor’s statements over the years, as they are useful when illustrating the profound limitations of “book smarts” — but had not run across this one. It’s a keeper: “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” My […]

[Read more →]

There’s a lot of discussion in the blogsphere regarding how Keynesian stimulus is proving to be politically impossible. They assertion is Keynesianism would work great, if only we had enough political courage to do it right. (“right” meaning spend WAY more than a measly 2.8 trillion.) Krugman says (and Christina Romer agrees) that we just […]

[Read more →]

Can anyone help me? I have been feeling bad about how people who defined themselves as “Progressive” and how they did so poorly on this test of “economic enlightenment.” Questions and results from the related survey are presented below. I would assert that the survey was unfair as it tested what most would call “mainstream” […]

[Read more →]

One of my most favorite — and little-known — services for staying on top of the what’s being tweeted is cloud.li. It’s great for discovering prominent hashtags and emerging trends related to any topic. Just type in a phrase, and it provides a list of keywords and terms commonly used in conjunction with that phrase. […]

[Read more →]

Not that the “What Me Worry” politicians will notice, but the march toward the inevitable, responsible, inexpensive rebuild-in-place scenario advocated by many (the one idea perpetually ignored by the politicians) seems to continue its progress. Washington Policy Blog: Gas Tax Revenues “clearly overestimated” Over the last few years, these forecasts had shown revenue was far […]

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

Sat next to a very nice and talented artiste/wordsmith at dinner tonight. In addition, this person was also a big fan of Michael Moore. As one could expect, the usual paradoxical inverse relationship between hours spent in academic/formal study of Macroeconomic theory and strength/rigidity of position on optimal resource allocation shone brightly. As one could […]

[Read more →]