Broback's Blog

Just ran across this 2007 report from the Treasury Department. Combine it with this from the Red Cross and World Bank data, and we get a picture of how Americans migrate (from a global perspective) between modes of lowly relative prosperity to the heights of lavish comfort. Key extracts below. (Emphasis mine) There was considerable […]

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Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has created a revealing flow chart that perfectly captures a rant I’ve been making verbally for 20 years. I should probably print it out and carry it around with me it comes up so often. After looking at this, one might wonder why anyone invests at all.

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Goolsbee was on ABC’s “This Week” and pantomimed the European finance ministers who perpetually talk about taking action, but never do. The central example of inaction mentioned was that Greece has yet to lay off a single government employee. This example was put forth by conservative George Will (studied economics at Oxford), yet was refuted […]

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Apparently you sell a lot more Touchpads at $99 than at $499. Gee, I guess individual downward-sloping demand curves aggregate into a similarly sloping curve after all. So weird. Someone notify Steve Keen.

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This time from the Economist: On a related note, this little blast from the past.

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The Wall Street Journal reports on a study that validates what all good redistributionists know about social injustice: “Mean People Earn More.” More proof that the spoils go to the non-deserve-ing. The researchers examined “agreeableness” using self-reported survey data and found that men who measured below average on agreeableness earned about 18% more—or $9,772 more […]

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Just can’t resist. I read this from Krugman and now I can’t get the “Brave Sir Robin” tune out of my head. Update: Sigh, nothing original here. An old meme. So much for my cleverness.

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It’s pretty clear that the primary job of the government is now to distribute treats. As members of both parties know, it’s a great way to get votes. Sure beats building infrastructure and protecting property rights. Hard to believe after seeing this that some people are trying to call what ails us a “revenue problem.” […]

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UPDATE 8/8/2011: Craig Newmark ran all 50 states and was kind enough to send me the results. Bottom line is a flimsy correlation 0.211, which is short of statistical significance. We also get an R-squared figure of .045 which is “not too impressive.” While it ‘aint zero, I gotta come up with something better than […]

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I’ve blogged several times about the Gallup Presidential Center site, where viewers can compare the approval levels of any/all post_WW2 presidents for the same point in their presidency. The parallels between Reagan and Obama are striking (both had to contend with really bad economies, and the resulting bad poll numbers) — yet their philosophies toward […]

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