by Noni Mausa I was listening to an interesting debate tonight before an audience of Canadians on the CBC radio show “Ideas” which discussed which president, R or D, would give rise to a safer world. Link here: (http://www.munkdebates.com/) The first speaker, Charles Krauthammer, lost me in the first minute or two with this stunning […]

by DolB After reading Tom Bozzo’s post via Vtcodger, I was inspired by the comments about bad management. I’m not confident that the issue of the Big 3 management is the result of stupidity as much as it is from philosophy. Part of the bitching of the Big 3 in the first crisis was do […]

by robertdfeinman Non-Adiabatic Economics by robertdfeinman, continuing the discussion of economics as a science from here and here. Most economic theories assume that the system under consideration is stable or is, at least, tending toward a stable state. I’m going to make an analogy with thermodynamics. The situation I have in mind is one of […]

by spencer Yesterday I was in line at the grocery store behind a woman buying a weeks supply for her family.Nothing unusual about that, but she had brought her own bags so she would not be using plastic and/or paper sacks that would be thrown away after one use. She had about a half dozen […]

by rdan The world’s remaining accessible fresh-water supplies are divided among industry (20 percent), agriculture (70 percent), and domestic use (10 percent), according to the United Nations. Meanwhile, fresh-water consumption worldwide has more than doubled since World War II to nearly 4,000 cubic kilometers annually and set to rise another 25 percent by 2030, says […]

Well this is even less of an economics post than XV and in thinking on this the last couple days I realized I didn’t have a firm enough grip on the historical particulars to make it as definitive as I wanted. But still the concept is important and I could use some feedback so here […]

Lifted from comments cactus style by Reader Stuart Levine continued from the post on Mankiw and corporate taxes here and here: Mankiw relies on “[A] 2006 study [by] the economist William C. Randolph of the Congressional Budget Office [who] estimated who wins and who loses from this tax. He concluded that ‘domestic labor bears slightly […]

Reuters reports: Newly diagnosed cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among U.S. troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan surged 46.4 percent in 2007, bringing the five-year total to nearly 40,000, according to U.S. military data released on Tuesday. The statistics, released by the Army, showed the number of new PTSD cases formally diagnosed at U.S. military […]

Reader sammy sends George Will: Title: Carbon cap and trade, good idea? Bad Idea? Here is the “con” case from George Will via The Washington Post: An unprecedentedly radical government grab for control of the American economy will be debated this week when the Senate considers saving the planet by means of a cap-and-trade system […]

Lifted directly from comments by cactus from the open thread: Economics is not a science. Physics wouldn’t be a science either if esteemed members of that profession who got prestigious jobs running the country were willing to make statements that contradict all known facts. But here’s the thing – if the administration’s position is that […]