Election Story Interlude

In contrast to Mankiw’s attitude (see cactus’s post below*), my favorite election story of the year comes from Ms. Mochi_tsuki:

So they started explaining to me what an absentee ballot is and how to fill one out. I pointed out that I’d spent 11 years of my adult life overseas and was very familiar with the process. One of them pointed to the other and said, “He’s been overseas as well. He’s a retired Admiral.” WTF?

You may know this, but by law, there are never more than about 200 Admirals in service. Really rare creatures, those. This one? Retired last month. And he’s spending his weekends working on the GOTV effort in rural Virginia.

But I guess retired Admirals don’t need the motivations that economics professors do.

*In fairness to Mankiw, he knows his numbers are b.s. The giveaway: “In a sense, putting the various pieces of the tax system together, I would be facing a marginal tax rate of 93 percent. [italics mine]” Not to mention the corporate tax free finesse, and the assumption that r=0.10, but lets sidebar those.