by Michael Halasy Medical Malpractice Reform: Truth in Advertising Needed (Part Two of Three) So in the first article, we discussed the historical implications of tort reform by examining Texas. The take home message being that tort reform failed to curb health care spending, and/or control costs (outside of malpractice premiums which did fall). Proponents […]

by run 75441 Are Wisconsin Public Employees Over-Compensated? Conclusion: Wisconsin public employees are not overpaid: The earnings equation estimates indicate that state and local government employees in Wisconsin are not overpaid. Rather, local and state public employees are undercompensated. When we make comparisons controlling for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, […]

by Mike Kimel Going Galt in 2011 – I Guess Atlas Shrugs Was Rightcrossposted at the Presimetrics blog A couple years ago, there was a small spate of commentary of folks by conservatives and libertarians about how, if the Bush tax cuts weren’t renewed, we’d see a bunch of highly productive people going Galt. In […]

Have you heard about 16.896? “…with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state.” Who knew behind the scenes it was also power plants? From rortybomb at the link above: The fight in Wisconsin is over Governor Walker’s 144-page Budget Repair Bill. […]

by Linda Beale Corporate Taxes from the AEI perspective–the AEI report gets an Fcrossposted with Ataxingmatter [edited to correct typos and add link to CTJ and Leonhardt articles 2/19pm] Kevin Hassett, an economic grunt at the American Enterprise Institute and frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal op-ed pages, prepared a report for the institute […]

Health care thought for a cold day: If members of Congress feel so strongly about not doing anything about health care costs, perhaps we should stop providing them with health insurance. Let’s credit their pay for the amount that has been paid by the taxpayers, and let them try to buy health insurance in the […]

Peter Dorman writes at Econospeak about economics insulated from the harsh light of day and evaluation of usefulness: The Embarrassment Known as the Value of a Statistical Life Some economic ideas thrive only in the darkness: they are simply too weird and half-baked to withstand public scrutiny. Perhaps no concept better exemplifies this than the […]

by Linda Beale GOP deficit-reduction hype used in ideological “values” war?crossposted with Ataxingmatter There is concerted effort to portray Social Security as ruining the country by being a significant cause of the current deficit , and this is not accidental.  Social Security has been funded by payroll taxes that are supposed to be dedicated to […]

by Mike Kimel A Critique of Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation, by way of Alex Tabarrok’s Criticism of Keynesian Politics Cross posted at the Presimetrics blog Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen are libertarian professors from George Mason University who post at the very popular Marginal Revolution blog. I often don’t agree with what they write, […]

This letter via Counterpunch to the Deficit Commission makes a clear statement on broad issues of accountability for the DoD, our contracting system, and the huge drain on our resources. Reading the whole letter points to examples of problems, and how the current system has reached and will reach unsustainable levels of spending. We are […]