Peter Singer: The reason is that we are not good at protecting ourselves against very small risks of disaster. Each time we get into a car, the chance that we will be involved in an accident serious enough to cause injury, if we are not wearing a seat belt, is very small. Nevertheless, given the […]
This is a picture of the beaver pond behind my old family home in western Massachusetts: You can’t tell from the picture, but the pond is at least a mile long and 1/4 mile wide, I think considerably bigger. The land under the pond had been farmed and then forested before being flooded by beavers. […]
The American Rescue Plan included a fully refundable child tax credit. The credit provides $3,600 per year for children under 6, and $3,000 per year for children between 6 and 17. The credit is paid out monthly, and slowly phases out for single parents who earn more than $112,500 and married couples earning more than […]
It is an unfortunate fact that many think tanks funded by conservative plutocrats and nominally devoted to spreading free-market ideas actively foster the politics of white grievance. I believe the evidence for this claim is quite strong, but it is not always immediately obvious that this is happening. Classical liberals and libertarians generally do not […]
Ross Douthat is evidently having trouble filling his column quota. Or maybe he’s just confused about the role of public intellectuals and the nature of rational decision making. In two recent columns, Douthat suggests that Democrats are excessively worried about Republican attacks on voting and election and should just chill out. He defends this “what, […]
Josh Marshall nails it (paywalled, but here’s part of his argument): Published reports suggest – and it is no surprise that this is the case – that the DOJ investigations are not looking deeply into the causes of the January 6th insurrection, causes which are inherently political and tied to numerous public officials and electoral politics. They’re […]
I assume/hope there’s a non-scary answer to this question, but I don’t have time to figure it out, so I’ll just throw it out here . . . From the NYT today: How can cases and deaths have declined by the same amount since January, given that older and more vulnerable people have been disproportionately […]
How should we grade our collective response to the covid pandemic? What lessons should we draw for the future? I believe that our response was poor. To see why, just imagine where we would be today if effective vaccines had not been developed. Our current strategy of moderate social distancing, intermittent partial lockdowns, and economic […]
Unfortunately, carbon pricing does not seem to be on the agenda of either the Biden administration or progressive advocates of an aggressive policy response to climate change. In part this neglect reflects ideological bias against market-based approaches to regulation and in favor of methods that are more direct in their effects. But it also reflects […]
Let me follow up briefly on my post from yesterday on vaccine hesitancy. Demeaning people is the first step towards ignoring their interests or even persecuting them. Jason Brennan urges us to ignore the welfare of the unvaxxed by painting a picture of them as moral terrorists or extortionists. He holds them responsible for their […]