Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Crony Capitalism

Teabagger and maybe Trump nominee for something (hopefully other than the Sec. of the VA), Sarah Palin slams Trump and Pence in a Randian manner on bailing out Carrier and Carrier workers calling it as an intrusion on free enterprise. Afterwards she gushes; “I am ecstatic for Carrier employees! Their bosses just decided to keep […]

Taking the CEO Salary Fight Local

Portland, Oregon’s government will be the first to test the legislative waters on excessive CEO pay by companies if passed the city board December 7, 2016. If the pay of a CEO exceeds 100 times of what a typical company employee makes, a surtax will be assessed the corporation. More than 500 corporations do enough […]

Wall Street CEO Bonus Loophole

Sarah Anderson at Institute for Policy Studies writes about how the 1993 reform to rein in runaway CEO pay by capping tax deductions of executive compensation at $1 million created a loophole as it did not apply to stock options and other performance pay methods. More-performance-measured-income to executives paid out, the lower the company income […]

How Does Diversity Affect Economic Growth?  A Look at Data on Immigration, Tax Rates and Real GDP per Capita

Authored by Mike Kimel In this post, I will explain the annualized growth rate in real GDP per capita using tax rates and the percentage of the population that is foreign born using data for the United States.  The data shows the following: A. the tax rate that maximizes economic growth is higher than you […]

On the Malleability of Cultural Traits – a Look at Irish-British and German-Americans

Authored by Mike Kimel The way the immigration process was structured from 1921 to 1965, 70% of immigrants to the US came from Britain, Germany and Ireland.  In a recent post I noted that the proportion of great writers to scientists in Ireland tended to be a lot higher than for Britain and Germany.  I […]

 “Wrestling With Racism – Are These Questions Racist?”

Authored by Mike Kimel Here’s a story widely reported in England from earlier this year: A black former soldier is suing the Ministry of Defence after he was injured when his hands were exposed to temperatures of -30C during training. Abdoulie Bojang, 30, is suing for £200,000 after he suffered career-ending injuries when he was […]

Punctuality Today v. GDP per Capita Tomorrow; A Look at a Few Countries

Authored by Mike Kimel In this post, I want to demonstrate the importance of a specific cultural trait, namely punctuality, on the economy.  The difficulty, of course, is coming up with a good measure of punctuality, and in particular, one that isn’t regularly gamed. Digging around, I found a paper entitled The Pace of Life […]