Andrew Rosenthal points us to one of the most eye-poppingly specious arguments I’ve ever seen against high-earner taxes, from Scott Hodge at the Tax Foundation (my bold). …612,520 people renounced their New York State citizenship and moved to Florida between 2000 and 2010. They took with them nearly $20 billion in adjusted gross income, after […]

Here’s how:From Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers at Reuters, hat tip to Matt Yglesias.Cross-posted at Asymptosis.

A while back I put together a rough calc estimating what our country’s “home-work” is worth as a share of GDP, based on the idea that such work is production, and that it has every bit as much value to our lives as work that we get paid for. By that estimate (based on the […]

If you’ve ever been involved in a legal contention, like a business or personal dispute or a contested divorce, you know that the whole game pivots, ultimately, on the potential end game: what would happen if the thing went to court — even if (even because) everyone involved knows that it never will. The fact […]

I hesitate to post this while Nick Rowe is on vacation, because he’s always so generous with his replies and explanations. Here’s hoping he gets back to this. But he does get me thinking. I’ve spent several days re-reading and pondering his Identity Economics post and (his) related others, which post begins [my brackets]: Here […]

Paul Krugman rightly attacked the confidence fairy again yesterday — claiming that the unemployment of the 80s following Volcker’s tightening proves that Fed credibility doesn’t help — but I think he misfires this time. Here’s what I sed over there, with some tweaks: To be fair, Paul, isn’t the point here that in 1980 the […]

First a recap: Philip Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgment was a groundbreaking look at whether political experts really are expert, as judged by their success at making predictions. His overall conclusion: they aren’t. But (lifted from a previous post): …among the experts, ”foxes” — those who in Nicholas Kristof’s words are “are more cautious, more centrist, […]

Now that the OECD has updated their GDP data for 2010, I thought I should revisit the question I asked a few years ago: Who’s growing faster? The U.S. or Europe? The answer’s the same as it was then: it’s a dead heat. As I pointed out in that previous post, people love to cherry-pick […]

I’m devastated that Christian Rudder hasn’t posted to the OKTrends blog for more than a year.* He did statistical analysis of the monstrous database of OK Cupid — a dating site that asks participants hundreds of often odd and quirky questions about themselves — to draw out conclusions about various, sundry, and often fascinating topics. […]

You know things are weird when pretty strongly right-of-center economists are proposing ideas first touted by MMT econocranks (yes, beowulf, I’m talking about you) to bring about the Obama breakout moment that progressives (despairingly) dream of at night. The world is a very strange place. And people argue with Steve Randy Waldman when he says […]