Well if so (something I’m not asserting), it’s a Republican spending problem: Economist’s View: Per Capita Government Spending by President. Cross-posted at Asymptosis.

Jonathan Haidt reports an interesting experimental result: Two three-year-olds walk up to a marble-delivery machine that has two bins. Each stands in front of one bin. Three scenarios: 1. One bin has three marbles in it, the other has one: the winner is unlikely to share to equalize the takings. 2. There are two ropes […]

My last post prompted me to revisit one from last May that I thought Bears might appreciate. For your delectation: Conservatives love to point out that our employer-based health insurance system is a result of wage controls under FDR. Since employers weren’t able to attract workers with higher wages, they started offering benefits instead — notably […]

Or: You Just Can’t Make This Shit Up “Health Care Costs Put U.S. at Significant Disadvantage Compared with Global Competitors” I’ll let you read the details, but short story: Whodathunkit? And what do they recommend? Creating greater consumer value in the health care marketplace by using health information technology and empowering consumers with more information […]

Or: Even a Stopped Clock is Right, Eventually For quite a while I’ve been explaining the rabid, frantic vehemence of tea partiers and Republicans in general with a single visualization: They’ve got their backs against the seawall, and a massive, overwhelming demographic tidal wave is looming over them. The terror that situation provokes among old, […]

Anti-taxers love to haul out the legendary napkin-inscribed Laffer curve to demonstrate that lower taxes would yield more government revenue. But this ploy only works because they assume that we’re at or past the high point — that higher taxes would move us down the right slope. (Note the cross-marks-the-spot in the image here?) But […]

I did a couple of posts a while back asking (and concluding) what would result from the Fed ending their interest on reserves policies. (Not suggesting they do so — just wondering what the effects of that one change would be.) I got a lot of good answers and discussion, but nobody mentioned the very […]

Poking around in FRED while thinking about money created by banks and by government, I came up with the following graph, which I found to be pretty eye-popping: Federal Debt Held by the Public as a Percentage of Total Credit Market Debt Owed That’s a pretty profound secular shift. But far from delivering any obvious […]

Via Chris Mooney to Digby to Krugman then me — this remarkable item from a Pew report: College-educated Republicans are more likely to deny scientific reality. They don’t spend their time in college (or life) trying to learn how the world works; they spend it learning how to mine, harvest, cherry-pick, and twist any “facts” […]

I’ll just share two of these. HT Yoram Bauman.   via 14 Ways an Economist Says I Love You. Cross-posted at Asymptosis.