Live link is here. Blog posts to follow on my usual schedule.

  Sandwichman at Econospeak offers a look at a piece of history: “Of Property” and the Mercantilist Fallacy “Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his […]

It’s official: President Obama has proposed cutting Social Security by replacing the program’s current inflation adjustment with the stingier “chained” Consumer Price Index. As I’ve discussed before, this risks undoing all the progress made against senior poverty since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. 25% of seniors were poor according to official poverty […]

I step out of the dark bathroom. (Really, the light is out and we’re around 26,000 feet—pretty certain it’s the even numbers if you’re flying West.) Wandering back to my seat, I see multiple people using electronic devices, including one gentleman who is listening to an album of Iggy Pop’s.  I know this because his […]

Center for Effective Government  presents side by side budget comparisons: Click image to see full-size PDF chart and analysis A larger image is also available (JPG format)

Greg Mankiw suggests a part of the new budget proposed by President Obama affects 401k and IRA accounts. Some comment in general retirement accounts from AB starts here. Apparently, President Obama’s budget is going to include some kind of penalty for people who have accumulated more than $3 million in retirement accounts.  The details are not […]

The title should actually be “How Dollar Bills Move,” but it’s not as alliterative. A fascinating item on the work of Dirk Brockmann, who’s used WheresGeorge.com to map the movement of dollar bills, and the boundaries over which they’re least likely to cross: I have no idea what to do with this, or whether it […]

Steve Randy Waldman and Scott Sumner (plus many others, linked from Steve’s post) wade in on notions of saving and investment. (I’m endlessly amazed that the best econothinkers on the web — add Nick Rowe, Andy Harless, David Beckworth, Josh Mason, and many others to the list — constantly feel the need to think, re-think, […]

Margaret Thatcher, Polarizing Right-Winger The major news media celebrated Margaret Thatcher upon her death.  They seem to praise her stubbornness and ability to move the UK to support her very conservative anti-union, pro-deregulation and privatization policies and talk of her impact on the UK.  David Brooks, a typical voice on the right who saw Thatcher […]