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, […]
Jon Hammond from econographia reseached the topic of contraceptive pills on the cost aspects involved with health insurance at my request. Instead of losing real data in the comments sections on previous posts, I am posting his findings here: Here are some of the empirical findings dealing with the insurance costs and cost-savings of coverage […]
Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario writes in Making the United States More Like Greece: One of the big problems in Greece over the past decade or so is that the government was not honest with its data. Various people assisted in the matter – including Goldman Sachs with respect to some debt issues – but […]
by Rebecca WilderEuropean Daily Catch: Retail Sales Stabilizing? Today’s real retail sales gave the ECB and EU heads of state another reason to keep their fingers crossed for stability of the Euro area economy (.pdf of release). In January, volume adjusted retail sales increased 0.3% in the Euro area (EA) and broke a 4-month trend […]
Seriously. In the rambling press release that he self-styled an apology to Georgetown U. law student Sandra Fluke for calling her a slut and a prostitute, Limbaugh groused: Amazingly, when there is the slightest bit of opposition to this new welfare entitlement being created, then all of a sudden we hate women. He then explained […]
In this Forbes article, Tim Worstall says he agrees with generally available birth control, but questions why health insurance should pay for it. Specifically he says: “But I really cannot see the point of trying to have health care insurance which then covers a multitude of treatments that aren’t really insurable matters, contraception being just […]
Today we are continuing to look at the historical tax tables to see how we viewed and possibly defined rich. I introduced this idea with my post: Defining Rich III. I found a source for all sorts of historical data from the Census Bureau. You can down load it or the better way is […]
by Peter Dorman(reposted from Econospeak with author”s permission) Wealth and Antisocial Behavior: Reverse Causality? There is quite a bit of buzz about this just-prepublished article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is the abstract: Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. […]
by Linda Beale It’s Almost April so Tax Tips Are Flowering You can tell when it is getting close to the April filing deadline for individual calendar-year taxpayers. All of the major tax firms release their “handy tax tips” to entice new clients for this tax season.The American Institute of CPA’s handy tips (released Mar.1, […]
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 […]