The NYT reports: IN the push to free the auto industry from its dependence on oil, all kinds of alternatives are being tried. Consider now the refreshing concept of cars that run on air. The idea sounds simple: compress air and release it to operate a piston engine. But the execution is difficult, and in […]

HOW TO THINK LIKE A NON PARTISAN EXPERTby coberly Suppose you take your somewhat nerdish 13 year old son out for adrive. You pull gently away from the stop light, and your son, whohas been doing some reading, remarks that gas engines are not veryefficient at low speeds. In fact, at ten miles per hour […]

Glancing through the CBO survey that only checked one side of the ledger, and therefore made Greg Mankiw happy, I came across the data on Corporate Taxes paid, by Quintile of Income. Now, there has been a groundswell of declarations that people aren’t “leaving the job market”; instead, they are supposedly being “entrepreneurs,” starting their […]

Afferent Input has become Dr. Afferent Input, PhD as of last Wednesday. In two weeks he will be moving to Berlin, Germany, for two years. He has promised to open an AB office in Germany and resume posting when settled. Congratulations AI.

by rdan Lawrence Lindsay talks about Social Security on CNBC Worldwide Business. CNBC narrator re-hashes propaganda lines, sort of asking but implying will run out of money, and gets unexpected answers from Lawrence.

Tom already hit this Paul Krugman column, so I’ll just put together a list: “I.R.S. lets you deduct mortgage interest from your taxable income but doesn’t let you deduct rent” But not mortgage principal. And the interest deduction still leaves an owner out of pocket for at least 65%—probably more. “[I]f the market value of […]

by reader CoRev The Greenhouse Effect. How it Works From Anthony Watts site, we have this graphic describing the heat wave length absorbtion properties of the Green House Gases (GHG). Water vapor is a far more pervasive and heat absorbant (see the above chart) GHG than any of the other GHGs. That does not imply […]

by Cactus I can’t stand baseball. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that if someone were to claim that, say, left-handed batters who refuse to swing at the first two balls that come at their direction when they’re at bat are more likely to hit home-runs than other baseball players, within a very short period […]

Andrew Biggs was Deputy Commissioner of Social Security until February, previously he was a top analyst at Cato’s Project for Social Security Privatization, currently he is doing something quite similar at AEI. He has a blog called Notes on Social Security Reform which deserves more traffic, not just because Andrew is a nice guy and […]

A new weekend begins.