by Mike Kimel I had a few posts noting that not long ago, I took a severance package from my most recent employer. Put another way, I’m now unemployed. Since then I’ve been looking for a new job. However, in recent weeks I’ve started taking consulting work, and I’m starting to lean more toward consulting. […]

In this excellent post, John Quiggin somewhat understates his claim The key passage “the same fundamental confusion I pointed out last time, trying to claim that rationality assumptions are both important and unfalsifiable.” and later at greater length “Williamson wants to have his cake and eat it. Most of the time he wants to help […]

By Rebecca Wilder This ‘Competitiveness’ Thing Is a Scam What is ‘competitiveness’? It’s an important part of the euro area leaders’ negotiated terms in the July 21st Summit announcement by the European Heads of State. The first paragraph, #4, and #11 of the announcement all refer to this issue of ‘competitiveness’: We also reaffirm our […]

by Michael Halasey Free market mechanics and healthcare… Now, I hear something all the time in my work in the health policy realm, and that is that the “free market” could lower prices. I even recently had someone approach me after I mentioned that the PPACA had resulted in an extra million people aged 18-25 […]

The lead article in the current AER is available here (gated, apparently, though the link isn’t working; h/t Tom Bozzo [on FB] and Brad DeLong; I was using the paper copy). The most interesting part so far: the authors only considered the documented costs of air pollution—not land, not water—in deriving the (embarrassingly negative) ROI […]

Brad DeLong points us to a post from The Nation on early Koch brothers and Hayek The Road to Serfdom!! Yasha Levine and Mark Ames: Charles Koch to Friedrich Hayek: Use Social Security!: [I]n early June 1973, weeks after [Charles] Koch was appointed president of the Institute for Humane Studies. Along with his brothers, Koch […]

by Mike Kimel It has been a very long time since I looked at the National Review. Apparently it is still there. Jonah Goldberg (apparently also still there) had a post that begins like this: And now let us recall the “Fable of the Shoes.” In his 1973 Libertarian Manifesto, the late Murray Rothbard argued […]

By Linda Beale Disaster Aid Disaster Averted, barely. Once again, Republicans intent on obstructing the normal operation of the federal government unless they can extract cuts to programs they don’t like (in the name of deficit reduction) applied the combination of House recalcitrance and Senate anti-majoritarian filibuster to threaten a government shutdown and siderail needed […]

Think Progress carries quotes from the Presidential contenders and election slogans The release of this plan immediately spurred the natural Republican tax apoplexy, with the GOP presidential candidates decrying tax increases as a surefire way to destroy jobs: MITT ROMNEY: President Obama’s plan to raise taxes will have a crushing impact on economic growth. Higher […]