Tag Archives: Featured Stories

A repost of a Bruce Webb take on Social Security and what happens if the Trust Funds go to zero. This is from 2015 and as you know, not much has been done. In one respect, maybe nothing should be done as long as it does not become a major crisis. By that I mean, we should be sure our actions are not over-zealous in solution. Do enough to stabilize it for the future as Dale Coberly and Bruce Webb proposed with the Northwest Plan. The timely is now...

Background Assumption #1: Voting is an affirmative action. You have to be willing to do it. When I say, “if it’s raining, I’m not going to waste my time voting for Joe Biden and Tammy Murphy,” it will not change the outcome of the Presidential or, probably, even the New Jersey Senate election. But the turnout will be lower than a sunny day would be. Similarly, “if it’s only drizzling, I’ll probably vote for Andy Kim, at which point I might as...

I took Algebra I in 8th grade. Algebra I and typing were the two classes I took in junior high that I can say I have used regularly for the rest of my life (so far).In the school system I was in, there was tracking. Some kids got to take 8th grade Algebra I. The rest took regular math. The ones who took Algebra I in 8th took Geometry in 9th, Algebra II and Trig in 10th, advanced pre-calculus in 11th and Calculus in 12th. I got off that bus after 10th...

Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum takes on Paul Krugman over his assertion that small-town America is aggrieved because the working-age men are more likely to be unemployed than their metropolitan counterparts. As usual, Kevin brings the charts and numbers to show that while Krugman isn’t wrong, the differences are small and don’t explain “white rural rage.” Kevin notes that while pay is less in rural areas, the difference is mostly compensated...

“Using the Joint European Torus (JET) — a huge, donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak — the scientists sustained a record 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel. That’s enough to power roughly 12,000 households for the same amount of time.”Progress, yes, but incremental.“And myriad challenges remain. Khan points out that the team used more energy to carry out the experiment than it generated, for...

(Not) Thinking About Money, Wealth Economics, Steve Roth (substack.com) It’s tempting to abolish the word entirely. Reprint from Wealth Economics. J.W. Mason offers a bang-up post on economists’ thinking about “money,” how economists have thought and talked about it over decades and centuries. There’s even a class syllabus and reading list from his class for his John Jay MA econ students. It’s a very deep dive. (“Thirteen Ways of Looking at...

Haley  Nikki Haley is staying in the race for the Republican nomination, at least for now.    Why?  If she only cares about becoming president, this year could be her best shot even with Trump way ahead of her in the polls.  Trump may be convicted or become incapacitated, and she could win the nomination as the last woman standing.  It is far from clear her political brand will be in better shape with Republican primary voters 4 years from...

By “here” I refer to my home town Washington DC. The answer, obviously, is that Binyamin Netanyahu is in charge there. At least he has much more influence over US Federal Government spending than the guy wincing in the photo. Both Biden and Netanyahu know that Netanyahu has much more support in the US Congress than Biden and both understand that Congress can control spending, sometimes by over riding vetos. Biden has the impossible task of...

This post is long and flirts with the 10% fair use limit, but I’ll try to keep under it.Dave Kellogg has a blog post up from a few days ago comparing the messaging of Team Trump vs Team Biden. Read the whole thing, but here are some core points. Kellogg distills the Democratic two-word message to “Save Democracy” and the GOP two-word message to “Save America.”In short: • “Republicans want to save the country, Democrats want to save an idea. Saving...

There is so much to say about the Claudine Gay affair, anti-semitism at Harvard, and Harvard’s response to recent student protests that I have opted to say nothing.  But over at Café Hayek, libertarian economist Donald Boudreaux asks an interesting question: How does Claudine Gay’s “my truth” differ from Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts”? It seems to me that these ‘concepts’ share much with each other and that each is equally unwarranted. ...