As taken from the Wall Street Journal September 26, 2023. If you have not been paying attention to what is happening in Alabama, this will bring you up to date. SCOTUS again rejected Alabama’s attempt to pack most of Alabama’s Black American citizenry into one congressional district. Alabama’s desires to maintain white majorities in six of its seven congressional districts. Supreme Court Rejects Alabama Bid to Scrap Black-Majority...

Income-based pricing is a bad idea, The one-handed economist, David Zetland I learned, via GS, that some Berkeley researchers have proposed [pdf] customers should pay for electricity based on their income. Thus, I would pay half of what you would pay if I made half the income you did. This is a terrible idea, IMO, but I can see how we got here, which I explain in two phases: charges related to costs (points 1-3) and charging rich people more...

from Adam Smith The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour.  The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher [economist] and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as...

Blog A decade of austerity and growing national debt: why we need to reform the OBR Strengthening the independence of the OBR does nothing to address its detrimental short-termism By Dominic Caddick 27 September 2023 Last Friday Labour announced...

‘Whose side are you on? I’m on the workers’ side.’ [embedded content]

Need to see liquidation and a build up in Barash sentiment. 

It looks as if something has gone skew-whiff with the comment box. I’ll look into it, but it may take me a while. For the moment, if you can’t get WordPress to record your name, just comment anonymously and add your name in the body. I’ll check and approve regularly. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Statistical reification — a deadly sin It would not be an exaggeration to say that many of us see academic statistics as “the sick man of science,” an alarming diagnosis in light of the central role it plays in science in general. The situation is maintained through specious and often byzantine rationales for destructive traditions, which is as expected from another human condition: Blindness to conceptual mistakes when correcting those would threaten the...

Sustainable Shift Too Little, Too Late?

Bernie Krause — Citadels [embedded content]