23 March 2018

How Real Estate Has Made Trump's Economic Policies so Dangerous

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Probably the most insidious way that real estate has shaped  T rump's  mind is that it has given him a zero-sum worldview. An acre ...
14 March 2018

The Libertarian Philosophy - A Truth (often ignored) and a Misconception (largely embraced)

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Libertarians advocate one thing that seems to me obviously right (but is often resisted) and another obviously wrong (but nonetheless wins t...
08 March 2018

Open vs. Closed Economy

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The San Diego Union Tribune was gracious enough to let me make an argument for an open economy here: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/op...
07 March 2018

In Defense of Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson was brilliant and visionary, a man who did as much as anyone to institutionalize the potential of the Enlightenment. Withou...

How Apps, Entrepreneurship and a Steady Boom Have Brought Unemployment Claims to an All-Time Low

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The Facts The 4-week moving average of initial unemployment claims is at an all-time low. In raw numbers, it was actually lower in 1969...
28 February 2018

The Terribly Boring Headline That Won't Generate Any Outrage or Clicks: Income Mobility in the US is Not So Bad

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The economist Raj Chetty of Stanford was in San Diego 27 February talking about income mobility. He's exploring a really important topic...
18 February 2018

A Failure of Empathy and the Preposterous Notion of 197 Shootings in Legislatures in the First 18 Years of This Century

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"We all are born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're k...
16 February 2018

The Switch That Triggered the Rise of the West (Can Also Be Switched Off)

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"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progres...
06 February 2018

Shout it - Yellen was Flawless at the Fed (Hopefully It Won't Be Another Century Before Another Woman is Fed Chair)

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This Monday was our first day with Janet Yellen as Fed Chair in four years. The market marked her departure with the biggest ever one day dr...
01 February 2018

General Intelligence and General Stupidity - Smart People Know the Difference

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As an old guy I've given up on the notion of meeting someone who is brilliant. So, if I'm told that someone is brilliant, I want to ...
22 January 2018

The Trick is Finding Someone Whose Unusual Interest in Dwarfs Has Forced Them to Sell Their Art

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From the early 1500s to early 1600s, the English destroyed a lot of art. Perhaps as much as 98% of their paintings and statues as part of t...
05 January 2018

The Real Culprits in the Trump Presidency

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We've watched a year of extreme incompetence in Trump's presidency. Not only does he not understand trade or war or trade wars or an...
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29 December 2017

Why You Should Never Loan Money to - or Vote for - Someone Who Invokes God

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I just finished Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's fascinating book, Everybody Lies . One of the ideas behind this is that we are more likely to...
23 December 2017

Trying to Make Sense of Why Republicans Can't Make Sense of Deficits

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It's not clear whether Republicans have given up on caring about the economy or if their ideology blinds them to what even sharp high sc...
19 December 2017

Returns Without Risk - The Republicans Vision of Banking Reform And How It Makes Recessions Worse

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Matt Yglesias at Vox reports on the extent to which Republicans are changing laws to profit them and their donors. In the midst of this lis...