economics

I guess my title a bit tongue in cheek, because despite Republicans going around calling Biden a Marxist, I don't really see any socialists getting on the airwaves. Best we get is some foreign news coverage about Bolivia or the usual countries, but that seems to be it. If there are some actual...

My wife and I were having a discussion yesterday about friends of ours who are up to their eyeballs in debt and are frantically trying to sell their house before it gets foreclosed upon. They are hoping to make a $6000 profit on the sale, after which they intend to go on a "spending spree" to...

So I just found a copy of Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith in a box in my attic. It must be my dad's or something because I have no idea where it came from. I mean, I understand it's 230 years old and possibly dated but I know it's one of the fundamental works in classical economics. I really...

Hello, everybody! I've been studying a lot of political philosophy and have combined several elements of various philosophies into one which I think is both reasonable and practical. I'd love to hear constructive criticism, so without further ado: When asked to describe Objectivism whilst...

In today's Guardian a piece about the economic crisis was illustrated with a graph of quarterly GDP data. Unfortunately, the graph doesn't seem to have been reproduced in the online version, but here is a link to the source data. Follow the links to obtain the series called IHYQ. Also get the...

Since the economy has gotten our attention, I though this would be a good topic to help us all understand a little better how our economic system is structured. Factcheck.org explains it in easy to understand language.

I'm waaaaay behind the curve when it comes to popular ideas, so I just recently read Stephen Levitt's best-selling economics book. I was fascinated! I was especially interested in his theory about Roe vs. Wade being a key factor in the plummeting crime statistics two decades later. Apparently...

In an email debate I'm having right now, I was sent the following youtube clips as evidence AGAINST Friedman and my own side (I've been asked to defend certain aspects of libertarian philosophy). To me, these videos SUPPORT Friedman's arguments, but for some reason my opponent refuses to agree...

Karl Rove would have you believe that Barack Obama is a radical leftist, seeking to enact a radical new fringe agenda while using words as "a means to hide a left-leaning agenda behind the cloak of centrist rhetoric." The reality, however, is that Obama relies on economic advice primarily from a...

Saturday, January 12, 2 - 4 pm FREE PUBLIC Michael Shermer, Ph.D. will discuss and sign "The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and other tales from evolutionary economics" National Science Foundation, Room 110 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA (see below for...

http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/what-makes-a-terrorist I'd like to add that scapegoating, in order to place the blame elsewhere on the reasons why a region has strife, is a vital component. It distracts people from looking at the real reasons why their...

The Lost War is an excellent article that reveals how futile and counterproductive the so-called "War on Drugs" is. This is not to suggest that illicit drugs or drug addiction are harmless, but rather that our punative approach to dealing with them causes more harm than it prevents. Simply put...

Despite hard data in recent times showing a strong US economy, is it actually strong enough to cope with the knock-on effect of the sub-prime mortgage disaster? The fallout has already reached Wall St, with the Dow shedding another 2% today, giving a total of 5% down since the July peak. The...

This explanation by Steven Levitt is a compelling evidence-based argument for raising the gas tax. Global warming is not the only reason, BTW. Levitt names three externalities to driving, but I can think of at least one more. Levitt cites: a) My driving increases congestion for other drivers...

I keep hearing claims and reading articles that claim that the middle class is shrinking and diminishing, and I've heard this same line of thought since I can remember ever even caring about jobs.. so about 20 years or so. However, I have to wonder why, if this is really happening, that it...

The new semester started, I´m back at Economics, and I´m getting into a teachy mood (among other things, to get my mind off the Virginia shooting thing). We´ve heard quite few times, predominantly from the Libertarian end of the spectrum, that the Free Market (tm) will do this or that, or not...

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000AF3D5-6DC9-152E-A9F183414B7F0000&colID=31 Being that there are probably both left-wing and right-wing skeptics on the board, I thought that this would a good topic for you. I've agreed with the author's points for a long time...

Okay, not really. But I couldn't come up with a catchy title about a this fascinating, thoughtful blog done by two economics professors at George Mason University, here in Fairfax, Virginia. Check this out. Lots of thoughtful ideas percolating here, most with an economist's-eye take on it. If...

The Austrian school of economics teaches us to view people as generally belonging to either the group of net tax payers, or the group of net tax consumers. There can not be any such thing as a "fair" tax, because any kind of tax, be it income tax, social security tax, sales tax, inheritance...

For all the believers in and proponents of paranormal phenomena, none of them seem to have a clue what effect something like real precognition would actually have on the world if it were widespread. If you can even bring yourself to think about it, might anyone here be able to think of a good...

Hi all. I'm doing a research project on the markets of Eastern Europe. I ran across some figures for the "total debt stocks" of some countries. The textbook definition is "the sum of public and publicly guaranteed long-term debt, private nonguaranteed long-term debt, the use of IMF...

Every now and then I read something that I feel I have to share. The following was a speech given by David Henderson, a globally pre-eminant economist, who in recent years has highlighted some glaring shortcomings in the analysis produced for and used by the IPCC. His thoughts highlight wide...

Here's a rather long quiz (25 multiple-choice questions; each option is a paragraph long) that quizzes your opinion in relation to four economic viewpoints: Austrian, Socialist, Keynesian, and Chicago. The questions are excellent and require a lot of thought. Sometimes selecting one particular...

Here is a Canadian Supreme Court case involving Starson: Supreme Court Case Here is the full text of a 16-page paper by Starson and someone else. Would anyone care to give a brief explanation of the ideas in layman's language? Discrete Anti-Gravity (pdf)

I was asking questions about traffic, and how it can be modelled and improved. An economist added the observation that there is a simple solution to preventing the overload of traffic, just charge for the right to travel on a road. 'red' ken in london has apparently done just that. If you wan...

Well, there's no Economics subforum (yet), but in the interests of education and enlightenment I'd like to present an essay written in the 1950s by Leonard E. Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education. It's a wonderful description of how the free market improves life for everyone...

A number of people have suggested, quite properly, that we should be spending less time debating the minutia between the candidates (war records, malapropisms, appearance, etc) and more time on the issues (Economics, Foreign policy, Abortion, Gay Marraige, etc). Sounds good to me. So to get...

In light of some bad articles from Dr. Walter E. Williams on gay marriage and on WMD. I thought I would bring up his latest article which is on government trying to curtail post-crisis price gouging. Once again, the government does something wrong trying to make things "fair". The road to...

Excellent article found here on what helps spur the creation of wealth: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/diamond_rich/rich_p1.html Also very interesting is that Bill Gates appears to be a Jared Diamond fan: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/diamond_pulitzer/diamond_index.html In any event...