Economists like to talk a lot about Pareto improvements. This is the idea that you can make a change that improves life for somebody and hurts nobody. A Pareto improvement is obviously always an good idea. Nobody could object by…
Yearly Archives: 2014
What College Degree Is Most Valuable, BS, MS, or MRS?
In high school I knew some girls who wanted to find a husband at college. We made fun of them by joking that they didn’t want a BA degree, but a MRS degree instead. But in hindsight it isn’t the…
Posted in Labor
Obamacare vs. Medicare
A lot of Americans dislike the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) because they say it expands government too much and will increase taxes. As Milton Friedman accurately said, for the government, to spend is to tax. So how big is…
Freedoms = Rights — Machine Gun Edition
Updated 2023/01/03 As Isaiah Berlin said, freedom for wolves is death to the lambs. Everyone likes more freedom, but all the freedoms that people debate about are contentious because increasing one person’s freedoms reduces the freedoms of others. In theory…
Replace GDP With Median Income
UPDATE: See the MELI FAQ for more up-to-date information about how and why we should reform the use of GDP. The reigning measure of economic progress and development is GDP per capita. Sure the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI)…
Posted in Medianism, MELI & Econ Stats
Medianism 