I’ve been teaching the conventional wisdom which says that a Bismarck-style universal health insurance program like Romneycare and Obamacare is like a three-legged stool. The three legs that hold up universal healthcare Bismarck systems like Obamacare are supposed to be:…
Blog Archives
Robin Hood and broken window facts and fallacies
Note: This is an update of two previous posts. The broken window ‘fallacy’ is an enduring parable invented by Frédéric Bastiat in 1850, and popularized in English by Henry Hazlitt (chapter 2) in his attempt to combat the dominance of…
Posted in Macro
Why tariffs won’t boost the economy like Trump thinks
Trump tweeted We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with…
Posted in Globalization & International, Macro
Median income of black men compared with white men in America
Via Kevin Drum. Presumably this is using personal income. There has been progress towards greater equality in the past half century. The ratio went from 59% up to 73% over this time, but nearly all of the change happened between…
Posted in Discrimination
Why are Americans suddenly more interested in gun control? Perhaps because of a 9/11-size spike in gun homicides.
Although I’m a pacifist (and a pragmatic one not a fundamentalist*), I don’t get particularly passionate about gun control because despite the fact that it generally reduces homicides and suicides, because other factors are even more important for reducing homicides. Furthermore,…
Posted in Violence & Peace
Occupational licensing is the new unionization
Back in 2011, which kind of license would cost more money to obtain in New York City, A) a license to practice medicine or B) a license to drive a taxicab? In 2011, a taxi cab license cost over $1 million.…
Posted in Inequality, Labor
#Pence2018: What gay bunnies mean for a Pence administration.
Whereas in 2009 nearly 50% more Americans opposed gay marriage than supported it, as of the latest poll, a mere eight years later, there are nearly twice as many Americans who support gay marriage than those opposed according to Gallop.…
Medianism 