Updated December 20, 2018 Mark Kleiman has done some of the most insightful policy analysis of illegal drugs available. He argues that home grown marijuana should be legal (and polls show that the majority of Americans have agreed for some…
Blog Archives
US median income finally rises above record set in 1999. Yea!
Kevin Drum reports that the official census bureau measure of: household income is now at an all-time high: And now for the buzzkill portion of this post: this means household income has increased a whopping 0.6 percent since 1999. That’s $22…
Posted in MELI & Econ Stats
Trickle-up economics
Supply-side economics is often derided as trickle-down economics. It is the idea that we should reduce taxes on the wealthy who will then use their increased disposable income to grow the economy so fast that it will benefit everyone. That…
Posted in Medianism, Public Finance
Median vs. mean life expectancy
Life expectancy is the mean number of years someone is expected to live if conditions would remain the same in the future as they are in the current year. But because life expectancy is slightly skewed to the left, David…
The ethics behind Trump’s main money man
Jane Mayer at the New Yorker has a profile of Robert Mercer, the reclusive Billionaire who probably invested more money in getting Trump elected than any other American (and we don’t know how much Putin spent). He not only directly…
Money can’t buy you love, but can it buy you life?
Raj Chetty et al. published a study of the correlation of class and life expectancy that got a lot of press, but I hadn’t actually looked at the original publication until this week. Here is the correlation between life expectancy…
The US is more interested in median income than anywhere else in the world
Interest in median income is much bigger in the US compared with the rest of the world according to Google Search Trends. Perhaps the US is more interested in median income because, as Brian Nolan, Max Roser, and Stefan Thewissen…
Posted in Medianism
Medianism 