While updating my iPhone I found a peculiar application, Stand Up Take Action, which allows people to click a button and get counted to express their support for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. The application didn’t have any other purpose, like asking you to make a donation. So I went to their website, which [...]
A common argument against concealed carry weapons permits (CCW) is that it would result in more crime, often expressed hyperbolically as precursor to a bloodbath. With 48 states allowing some form of concealed carry, we should expect that there have been enough natural experiments to answer this assertion definitively. My expectation is that the people [...]
Robert Reich recently posted an article on Salon about why we should not worry about the US government debt, and why it should be even higher that it is now. Government spending, he says, got us out of the Great Depression, and it can get us out of the current recession. Reich’s dad though that [...]
Interested in doing a science project, Max and I went to the alley to collect a 2 liter plastic bottle from the recyclables bin. I had put the bottle in the bin the day before but could not find it that day. I also noticed the beer and wine bottles were missing, but the paper [...]
A common argument against the current state of American health care is that the evil insurance companies make their obscene profits by denying claims. I don’t intend to tackle the question of the moral right of companies to make profits, or to defend the current state of American health care, but I do want to [...]
There is always someone who will believe an incredible science or technology story, especially when the technology could save the planet, or is invented by a teen-ager, or comes from the third world. When the story has all three elements, the suckers get in line. Today, the Daily Mail reports that an Indian teen-ager has [...]
The substrate of the start up business plan is that the nascent business will reach $50 million revenues per year after 5 years. Venture Capitalists seem to expect that every pitch will have a revenue graph with a hockey-stick shaped revenue line that shows the business at $50M in 5 years. Naturally, this means that [...]
In his Labor Day article in Salon.com, Michael Lind satirizes free-market conservatives, who he claims believe that Laborers destroy wealth. In building that thesis, he presents a range of logical fallacies that are interesting to analyze. Mr. Lind doesn’t daly. His opening sentence lays out his theme: Today is Labor Day, when we celebrate the wealth [...]
Authors of economics textbooks for high school students are virtually required by school boards to discount free markets and promote state intervention. That’s the conclusion of a Mackinac center report, which includes direct statements to that effect from the textbook authors themselves. Here are some quotes from economics textbook authors: “I agree with your review [...]