I have enough of my own issues to pay attention to, so I’ve been doing my best to scrupulously ignore the running health reform debate, but in this town there are limits to what can be blocked out.  As I understand the current state of play, we will still have a mandate and a “non-discrimination” [...]

[Read more →]

Megan sez:
That’s a bold prediction.  I’m skeptical.  I think it is more likely is that this thing passes, and fails spectacularly.  There are too many moving parts, and if any of them breaks, the whole thing rapidly starts to spin out of control and eat a gigantic hole in the deficit.  If it does break, [...]

[Read more →]

It seems like every year someone feels obligated to remind us that the Economics Nobel isn’t a real Nobel Prize because it’s not one of the categories established by Alfred Nobel’s will. Yglesias does the honors this year, implying that this is some sort of strange scam where the Bank of Sweden somehow convinced people [...]

[Read more →]

A commenter on the other day’s patent post makes an important point:
I also thought that even if an idea is obvious, it won’t be implemented until someone realizes that they have a need for it. I guess this falls under the question of whether there’s prior art, but it would also be a reason why [...]

[Read more →]

In the middle of a group discussion of health care reform last week, an acquaintance expressed puzzlement that the current debate isn’t more heavily focused on international comparisons. Modulo all the important differences—cultural, institutional, demographic, and so on—between the United States and other developed countries, shouldn’t we be spending most of our time weighing the [...]

[Read more →]

Another prime example of the sort of talking point I find grating not so much because it’s specious as because it’s so shamelessly, disingenuously specious:
So here’s a little test for our Republican friends to help them decide the status of the nation’s economy. I dare them to answer these questions truthfully, as Americans first, and [...]

[Read more →]

Sometimes I swear the Times runs articles just to make my head hurt. Consider this op-ed by one Robert X. Cringely, who does actually appear to be a fictional character dreamt up by Arthur Sulzburger (or other, darker forces) to be the instrument of my torment:
Microsoft makes most of its money from two products, Microsoft [...]

[Read more →]

Conor Friedersdorf finds serial plagiarist Ben Domenech stroking his chin over the pernicious collapse of values that’s causing moderns to delay marriage and reproduction. But sometimes, two charts are worth a thousand words of wankery.

8

[...]

[Read more →]

Tyler Cowen wonders:
Should the service fee by high or low?  It could cut either way.  A low service fee encourages withdrawals and thus gambling, which is profitable for the casino.  A high service fee takes in money from the desperate and those with high time preference.
It was $4.99.  (Of course that is n = 1.)
On [...]

[Read more →]

Your daily emetic:  Try to make it through this load of pap–a “manifesto” for “Generation M”—without bringing your lunch back up. A tiny sample:
Dear Old People Who Run the World,
My generation would like to break up with you.
Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we [...]

[Read more →]