Monthly Archives: December 2010

Quotation of the Week

Posted on December 3, 2010 | Comments Off on Quotation of the Week

“To err is human; to get paid for it, you have to be an economist.”

–Larry Sabato, on unemployment projections being 100,000 off from what was released today.

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Posted in Economics, Pith

From Poor and Sick to Healthy and Rich

Posted on December 3, 2010 | Comments Off on From Poor and Sick to Healthy and Rich

Via Russ Roberts, this is an amazing video. I’m always impressed with creative, compelling ways to use data to tell a story. And this story is one of the most important in human history: how most of humanity went from being poor and sick to healthy and rich in just 200 years.

There is still a ways to go. But if past is prologue, I’m optimistic about the future.

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Posted in Development Economics, Economics, Fun with Statistics, The Market Process

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Federal Register Hits 75,000 Pages

Posted on December 2, 2010 | Comments Off on Federal Register Hits 75,000 Pages

The Federal Register is not a perfect barometer of how active government is. Sometimes rules that ramble on for dozens of pages are almost innocuous. An economically disastrous regulation can take up less than a page. But in general, high page counts mean a more active government.

Over at the AmSpec blog, I break down some of the numbers behind the Federal Register’s latest milestone — 75,000 pages.

President Bush still holds the adjusted page count record. But President Obama is putting up quite a challenge; at its current 327-page per day pace, the 2010 Federal Register would be 81,560 unadjusted pages long.

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Posted in regulation

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Like, Totally

Posted on December 1, 2010 | Comments Off on Like, Totally

Overuse (and misuse) of the word “like” is an obstacle to clear speaking and clear thinking. It is also a signal to the rest of the world that one need not be taken seriously.

Christopher Hitchens has an amusing article on the history of “like,” pointing out that “in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables. But it didn’t start off that way, and might possibly be worth saving in a modified form.”

I largely agree. Read the whole thing over at Vanity Fair.

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Posted in Argumentation, General Foolishness

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They Must Be Dog People

Posted on December 1, 2010 | Comments Off on They Must Be Dog People

Report: Kill the Feral Cats

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Posted in General Foolishness

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Do You Want the IRS Doing Your Taxes?

Posted on December 1, 2010 | Comments Off on Do You Want the IRS Doing Your Taxes?

The average American spends over 26 hours per year doing taxes. That’s too much. The obvious solution is to simplify the 70,000-page tax code. But that’s politically difficult. So Austan Goolsbee, among others, has an alternative idea: have the IRS do your taxes for you.

This return-free system is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. One of them is the obvious conflict of interest when your tax collector is also your tax preparer.

Another reason is that the IRS is not up to the task. As I explain in an op-ed being distributed by McClatchy News Services, the IRS rarely has all the information it needs to fill out an accurate return for any one individual, household, or business. People change jobs. They have kids. They get married, and sometimes divorced. They buy homes and cars. Who knows what kinds of deductions they qualify for? The IRS probably doesn’t.

And if the IRS makes a mistake on your return, you would be liable for it. If you want to stay on the right side of the law, you would have to calculate your own taxes anyway, to make sure the IRS got it right. So much for saving time.
Return-free systems have already been tried in California and the UK. Neither attempt can be called a success.
It is heartening that officials are looking for ways to reduce the burden of doing taxes. But a return-free system would treat only the symptom, and poorly at that. The root problem is an arcane, 70,000 page tax code. The solution is to simplify it.

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Posted in Economics, Publications, Taxation

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