The Brewers enjoyed a day off yesterday, but their magic number still went down, courtesy of the Mets. It is now 2.
Tonight, the Brewers start a 3-game series against the Marlins, and the Cardinals take on the Cubs. If the Brewers win and the Cardinals lose, the division is clinched.
Comments Off on Mets 8, Cardinals 6
Posted in Sports
Tagged brewers magic number, magic number, nl central
E-Verify is a program that checks the immigration status of new hires. The House is expected to vote on legislation that would make E-Verify mandatory nationwide. Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh thinks E-Verify should be scrapped altogether. Not only does it make it more expensive for companies to hire people, it misses over half of the undocumented immigrants it is supposed to identify.
Comments Off on CEI Podcast for September 22, 2011: E-Verify
Posted in CEI Podcast, Immigration
Tagged alex nowrasteh, arizona immigration, e-verify, everify, Immigration
I forget who I’m paraphrasing here, but the two iron laws of modernity are 1) things are getting better, and 2) people think they’re getting worse. The short video at the bottom of this post is one way to prove the first law to victims of the second law. It’s a rough cut adapted from a recent talk Don Boudreaux gave; I eagerly await the full version.
When I took macroeconomics in graduate school, the professor circulated a Sears catalog from 1900 or so around the classroom. Most of the prices were given in cents, not dollars. Now imagine that you could buy anything you wanted from that catalog today at those low prices. They’re still too expensive. Take these vacuum cleaners pictured below:
$12.50 for a vacuum cleaner? What a deal! And yet, given the choice, I would not buy it. Too expensive. I wouldn’t even be willing to pay $5.00 for it. Heck, I wouldn’t even want it for free.
Why is even a price of zero too expensive for that vacuum? Because it doesn’t even use electricity. It’s manually powered. No thanks. I’m better off with the $90 vacuum I bought a few years ago.
Of course, I’ve been ignoring inflation. As a useful public service, the Minneapolis Fed has an inflation calculator right on its homepage. It only goes back to 1913, and our vacuum is a 1909. But that’s close enough for the point I’m making.
If that vacuum cost $12.50 in 1913, it would cost $285.17 in 2011. This manually powered vacuum, that I wouldn’t pay a dime for, is three times as expensive in real terms as my electric vacuum.
Things are better now. Modernity is a blessing. The first law holds. Hopefully the second law won’t prove quite so rigid.
Click here if the embedded video below doesn’t work. It’s well worth 1:26 of your time to watch.
Comments Off on It Gets Better: Sears Catalog Edition
Posted in Economics
Tagged Don Boudreaux, inflation, modernity, prices, progress, sears catalog
Holman Jenkins sums it up:
Google will be accused of having a “monopoly” on search, though its market share is only 65%, and it charges consumers nothing for its services.
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Posted in Antitrust, Economics, Technology
Tagged google, google antitrust, holman jenkins
Planking is an odd, odd trend. Plankers are people who pose for pictures by lying face down on the ground in unusual places, stiff as a plank of wood; hence the name. It isn’t clear how the fad started, but a quick Google image search for “planking” will give results of people planking everywhere from a swimming pool to a camel’s back to the spare tire on the back of an SUV.
Winston Castelo, a legislator in the Philippines, has had enough. That’s why he introduced the Anti-Planking Act of 2011. There is a transportation labor dispute happening in Manila right now, and there have been some strikes. Some groups of protesters have taken to planking in the middle of the street, tying up traffic. Hence the anti-planking bill.
The protesters shouldn’t be doing that, obviously. Not only is it rude, it’s probably illegal. Offenses like jaywalking and disturbing the peace are already on the books.
People all over the world have been poking fun at Congressman Castelo’s odd sense of priorities. Good for them, I say. Threats to freedoms even as trivial as planking should not be taken lying down.
Comments Off on Regulation of the Day 197: Planking
Posted in Nanny State, Regulation of the Day
Tagged anti-planking act, anti-planking act of 2011, philippines, planking, winnie castelo, winston castelo
The magic number is now 3. If the Cardinals cooperate — they didn’t last night, downing the Mets 11-6 — the Brewers could officially win the NL Central as soon as tomorrow.
Since St. Louis is on a hot streak and Milwaukee is on a tepid streak, it could be a bit longer than that. There are 7 games left in the regular season.
Comments Off on Brewers 5, Cubs 1
Posted in Sports
The ever-loquacious Penn Jillette talks to Nick Gillespie about his new book, God, No! He doesn’t know if any gods exist or not, and he doesn’t know what’s best for other people.
His basic philosophical humility is a refreshing departure from right-wing religiosity and left-wing social engineering; they do know what’s best for other people.
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Posted in Political Animals, The Old Religion
Tagged atheism, god no, libertariianism, nick gillespie, penn jillette
As many as 200,000 people are currently imprisoned in concentration camps in North Korea. That’s about one percent of the population.
May those poor souls find a way out, and soon.
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Posted in International
Prices aren’t just dollars and cents. Time, effort, hassle, standing in line, and driving across town also count. Click the image to enlarge. Original here.
Comments Off on An Economic Lesson in Comic Strip Form
Posted in Economics
Tagged economic lessons, price theory, prices, xkcd
This year’s Federal Register is on pace to be 80,190 pages long. That’s an average of 220 pages of fresh proposed rules, final rules, notices, and more every single day.
If this pace keeps up, this year’s Register will make for slightly easier reading than 2010, which set a new record with an 81,405 adjusted page count.
Think about that for a second. 160,000 pages in two years. Even Stephen King couldn’t write that much. Amazing that so many people claim this or that part of the economy is unregulated. With 165,000 pages already in the Code of Federal Regulations and more coming every day, it just ain’t so.
Comments Off on Federal Register Near Record Pace
Posted in regulation
Tagged deregulate to stimulate, federal register, regulation, stephen king
Inertia Wins! 