Quote of the Day: Blue Model Implosion

From the mayor of San Jose, California:

"This is one of the dichotomies of California: I am cutting services to my low- and moderate-income people . . . to pay really generous benefits for public employees who make a good living and have an even better retirement."

Yeah, I'm sure this is going to turn out just awesome.

The Onion on Student Loan Debt

ZING!

The Tax Burden of the 1%

I'm sick of the "let's eat the rich!" cries of the self-proclaimed progressives.  Do you know the members of the 1% pay a bigger share of the federal income tax burden than the bottom 90% combined?  Yeah.  Tax Prof Blog has charts and numbers.  But some people are addicted to taxation.  I can't help thinking of the first part of this video - a feckless ruler all but fondling that tax revenue:

I'm just going to say one more thing about the whole idea:

Davos 2014 Global Wage Calculator

Here it is!   I took it and found out that an admin manager in Finland makes more than I do.  Excuse me while I take my overeducated self off to rage-eat a whole pint of Ben and Jerry's. (Chocolate Therapy, natch.)

"Comically Meaningless"

Econ prof Greg Mankiw considers a statement by the New York Times.

Lest We Forget, The Kids Aren't All Right

Yeah, we're all totally screwed:

Washington has willfully ignored the looming crisis of entitlement spending, knowingly consigning young Americans to a future of crushing debt, persistent underemployment, and burdensome regulation. Politicians on both sides of the aisle share the blame.

While we're at it, let's note the particular problem of school debt which is - surprise! - made ever worse by political attempts to "fix" it:

This summer, Congress made a big bipartisan show of cutting student loan rates to 3.4 percent from an already artificially low 6.8 percent. But even that seemingly helpful gesture will wind up hurting the Americans it claims to help. Federal student aid, whether in the form of grants or loans, is the main factor behind the runaway cost of higher education. Subsidies raise prices, leading to higher subsidies, which raise prices even more. This higher education bubble, like the housing bubble before it, will eventually pop. Meanwhile, large numbers of students will graduate with more debt than they would have in an unsubsidized market.

S-C-R-E-W-E-D.

High Five, Fellow Capitalist Pigs!

Thanks to free markets, over the last 20 years nearly 1 billion people have been raised out of extreme poverty.

Quote of the Day: Eurocalypse Now

The whole thing is worth a read, but here's a blurb:

... with the exception of communism itself, the euro has been the biggest economic catastrophe to befall the continent (and the world) since the 1930s.

Rant: Poverty and Cultural Authenticity

Short version: you don't need the former in order to have the latter.

So tell me, ye judges of authenticity: am I "authentic" enough for you?  Maybe my smartphone and laptop and high heels disqualify me as a "proper" Taiwanese.  Should I be back wading in the rice paddy and wearing a coolie hat with a baby strapped to my back?  Does that better meet your laughably ignorant expectations?  Would it make you feel better if all the businesspeople and computer engineers of Taipei knock down the high-rises and go back to living in villages?  trade in their cars for wagons and water buffalo again?  ARE WE ANY LESS TAIWANESE BECAUSE WE'RE NOT POOR?  How insulting.

Oh, and heaven forbid that anyone say that the greater issue is whether quality of life is better.  Let me tell you: on my last visit to "the old country," one of my elderly aunts started telling me about life 50 years ago when she knew that "culturally authentic" poverty firsthand.  I won't weary you with details; suffice it to say it was horrifying and included phrases like "no running water" and "no indoor plumbing."  Then she smiled, gestured around her comfortable modern home, and said, well, thank goodness that's all over with!  Indeed.

Lord, give me patience with those horrible people who argue about "authenticity" ... or, better yet, Lord, give me the self-control not to punch them in the face.  Why, one might even think the authenticity police's breathtakingly arrogant behavior is ... raaaaaaaaaaacist or something.

OK, OK, how about something like this for a solution?  Wealthy tourists want to see "authenticity" from the ethnic locals while the ethnic locals want a better life with modern advances.  Why not take a hint from the brilliant Gary Larson's cartoon?  

P.J. O'Rourke and Pizza Politics

It's P.J., so read!

One Canadian Perspective on Bernanke

Oh, my.

The Euro Crisis: "a shabby, demoralising slide into darkness"

Life imitates T.S. Eliot: here are a few thoughts on the slow slide into ruin when we're expecting instant apocalypse.  That doesn't mean the ruin is any real.

Quote of the Day: The Greek Disaster

From a BBC reporter:

This is happening in a European Union country - a place of unparalleled cultural richness, of beauty, of history. How has it come to this? 

You can read the theories, study the statistics and yet it still seems incomprehensible that a country can fall so far, so fast.

Nerd Analysis: The Screwed Generation

Well, that's just freakin' great.  Let's eat the young.  I'm weirdly reminded of The Grapes of Wrath and Rose of Sharon breastfeeding not a baby, but a starving old man.

Nerd Analysis: Niall Ferguson & Europe's Economic Mess

"Farce"?

Euro Notes: That Single Currency Is Doomed?

I had my doubts about this entire enterprise, because - as you recall - Milton Friedman predicted that the euro wouldn't survive its first recession.  Of course, perhaps the idea itself of forcing all those nations into a single currency was "an incredibly stupid idea in the first place."  In a nutshell, just look at Greece and Germany.

Nerd News: Student Loan Interest Rates May Double in July

WHAT.

China's Obnoxious 1% and Their Spoiled Brats

The end of the Chinese dream?  That's what today's cover of Foreign Policy says.  Well, it's certainly something about oligarchic misbehavior and crony capitalism (which is, do I need to say it for the millionth time, not the same thing as actual capitalism).

Hungary Outlaws Homelessness

When homelessness is outlawed, only outlaws will be homeless!  *facepalm*

Classic Milton Friedman

Harvard econ prof Greg Mankiw has an intriguing post on what Milton Friedman might say to the Occupy movement.  Get a load of the dipstick in the first video who asks, "Isn't it necessary to forcibly redistribute wealth?"  Um, NO.  Note too how courteously Friedman disassembles these young clowns who have more idealism than sense.