As the US debates making compulsory wearing a mask to prevent the spread of a deadly pandemic, it’s instructive to think what the Father of our country—George Washington thought about individual freedom vs the general good.
Greatest Common Factors
Exploring the variables that matter most. Exploding the conventional wisdom that rules us.
What a Founding Father thought about a nation of freemen built by slaves–but kept secret during the Constitutional Convention
On July 9, 1787 in Philadelphia, the 50-something delegates to the Constitutional Convention argued intensely over how much a slave was worth while at the same time completely omitting the word “slavery” from the Constitution […]
Those parts of the Constitution that the Father of the Constitution–James Madison–didn’t want. At all.
What if the Founding Fathers didn’t actually like the Constitution they ended up with?
Why African Americans are dying at higher rates from Covid-19: A 7-step syllogism
Hospitals and public health officials are reporting that African Americans are dying at higher rates–6X in Chicago vis a vis whites there. Here’s the reason why:
Between 1900 & 2014, the US went from spending basically $0 to 8% of GDP—and its citizens gained 31 more years of life
Between 1900 and 2014, the US spent 8X more of its national income on public health. During the same time, its citizens could expect to live 31 years longer.
130 years after the Civil War, Black Male Workers Died Twice as Often in the South
Researchers at the National Institute of Health examined six years of workplace safety data from the 1990s. Here’s what they found:
Why the Right has to hate the Left’s Cities and States
The right doesn’t love to hate the left’s biggest cities and states.
It has to…
What we talk about when we talk about a market-based healthcare system
Here’s the saddest song I’ve got:
Syllogism Wednesday: Money & Power edition
Here’s a short story:
Saturday syllogism: What we talk about when we talk about inequality
Here’s my short story for Saturday:
Forgotten Lessons from the Constitutional Convention: What worried Ben Franklin about giving small states equal political power as large states
During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin was concerned that giving states equal power regardless of their populations would allow a minority to rule a majority. Fast forward to 2020: The GOP Senate majority […]
Starting yesterday, NY employers can’t ask job applicants how much they got paid at their last job(s). Quick and rough thoughts on why that’s good news for workers.
I’ve never met someone in HR who keeps track of the marginal product of labor. In the real world (like outside of an econ textbook) employee pay has little to do with actual productivity and […]
The architects of the Constitution–the real protagonists of the United States– dreamed of a different government than what they settled for.
The US Senate *majority* represents a *minority* of the population and a minority of the economy. The very structure of our government is flawed—and it’s exactly what the protagonists of the US Constitution feared. Consider […]
Wonky Geometry: How paying people whether they work or not can increase the wages of the working
Short version (to be elaborated on in future post): UBI (and M4A and affordable housing) raises reservation wage –> shifts labor supply curve —> new (higher) equilibrium wage.
appeals to yesterdays that never were
I like to think this blog is about my own ideas, but sometimes something comes along that’s worth repeating. This is one of those. “The late Ryszard Kapuściński coined a striking term to describe those […]
Because science: “Every particle in nature has an amplitude to move backwards in time..”
“Every particle in nature has an amplitude to move backwards in time…”
How’d the West defeat Communism? De facto socialism. B/w 1947-1991, government comprised 40%-60% of “Capitalist” UK, US, France, Italy, West Germany…
Capitalism defeated Communism? More like de facto socialism defeated Russian imperialism. Here’s why.
Why taxing Billionaires is not a violation of a free market but rather a correction of a failing one
Billionaires aren’t winners of an actual free market. Their companies (eg Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Berkshire Hathaway, et al) are price-setting, not price-taking, monopolies, monopsonies and oligopolies. Investors don’t want to invest in companies with competition. […]
Gun ownership fell substantially between 1973 and 2014. Guess what else did: the chances of getting murdered.
The relationship between gun ownership rate and the homicide rate is clear. They’re closely connected. So just how closely correlated are they? Well, in fact, the rate of gun ownership explains 76% of the variation […]
When more employees in a state are represented by unions, families earn more money. A lot more.
Read the chart. It should speak for itself. I bring data to the convo. No point arguing about subject without seeing the numbers. Here they are. The correlation is significant. R-squared value shown. […]
Why Republican voters should not trust themselves–and Donald Trump shouldn’t count on his own base
What do Nixon, Ford, Bush 1, Bush 2, John McCain and Mitt Romney have in common? Two things: First, they were the choices of Republican voters gave us. They were their boys. Two–here it comes–Republicans […]
Questions to ask when someone says, “But the Founding Fathers wanted [fill in the blank here]”
They’re probably rolling in their graves. They’re invoked constantly–but rarely with any specificity. I’m talking about the US Founding Fathers and the narratives we’ve spun about their political, social and economic thoughts. That is, […]
That part of Adam Smith they don’t teach in Econ 101–or anywhere else
What if Adam Smith’s legacy had been completely hijacked by a visible hand of naked self-interest?
The self-evident irrationality of Red State resentment
What if the biggest complainers about the federal government were its biggest beneficiaries?
Well…
Here’s the only question you need to answer to figure out whether you’re against redistribution or not
Why care is the new commodity—and the future of work looks dim
Median pay of the 10 fastest growing jobs between 2016 and 2026 is $27,000
What unions do—or used to—and how the bottom 80% of American families started sharing a smaller piece of national income
It’s about leverage. You produce more money per hour than you get paid for—otherwise you wouldn’t be hired by a for-profit company. But the amount you get isn’t set in stone. Your worth depends on […]
Why regulating gun ownership can make sense even when regulating ownership of almost anything else might not
Unlike ownership of cars or knives or hammers or nails or lead paint or parachutes, the primary purpose of gun ownership is staying safe and yet the primary effect of more gun ownership is less safety.
3 decades of data show clearly: When gun ownership falls, the chances of getting killed by a gun falls
Three decades of data show clearly: gun deaths fall when gun ownership falls and rise when gun ownership rises.
What free market? For the last half century, government has been a third, or more, of the US economy
What free market? As the US debates “socialism” and “capitalism”, it’s important to remember that government has been a large part of the American economy for generations. Consider data from the last 70 years […]
It’s National Flag Day. Here’s why we put symbols on sticks.
We might be living in an age of self-driving cars and going to Mars, but we also have totem poles.
