A lot of people like to talk about the size of government. This is the actual data.
Exploring the variables that matter most. Exploding the conventional wisdom that rules us.
Category: Embedded in America
Perpetually relevant thoughts on the relationship b/w the murder rate and the gun owner rate
As mass shootings surface in the news again, it’s worth understanding the very clear relationship between the murder rate and gun owner rate.
Political Econ Friday: Fauxcrat Joe Manchin and GOP Senators don’t wanna help Americans with student loan debt for a real simple reason…
Here’s why Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and GOP Senators are reluctant to help defray crippling, widespread economic costs of American higher ed. It’s real simple: There’s nothing in it for ‘em. See, Manchin and GOP […]
The farther Americans live from each other the less they want to live–and vice versa
The farther people live from each other the less they want to live. What evidence from the states shows…
Amplitudes of power: 229 years reveal why Senate majorities aren’t what they used to be
—and why whoever wins should temper expectations of dominating the Senate like it’s 1933 or 1965.
Social physics of presidential politics: It’s not large states which elect Democrats. It’s dense ones. Pro-Clinton states had 304% more people per square mile.
The average state which elected Donald Trump had 93 people per square mile. Average state won by Hillary Clinton had 283 people per square mile. Density—the distance between us—matters. And so does information, which corresponds […]
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?
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:
What we talk about when we talk about a market-based healthcare system
Here’s the saddest song I’ve got:
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 […]
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 […]
The self-evident irrationality of Red State resentment
What if the biggest complainers about the federal government were its biggest beneficiaries?
Well…
Greatest Common Factors 