the egalitarian u.s. health care system?

Tyler Cowen writes: Since old, high-bank-account white males have lots of social status and power, [believers in egalitarianism] cannot bring themselves to regard those males as holding very poor overall endowments. Cowen claims that the poor old rich white guys’ supposedly “poor overall endowments” arise from the impairment of their human capital at the more-or-less […]

perils of public sociology: not having a clue what you’re talking about

Dalton Conley wastes a page of valuable intellectual real estate. 1. Conley actually wrote this for publication in the New York Times: The truth is that the triumph of conservative ideas may present a political problem for the ailing Republicans, but the party that’s truly lacking in ideas is my own, the resurgent Democrats. Yeah, […]

are economists really well-paid?

At Freakonomics, Daniel Hamermesh suggests maybe not: While differences in earnings by college major are huge, once you account for longer hours worked by business and engineering majors, by the fact that they often have higher SAT scores, and other factors, the differences are much smaller; indeed, over half of the variation in earnings by […]

article title of the day

“The Economics of Workaholism: We Should Not Have Worked on This Paper” by Daniel Hamermesh and Joel Slemrod.

how to diminish the influence of economics

1. Expend energy railing against the Patriot Employer Act, co-sponsored by Barack Obama. What’s to hate about it? From the Economist‘s Free Exchange blog (h/t Mark Thoma): There is much to dislike in the bill. Essentially, it offers employers a tax credit, worth one percent of taxable income, in exchange for adherence to a set […]

more sensitive than most

Dispatch from Madison: People working in UW-Madison buildings along Lake Mendota reported a shake and a boom apparently caused by an ice quake Thursday afternoon. “It actually sounded like a bus drove into the building. The whole building shook, ” said Patrick Brenzel, a staff member in the eighth-floor offices of the department of sociology, […]

’twas the night before Tax Day… or is that Happy Helicopter Day?

A correspondent asks: I’m searching for economic advice. If I were to create a national holiday meant to coincide with the stimulus package being planned in Washington, when would be a good time to have the holiday? It’s not so much an economic question, and I dunno. Perhaps, like “Love Day” from The Simpsons [*], […]

sometimes the dismal science just gets you down

Hi everyone! With all this discussion of incentives going on, or something, Jeremy lent me the keys to bring in a view from the economics (and/or non-academic) side of things. If I were offered the chance to eliminate forever one influence of Econ 101 reasoning from the popular discourse, it would be hard to resist […]