The newspaper that says government should be better and that rich people should pay their fair share to fund that bigger government celebrates a billionaire who will pay essentially nothing at all in tax… “Billionaire No More: Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company” (nytimes): … | Continue reading
A friend who emigrated (“high skill”) to the U.S. from Eastern Europe (not Russia itself!) texted our chat group: I drove into Harvard Square for the first time in about 3 years. Driving through Cambridge: George Floyd yard signs, fair share yard signs [extra tax on the rich], B … | Continue reading
Back in June, I wondered Could our epic deficits drive inflation no matter how high the Fed raises rates? and this question was followed up Economist answers my question about high interest rates and high deficits. Here’s the NYT front page, September 22: The government has be … | Continue reading
Here’s the current predicted track for Tropical Storm Ian: Worrisome for Disney World! On the other hand, if a ride is destroyed by Ian, perhaps it could be rebuilt along the lines suggested in Should Disney World offer a ride educating kindergartners on sexual orientation and … | Continue reading
As loyal readers are aware, when it comes to homeownership I am a hater. The culture of homeownership is a huge drag on the U.S. economy, in my view, for the following reasons: homeowners spend a lot of time working as amateur property managers, e.g., arranging maintenance or ac … | Continue reading
From September 12, 2022: KPHX 120353Z 17048G75KT 4SM TS BLDU SQ FEW028 SCT090 BKN110CB BKN160 31/19 A2987 RMK AO2 PK WND 18075/0353 WSHFT 0338 LTG DSNT SE AND SW CONS LTGCGIC SE-SW TS SE-SW MOV N BLDU FEW028 T03060194 Translation: At the Phoenix, Arizona, early in the morning i … | Continue reading
There are billionaires on both sides of the U.S. debate regarding whether we should welcome more low-skill migrants (this analysis by a Harvard professor says that an economically rational billionaire will choose more low-skill migrants). American billionaires are so rich that th … | Continue reading
Until a few months ago, we paid $1.99 for 16 oz. of frozen peas. Now it is $2.29 for 15 oz. That’s 23 percent inflation. Related: “Frozen food category surges amid inflation: ‘It’s a dramatic shift,’ says food exec” (Yahoo! Finance, May 2022): Saffron Road’s Durrani added tha … | Continue reading
Aside from immigration, the big political question in the U.S. is what percentage of GDP should be consumed and directed by government. In the old days, the Federal government was limited to some extent by the Constitution, but today the only limit on the great things that the Fe … | Continue reading
The local power company wants to sell us an $11/month surge protector that is sure to protect our home from a 100-million-volt lightning strike and then, because it works so well, charge an additional $6/month to clean up the damage when the surge protector fails to provide any p … | Continue reading
The 50 asylum-seekers sent to Martha’s Vineyard have reached sanctuary in the middle of a military base in the middle of an off-island forest. Where can the next group of migrants who want to escape to a properly governed Science-following state land? Here’s an email that I recei … | Continue reading
A friend whose teenage son is a fanatical Patriots fan indulged the boy and his brother with a trip to Miami to watch the Patriots-Dolphins game on 9/11. A mutual friend texted his opinion: Football is a barbarous gladiatorial display which sacrifices black bodies on the altar o … | Continue reading
A few media-following friends in the Northeast have been checking in, concerned that Hurricane Fiona, which knocked out power in Puerto Rico, is also trashing our neighborhood. They are reassured to learn that Puerto Rico is 1,000 miles from Palm Beach County, but it has made me … | Continue reading
Just as Floridians love to talk about the real estate market, a common topic of discussion at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) was “When does the market for used aircraft collapse?” I’m bearish on the little airplane market. Due to the reduced labor force participation rate in the U.S … | Continue reading
The arrival of one million migrants into Texas border towns is a minor issue. On the other hand, the arrival of 50 migrants into an island with vacant houses sufficient to hold 50,000 people (the summer population bump) was a crisis that required calling out the Maskachusetts Nat … | Continue reading
The American Economic Association’s rules for an upcoming gathering of approximately 13,000 people: (from https://conf.aeaweb.org/) They’re concerned enough about COVID-19 that they want everyone to wear an N95 mask (not professionally fitted, though, and hence potentially us … | Continue reading
How do people in the refugee-industrial complex think about their industry’s product? “DeSantis sending asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard divides Venezuelan Americans” (NBC): After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent two planes of mostly Venezuelan asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineya … | Continue reading
From the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center: “We stand with immigrants, with refugees,…” Should this be amended to “We stand with immigrants and refugees for up to 36 hours“? “MA National Guard Activated To Aid Martha’s Vineyard Migrants” (Patch): Gov. Charlie Baker will activat … | Continue reading
If you’re looking for something to do southwest of Oshkosh… Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin (KPDC). This is a quick crew car ride away from Effigy Mounds National Monument, a collection of massive earthen sculptures made by Elizabeth Warren’s ancestors during Joe Biden’s youth. Read … | Continue reading
… but they need to be “off island”. “‘I Ended Up on This Little Island’: Migrants Land in Political Drama” (New York Times, today): Ardenis Nazareth, newly arrived from Venezuela, was standing in a McDonald’s parking lot across the street from a San Antonio shelter a few days ag … | Continue reading
In the spring of 2020, the typical state governor ordered his/her/zir/their subjects to stay home and watch TV or play Xbox. A lot of us are still following the habits that we developed in 2020. The U.S. labor force participation rate: A business executive with whom I talked i … | Continue reading
Trying to get through my backlog of summer stories and photos… here are some miscellaneous thoughts from EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) 2022, which enjoyed record attendance of about 650,000 people (stats; each member of our family might have been counted 7 times, however, because th … | Continue reading
From May 9, 2022, S&P 500 down at least 6 percent since Joe Biden took office: Who wants to get bragging rights by calling the bottom on this market slide? I’m going to say that the correct value is 3,200 (pre-coronapanic value) plus 0 percent growth for 2020 when Americans cowe … | Continue reading
The latest CPI numbers are out today. What’s the correct level of panic? Here are a couple of mid-August pictures from Target: Prices were going up to fast that the “Sale!” numbers are actually higher than the regular prices, listed above (it isn’t a positional error; the … | Continue reading
Here’s an interesting Labor Day example of laboring in the Web development mines. Trying to book four tickets on JetBlue.com: After multiple retries, I called the 800-number and the automated system said to expect a 2-minute wait, but suggested going to jetblue.com/chat to res … | Continue reading
Happy Labor Day to all of those who failed to absorb “The Work versus Welfare Trade‐Off” (CATO, 2013). (Also, Happy Labor Day to those who are smart enough to refrain from labor!) Part of an email from a teacher in the Palm Beach County Public schools: … I have tested positive … | Continue reading
Here’s a book that I recently enjoyed, loosely related to my slavery as an expert witness: Anatomy of a Murder. It was turned into a 1959 film with some added twists (Jimmy Stewart, a combat B-24 pilot in World War II, is the star). Although the subject of the trial in the book/m … | Continue reading
…. so long as they’re not going to live in Connecticut. Here’s CT Senator Chris Murphy on immigration: “President Trump’s so-called immigration framework is a total non-starter. It uses Connecticut Dreamers as a bargaining chip to build a wall and rip thousands of families apar … | Continue reading
Prepping for a deposition last month in an inter partes review, a guy joined the call who is in his first year at Columbia University’s Law School (he knows enough about patents that it would make more sense for him to be teaching at Columbia, but that’s irrelevant for our purpos … | Continue reading
Congress and the Biden administration have signed up the working class to pay for the laptop class’s new electric cars ($7,500 each) and also for the gender studies degrees, and attempted degrees, earned by the children of the laptop class (“no one with a federally held loan has … | Continue reading
This was supposed to be the big year for Rainbow Flagism in Norway. Tourists are promised Queer Culture Year 2022: My 2SLGBTQQIA+ celebration experience got off to a reasonable start. Although I did not notice any rainbow flags in the airport, the underground train station car … | Continue reading
Here’s a new car being sold for $90,000 over sticker. In other words, the dealer gets $100,000 in profit while General Motors accepts perhaps $15,000 in profit. I still can’t figure out Why aren’t cars (and pinball machines) auctioned as they come out of the factory? At least … | Continue reading
Oslo might not be the best place for building tourist self-esteem. After two days in the city, here are a couple of signs: Here’s something else bizarre… an important symbol for this city is the tiger: I also learned that when a counter-serve restaurant offers you “potat … | Continue reading
I was on a call with an MIT professor who, after expressing his horror at the post-Roe age in which we somehow live, expressed the belief that the dictatorship of Ron DeSantis has prevented libraries in Florida from stocking the books that Americans should be reading now. I said … | Continue reading
A combination of inflation and stock market saggage means that Americans aren’t as rich as we thought we were. When we thought that we were crazy rich (2020-2021) and it was illegal to buy a variety of services, such as international travel to most destinations, we loaded up on r … | Continue reading
“This Teen Was Prescribed 10 Psychiatric Drugs. She’s Not Alone.” (New York Times, yesterday): One morning in the fall of 2017, Renae Smith, a high school freshman on Long Island, N.Y., could not get out of bed, overwhelmed at the prospect of going to school. In the following da … | Continue reading
“Home Appraised With a Black Owner: $472,000. With a White Owner: $750,000.” (New York Times, August 18): Last summer, Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, welcomed an appraiser into their house in Baltimore, hoping to take advantage of historically low interest rates and r … | Continue reading
A very loose companion to my own “Women in Science” piece (“Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it.”)… an article by an English professor who was fired (“denied tenure”) at Yale: what disgusted me the most was not the … | Continue reading
Checking a couple of recent news stories… “Placido Domingo’s name comes up in Argentina sex sect probe” (state-sponsored PBS) Opera star Placido Domingo’s name has appeared in an investigation of a sect-like organization in Argentina that also had U.S. offices and whose leaders … | Continue reading
Working through my backlog of summer photos, I stopped off in Denver during Pride Month. In traveling from California to Colorado, both states in which people say that they Follow Science, hardly anyone was wearing a mask: I stayed in Arvada, which is 90 percent white and 0.9 … | Continue reading
Digging through the summer photo backlog, a report on a June trip to San Diego where I slaved away as an expert witness on a software case in federal court (the jury stuck around to be interviewed by the attorneys after the trial and said that they understood and enjoyed my testi … | Continue reading
Today’s inflation news… “It Now Costs $300,000 to Raise a Child” (Wall Street Journal): The cost of raising a child through high school has risen to more than $300,000 because of inflation that is running close to a four-decade high, according to a Brookings Institution estimate … | Continue reading
Today’s inflation news… “It Now Costs $300,000 to Raise a Child” (Wall Street Journal): The cost of raising a child through high school has risen to more than $300,000 because of inflation that is running close to a four-decade high, according to a Brookings Institution estimate … | Continue reading
On May 1, 2022 I ordered my “free” (i.e., taxpayer-funded) COVID-19 tests. They arrived in today’s mail. They expire on September 9, 2022: For these to be useful, in other words, I need to copy the Pfizer CEO and add COVID-19 to my vaccinated-and-boosted body… within the next … | Continue reading
On May 1, 2022 I ordered my “free” (i.e., taxpayer-funded) COVID-19 tests. They arrived in today’s mail. They expire on September 9, 2022: For these to be useful, in other words, I need to copy the Pfizer CEO and add COVID-19 to my vaccinated-and-boosted body… within the next … | Continue reading
My favorite group on Facebook is the Golden Retriever Club. The gift that keeps on giving recently yielded a linguistic innovation. You know how people who are not, in fact, pregnant people will say “We’re pregnant” when a household member is a pregnant person? Here’s the natural … | Continue reading
My favorite group on Facebook is the Golden Retriever Club. The gift that keeps on giving recently yielded a linguistic innovation. You know how people who are not, in fact, pregnant people will say “We’re pregnant” when a household member is a pregnant person? Here’s the natural … | Continue reading
The elite-born Liz Cheney purportedly represents the interests of voters in Wyoming. Back in July, she stated that investigating the January 6 insurrection might be “the most important thing I ever do” and, therefore, was presumably devoting maximum effort to this project. Her … | Continue reading