I was just thinking about a friend who had her identity stolen, and had no backup beyond her driver’s license which was the one document that had been stolen. If she had a passport, she would not have had her life ruined. It has cost her tens of thousands of dollars. The average American makes …
Category Archives: Uncategorized
UBI-based inflation?
Many in the economic center and economic right are claiming that the stimulus payments are the cause of the inflation we are seeing now. One such article is in the latest Economist. It is a rather unusual article for the Economist because it doesn’t include any graphs. What if we actually do some basic graphing …
Republican governors 2022
Let’s do a quick roundup of Republican governors and see if they are fit for office. Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott would rather spend millions of dollars flying refugees to Martha’s Vineyard than ensuring they have the resources necessary for the ongoing hurricane season. Does this seem like a reasonable use of taxpayer money? Eric …
Commonwealth free trade is a bad idea by itself
One reason a lot of people support Brexit has been for the United Kingdom to create a European Union-like organization among its commonwealth realms, and they argue this will increase the United Kingdom’s power projection. Let’s compare what this will be compared to the European Union which the United Kingdom has left. European Union …
Continue reading “Commonwealth free trade is a bad idea by itself”
Putin has destroyed Russia
If you look at the Russian population pyramid, there are several important places to remember which are clear in this population pyramid as I have clearly marked. Russia didn’t have to have its current baby bust. If Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine and focused on upskilling Russians, growing their domestic economy, and improving the quality of …
Ideal transportation system
Going from smallest to largest… We’ll use the Capitol Building of the United States of America as our reference point, because a large percentage of Americans have visited it at least once in their lives, and if you haven’t, you need to. LEVEL 0: Private cars First of all, we will always have cars. 20% …
How Trump became president
The presidency of Donald Trump was one of the worst America ever had. Even though he had few legislative accomplishments, America won’t be safe until the courts are unstacked from what he did. Donald Trump didn’t even win the popular vote, but reduced turnout and a lack of campaigning in three states gave him a …
Sending surplus to taxpayers is bad economics
On the surface, to someone who doesn’t understand macroeconomics, sending surplus money back to taxpayers sounds like a great idea. It sounds like a benefit to taxpayers to give them relief and helps people out. Right? But in reality, it is not a good policy. This creates a pro-cyclical fiscal policy which means people pay …
Continue reading “Sending surplus to taxpayers is bad economics”
Wishful thinking as national policy
New CDC advice: push all of your money in bonds when the stock market goes up! I’m a little frustrated here… This whole idea of loosening up our policies when they start to work is moronic. We cannot do science via popular opinion, we need to do policy based on science, which is based on …
Up and coming democracies
I just wrote a post examining which countries are democratic enough that we should seriously consider extending visa-free travel to them. I identified 27 different countries where there is no good reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to travel to the US and Canada without a visa, and I think we need to update our …