Flower Shell

From Nick Gillespie:

Shotgun shells loaded with seeds (have to be hard seeds, of course, but many are). 

A video:

You are not a REAL Libertarian

It is true enough that I rarely go to Libertarian Party meetings anymore.  There are lots of reasons.  And about half of them can be found in this video...


Neanderbill and I were talking about this just the other day, in fact.  We are just not welcome.  Here's why...A whole lot of people have this view, literally, of the Nolan Chart.

And, yes, by that standard, I'm a socialist. To see if YOU are a socialist, take the quiz!

UPDATE:  Let's be careful.  1.  I'm a libertarian (small l). 2.  I consider myself a Libertarian (big L).  I'm registered LP, and I contribute to the party and to candidates.  3.  The point is that I often get TOLD by LP folks that I don't belong. 

We spend more time checking for "yo papiss, pliss!" at ideological checkpoints then we do actually trying to grow the party.  So I just stay home and write stuff.

The Golden Age of Macro Surrealism

Lebron von Strauss helpfully directed me to this blog, where we find the claim that (their version of) potential real GDP is below current real GDP.

Just like that, problem solved. Hey Paul, Mark & Brad: look at the chart. We are above potential!

Quiterbitching.

(clic the pic to better see that the economy has actually been above potential for 2 years now!)

Before you scoff, you should know there's a method to this madness:


When capacity utilization is above effective labor share, ED potential real GDP will be below real GDP. When capacity utilization is below effective labor share, ED potential real GDP will be above real GDP.

Say what?????

People, I didn't say it was a reasonable method, did I?

Further following his muse, the inspired blogger busts out this gem:

The path forward may not be a matter of raising real GDP, but of raising potential real GDP.

I guess this could be epic trolling, but I prefer to think of it as the epitome of Dali-onomics.

Given that the guy calls his measure "ED potential real GDP", I think we all know how to raise it, no?

Matt Yglesias: Amnesiac

In an otherwise sensible post explaining how capacity utilization is back to normal while industrial output lags behind trend, Matt says something truly remarkable:

"This highlights the very real and very high costs of achieving economic recovery by simply letting things run their course."

Wait, what?

Maybe Matt and I are subjects in different simulations, but I don't think that's what happened at all.

What about the nearly $800 billion stimulus?

What about bailing out GM?

What about "cash for clunkers"?

What about cutting the payroll tax for two years?

What about extending the Bush tax cuts?

What about the repeated extension of unemployment benefits?

"Simply letting things run their course" is about the last thing that's actually happened in the past 4 years.

7,000 extra page views per day, 4 days?

Anybody have any idea what could have caused this?  We got 7k+ extra page views per day, for four days, and then it stopped.

Extremely lame denial of service attack?  Bots looking for emails to harvest?  Some readers with extremely short attention spans?

Angus and I have no clue.  Very odd.  Never seen anything like it.

Selling

Thirty year old man leaves wife of ten years for 22 year old other woman.

Ex-wife uses this in marketing campaign.  Husband agrees it might work, pays for half of sign expenses.  Only in Oregon.

KPTV - FOX 12

Are Conservatives Libertarians? Are Libertarians Conservatives?

Several interesting articles.

1.  A piece by two people who really, really hate Ayn Rand, and are under the bizarre impression that Ayn Rand was a libertarian. In fact, libertarians split from Ayn Rand over just the sort of issues raised by the authors.  Most Objectivists I know are pretty scornful of the LP.  And most conservatives I know couldn't SPELL Ayn Rand.  The idea that Ayn Rand dominates conservatism.... strange.

2.  Welch and Gillespie try to talk sense into Jonah Goldberg and "Man" Coulter.   Man Coulter keeps coming back from drug laws, which she thinks conservative don't want, to solving the deficit problem, which we all KNOW that conservatives don't want.

3.  Kevin Vallier at BHL tries to claim that BHL is friendly EVEN to conservatives.  That's because BHL is friendly to everyone.  They are like little wiggly puppies, that's what they do.  They're so cute!

Hard Balls Banned In Toronto

As Jackie Blue notes, "Finally, the kids are safe."

Toronto bans balls of almost all kinds (apparently really soft balls, like Nerf or Harry Reid's, are still okay).

This includes, remarkably, soccer balls. Yes it does.

Grand Game: Inflation Edition

Angus points out that advocating good policies that are impossible is bad.

As a balance, I submit that it is also unfortunate when we are told we need to pursue bad policies that are unfortunately all too feasible.

In this article...well, check it out.

My own favorite 'graf:

Had the central bankers of the world understood that inflation in asset prices could be just as bad as, if not worse than, inflation in the prices of consumer goods, this would not be necessary. But they did not. So they did nothing to resist soaring home prices, just as they had seen no reason to worry about the Internet stock bubble.

Golly sakes alive, Jasper; where to start?

1. "Understand"? The asset bubble was largely an intentional consequence of monetary, regulatory, and tax policies of the federal government. It was not a thunderstorm, something that just happened randomly. It was a POLICY.
2. The fact that incorrect asset prices resulting from government policies on money, interest, and taxes cause asset bubbles is one of the central tenets of the Austrian Business Cycle theory. I myself have always been skeptical of that theory, but it accounts for the events of 2001 - 2010 beautifully and quite accurately.

It's not the bust. The problem is the freakin' boom. And the idea that inflation solves the bust is just askin' for another boom.

Noticias

Some links where I said things, and other people wrote them down and put them on the internet.

1. Politico: On the President's 50th birthday.

2. Duke News Tip: WWE Smackdown!

3. Chinese news magazine San Lian Lifeweek: (Specific article here, on the budget deal) Entire mag

4. The Hill, about the debt ceiling vote.

UPDATE: A commenter notes that there have been other such instances in the past, and my poor record as a predictor of future events should impeach the value of future such predictions. An example, here, in Time. I actually said, "BHO is unelectable!"

Good one....and a fair point. No way you should make trades based on my predictions, and in fact you can likely make money by doing the opposite of what I suggest. I'd thank that brave commenter, but s/he showed the courage of her/his convictions by remaining anonymous. Not so brave after all...

Clouded Memory

Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at
Our Fingertips

Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu & Daniel Wegner
Science, forthcoming

Abstract: The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines,
has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can "Google" the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

Better than Ezra?

This is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel and for that I apologize. I try not to look at Ezra's blog, but when Mark Thoma links to something, sometimes I can't help myself.

You know, his blog wasn't always this bad. Maybe since his listserve got shutdown, he's been on his own a bit more?

People, Ezra thinks you don't know how tax brackets work and that you don't know the difference between a tax cut and a tax increase.

Let me beak it down for him:

If your tax rates go down from where they are, that is a tax cut. If your tax rates go up from where they were, that is a tax increase. If they stay the same, then there is no cut or increase.

So it makes no sense (except I guess in Ezra-world) to even use the phrase "Obama tax cuts" which appears in some variation more than 5 times in his post.

In fact, his post ends with the following bit of awesomeness:

"Under Obama's tax plan, everyone gets a tax cut"

How could the Post fire Dave Weigel and leave this guy on the payroll?

Angus and Ezra live on different planets

Let me just quote three of Ezra's sentences from the WAPO to illustrate my point:

A $787 billion stimulus? Yes, it was too small. But everything Washington does is always too small.

he-he-he!