Category: Economics

Up Earth Creek without a paddle [repost]

Up Earth Creek without a paddle [repost]

| July 16, 2014 | Reply

[I originally wrote this post back in 2007. As we hit the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, it still says everything I think about our past and current space efforts.] I am a child of the Space Age (or, to use Robert Heinlein’s phrase from his ‘Future History‘ timeline, the False Dawn of […]

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Obamacare and the Subversive Masses

Obamacare and the Subversive Masses

| January 1, 2014 | Reply

It is clear that with the start of 2014, the Obama Administration — as many (including myself) predicted — wants to declare victory with Obamacare and go home. It is also clear to many of us — but apparently not to the mainstream media — that the Obamacare trainwrecks just keep on coming and are […]

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Obamacare and the Three Errors

Obamacare and the Three Errors

| October 29, 2013 | 2 Replies

[made some minor edits and corrected a few typos] A friend of mine, a staunch Obamacare supporter, made a comment the other day, saying in effect, “Since you Republicans are complaining about the lousy website launch, you must have already conceded the argument on healthcare reform itself.” Well, no. The current mess we find ourselves […]

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<strike>Three</strike> Four must-read Friday links

Three Four must-read Friday links

| September 20, 2013 | Reply

  First, Megan McArdle: “Banking without risk is impossible“: The fundamental fact of a banking crisis, which is different from a crisis in any other industry, is that if people believe a financial institution to be bankrupt, it actually is bankrupt. As Arnold Kling puts it, banks exist to reconcile the desire of households to […]

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Lookout, Hollywood — GTA V makes $800 million in 24 hours

Lookout, Hollywood — GTA V makes $800 million in 24 hours

| September 18, 2013 | Reply

Over the past decade, I have found it interesting that Hollywood continues to be portrayed as a glamorous, serious business, while the video game industry is seen as a haven for nerds at best, and a cause of real-life violence at worst. What that overlooks is that the video game industry is more lucrative than […]

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“The Government”: a parody of “The Office”

| September 10, 2013 | Reply

Jim Geraghty, in his National Review Morning Jolt e-mail newsletter (a must-read; sign up here), gave a link to this new web series, “The Government”. It’s a parody of “The Office”, except that — as far as I can tell — most of the examples cited in the episode are real. The problems with parodies […]

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The Peter Pinnacle

The Peter Pinnacle

| August 25, 2013 | Reply

Michael Swaine has been around, well, possibly even longer than I have, and has been far more prolific as an author and editor in both the programming and personal computer industries (many will remember him as an editor and author at Dr. Dobb’s Journal). Possibly inspired by recent events, he just coined the following twist […]

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Dell drops keyboardless Windows RT tablet

Dell drops keyboardless Windows RT tablet

| August 20, 2013 | Reply

Over at IT World (via Slashdot) comes the news that Dell has stopped selling its Windows RT tablet without a keyboard (which had been priced at $299) and now only sells a Win RT tablet with a keyboard at $479: Dell made several changes to the RT offers on its website. By Friday evening it had […]

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The continuing student loan debacle

The continuing student loan debacle

| August 19, 2013 | Reply

Matt Tabbi at Rolling Stone has a (deservedly) scathing article on the growing student loan bubble, something that Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has been writing about for years. Tabbi takes some cheap shots at the Right, but he’s pretty scathing on Obama as well.: Obama had already set himself up as a great champion of […]

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Things that can’t go on forever, won’t.

Things that can’t go on forever, won’t.

| August 5, 2013 | Reply

George Mellon over at the New York Sun writes: How does an investor react to the news that a propped-up and thus over-priced asset may lose its props? His natural urge is to sell, of course, and that urge will soon be reflected in a decline in the asset’s price. So it is with Treasury […]

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