Durham's Bull

Earnings Growth by Age

A nice post with a great chart from Zubin Jelveh. 

Obama the Centrist

The lead article from this week's Economist evaluates Obama's rhetorical move to the center, in spite of his voting record.

Sullivan provides the full text of Obama's recent speech from Independence, MO where he targets right-leaning independents. 

Everybody Move to the Back of the Bus

Matt Yglesias and John Schwenkler have a great couple of posts (here, and here) on the relative advantages of buses to rail.

I must say that my experience with buses has been pretty pleasant thus far.  I took the bus from Braddock Rd to the Pentagon at least once a week this past spring, and never had a bad experience.

The closest I came was this one time when a crazy old guy jacked up some nerdy bureaucrat for being too loquacious while he was trying to sleep.  It was pretty amazing.  As the great Walter E. Williams once said, there a number of ways of resolving conflict.  In fact, violence is such an effective remedy that the government sees the need to monopolize it.

Anyway, back to the buses, why should they be financed publicly?  The usual answer to this question is access.  I don't buy it - even with expensive gas.  I can't help but think of the amazing competition for riders from Washington to New York.  Here, here, here, here, and here just to name a few.  These offer leather seats, free wireless, etc. for as low as $20 one way and $35 round trip.  Some even had limited-time offers for free one-way trips. 

You would never see any of these things in a government financed mode of transportation.  Competition is the very thing that disappears due to the crowding-out effect of public financing, and this is why costs never come down.

Rusty Old American Dream

Brad DeLong points out that GM has had it rough for quite some time now. 

In a little shameless self-promotion, I'll note that Koch Industries, the largest privately held company in the world, has outpaced the S&P 500 by over 2200 times since 1961.

The time frame is off by about 10 years, but the story doesn't change substantially.  You can do the math on how much better Koch has fared than GM. 

Plotting the Politics of the States

Here.

Colorado's the closest to being libertarian, but surprisingly enough, Iowa and Minnesota are pretty close as well.

Gas is Cheap?

"Compared to prices in most other industrialized nations, however, the American national average of $4 a gallon is a bargain."

So says the NY Times. 

It's true - by the time you figure in subsidies and relatively low gas taxes by international standards, we should consider ourselves lucky.

I'm always struck by comparisons of a gallon of gas relative to a gallon of some other commodity - e.g. milk, water, etc. 

The Future of the Newspaper Industry

Becker and Posner offer their two cents. 

I imagine that there will still be a large number of people who will continue to want hard copies for a variety of reasons.  It really is a different product. 

I, however, am not one of these people.  I love the fact that I can access most any story via the internet for free, and I'll pay for the fact that it ruins my eyes later.

Top Public Intellectuals

Last month ForeignPolicy.com held a poll to determine the world's top public intellectuals.  The results were ridiculous. 

The situation reminds me of what Malcom Gladwell dubbed a "mismatch" in selection process. 

They wanted thoughtful responses from credible people.  Instead, a snarky economist might suggest that they simply found out who was most popular among typical FP readers with relatively low opportunity costs, and/or were particularly psychologically motivated to respond.  This would, in fact, explain the results fairly well.

How ought they have designed the contest?  Leave it in the comments.

The Regressivity of Carbon Taxes

A nice post from PostModernConservative on why carbon taxation is disproportionately hard on the poor.

Blog Power

In the same article as the previous post, Brooks also has an interesting note on the power of the blog.

"Moreover, most of these writers did not rise through the official channels of the conservative or libertarian establishments. By and large, they didn’t do the internships or take part in the young leader programs that were designed to replenish “the movement.” Instead, they found their voices while blogging. The new technology allowed them to create a new sort of career path and test out opinions without much adult supervision."

The notion reminds me of Polanyi's philosophy of science classic "The Republic of Science."  On the whole the blogosphere is quite meritocratic.

In a way, the self publishing allows thinkers to bypass the traditional production process for ideas.  It is very much a decentralized alternative to hierarchy of the journal process of the academy. 

It is not without its costs - lots of blogs are trash.  That said, many informal processes have arisen to separate the good from the bad, and the blogging process has been on net quite valuable.  I might even go as far as to say that it is as valuable in the dissemination and refinement of ideas as the journal process - if for no other reason than the speed of transmission.