Category: economics
Why I Continue to Subscribe to the Local Newspaper
I continue to subscribe to the local newspaper for a handful of reasons. general coverage of national politics excellent coverage of local politics high-quality...
Comments on the Arlington Central School District Budget (2010-2011)
The Board of Education of the Arlington Central School District has made the difficult decision to close an elementary school in order to reduce the district...
Dear Amtrak
You disappoint me. You don’t understand pricing. Or perhaps you simply have no experience of buying things with your own money. In any case, what are you ...
Competitive Pricing of Substitutes in Transportation
Nate Silver has an interesting, if partial, analysis of statistics comparing modes of transportation based on the National Household Travel Survey. He wonders w...
Electronic Medical Records
On Marketplace this morning, they mentioned that Obama wants electronic medical records. Why is it any of Obama’s damn business? I haven’t noticed a...
What Benefit are Wire Services in a Well-Connected World?
As a former employee of The Associated Press, it’s been somewhat embarrassing to watch their plodding attempts to control data which has already escaped f...
Pretend You’re a Chainsaw
During a depression, wages are sticky downward. That is, they do not drop quickly, though prices do. Instead, jobs are lost. Fine. I’m going to pretend I&...
Painful Balancing
The Arlington Central School District is treating this budget planning a bit differently than the past few, because of the severe fiscal pressures. This is a go...
Tanzanian Millers
Why aren’t there more local millers in Tanzania? Or, why is international aid or investment required in order to process cassava, as this story on Marketp...
Increasing Employment
Do you know what provides lots of jobs? Inefficiency. While touring China, [a businessman] came upon a team of nearly 100 workers building an earthen dam with s...
For All Debts, Public and Private
As a young man with few dollars, I used to spend some time admiring the engraving on those few I had. I’ve long been struck by the phrase printed on Feder...
Economic Stimulus Package: No Taxes
The bank just sent a summary statement of the escrow account we use to pay the local and school property taxes. One achieves a certain distance from the taxatio...
Marshalls’ View of Over-Production
The Marshalls department store has a great advertisement playing now, on the subject of over-production, which I would re-post here for your enjoyment, if it we...
It All Averages Out in the End, Does It?
The law of large numbers does not invalidate garbage in, garbage out.
Deferred Consumption
I recently subscribed to a number of podcasts in an effort to drown out the unbearable background noise in the Fishkill office: Fox News. One of them was a prog...
Pirate Gold
The Somali pirates who have been very active in recent months have been asking for dollars, not gold. Moneychangers offer wads of new US dollar notes, the only ...