Monthly Archives: January 2012

Mankiwniversity

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

Harvard econ professor, econ textbook author and sometimes New York Times columnist, Greg Mankiw points out that his Intro to Econ course, or Econ 10, is the largest course at Harvard.  Story here. I wonder if Mankiw has given any … Continue reading →

Posted in Business or Product Idea, Economics, Education, Innovation | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Limit the freebies

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

As I’ve written about before, one problem with health care in our country is caused by the government mandate to provide emergency services regardless of patient’s ability to pay in the Emergency Medical Treatment Act from 1986.  As the linked … Continue reading →

Posted in Health Care, Power of Incentives | 1 Comment

Lemonade Stand Economics

Posted on January 29, 2012 by

Thanks to Russ Robert of Cafe Hayek for pointing me to Jerry Jordan’s Investors Business Daily article,  Government Accounting is Like Lemonade Stand Economics. I attempted to explain the same topic that Jordan writes about last September in my post, … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Finance, Power of Incentives, Pricing | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Did you get that hot Christmas toy?

Posted on January 28, 2012 by

Last night I heard this sound bite from President Obama: If you [colleges] can’t stop tuition going up, your funding from taxpayers will go down. I wonder if he has considered that the funding from taxpayers is the very cause of … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Government, Politics, Power of Incentives | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Incentives Do Matter?

Posted on January 28, 2012 by

Commenter Marko, on the Carpe Diem blog asks to this post about President Obama’s State of the Union address: By saying that he wants to cut taxes in certain sectors to encourage or help them, doesn’t Obama admit that higher … Continue reading →

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What happened?

Posted on January 28, 2012 by

While reading the following portion of this morning’s Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Interview, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a metaphor occurred to me. “What happened before in state government was that they would just spend, and then in April … Continue reading →

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Sounding Off

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

In this post, I pointed out that a big problem in our society is the strong encouragement we give to getting your voice heard, while not encouraging thinking, researching and applying reason to arrive at our positions. In this one, … Continue reading →

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SOTU

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

Here’s Obama’s SOTU in a nutshell: I’ve picked winners.  I’ve picked losers.   I want to continue to exceed the authority granted to me in the Constitution to pick more winners and losers. I want to work with everybody in … Continue reading →

Posted in Government, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

All Sorts of Awesome

Posted on January 25, 2012 by

This is all sorts of awesome (from Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution).   Key highlights: Stanford computer science Prof offers online course on Artificial Intelligence. 160,000 people take it. On campus class size dwindles from 200 to 30, as more … Continue reading →

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The Backbone Hypothesis

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

I enjoyed Thomas Sowell’s column this week, South Carolina Message. Sowell summarizes the surges in the multiple candidates against Romney: The more fundamental message is that the Republican primary voters do not want Mitt Romney, even if the Republican establishment … Continue reading →

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