A mustache interview

For reasons I’m not entirely clear on, the May Monthly Mustache Interview at the American Mustache Institute website is with me. As for why it is only now, with just a week left in May, appearing online, I am entirely clear on that: I was embarrassingly slow about answering the questions. Anyway, the AMI interview [...]

Paul Romer explains why we need more science PhDs than we think we do

It’s always fun when a future Nobel-prize-winner comments on your blog. It’s even better when the comment can be recycled as a post of its own. First, a little context. I was annotating James Pethokoukis’s list of “five ideas that both liberals and conservatives might agree on that also could actually improve economic growth” (itself [...]

A major advance in airport design

A lack of conveniently located electrical outlets to plug your laptop (or phone charger or whatever) into at the airport is one of the great scourges of American travelers. So I was really impressed with this seemingly jury-rigged solution at the Charlotte airport. A long outlet strip was attached to the outside of a moving [...]

A non-bogus conservative argument on taxes

Just because I go ballistic on people who claim that tax cuts increase tax receipts doesn’t mean I think the conservative case on taxes is wrong. In fact, I think people like Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow are actually damaging that conservative case in a big way by spouting such obvious nonsense about the impact [...]

Savannah photo album: Shipping containers, plus pork rinds for breakfast

What you see there is a big container ship headed down the Savannah River, bound for China or some such place. I didn’t have time to do a good job of framing the photo, but you get the basic idea: Charming, leafy old downtown Savannah in the foreground, modern commerce floating by in the background. [...]

Is it really true that no matter what the tax rate, tax receipts are always the same?

The WSJ ran an opinion piece Tuesday by David Ranson, head of research at H.C. Wainwright & Co. Economics, on what he calls “Hauser’s Law”–the observation apparently made by “San Francisco investment economist Kurt Hauser” 15 years ago that: No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at [...]

A chart for the corporation-bashers among you

You request. I deliver. Here’s the chart that commenter Brew asked for: GRAPHIC BY FEILDING CAGE/TIME.COM There’s a bunch of caveats I feel compelled to throw out: Corporate income is taxed twice–once as corporate income and once as either capital gains or dividend income, which are both counted under personal taxes. Also, economists teach that [...]

In Savannah

Assuming that our nation’s excellent and reliable air transportation system cooperates, I will be spending Wednesday and Thursday in Greater Metropolitan Savannah on a reporting trip. I have a couple of roboposts lined up for today (Wednesday), and hope to share some lovely trip photos after that. But if there turn out to be any [...]

Economic growth ideas that ‘liberals and conservatives might agree on’

James Pethokoukis at U.S. News reads my cover story on the next president and the economy and notes correctly that despite what it says on the cover, it doesn’t really offer any prescription for economic growth (I had nothin’ to do with that cover language). Then he goes all Matt Miller and offers “five ideas [...]

Time to retire the phrase ‘über-cool’

PRASHANT PANJIAR/Livewire Images for Time This photo, which accompaniesd a disturbing story by Hannah Beech, was taken on the outskirts of Naypyidaw, Burma’s new capital. The billboard is advertising a new hotel–apparently there isn’t much in Naypyidaw but new hotels. In case you’re having trouble reading the words on it, they are: THE THINGAHA ÜBER [...]