N. Gregory Mankiw sheds some light on Congressman Charlie Rangel’s tax reform proposal.

Have you ever heard Stephen Colbert make a joke about rich Republicans and thought to yourself, Hey, that’s not quite right? True, the GOP includes lots of upper-middle-class professionals (e.g. your orthodontist). But just about everywhere one looks are very, very wealthy people (e.g. George Soros and, um, Stephen Colbert) who vote for [...]

New York City beefed up its regulations for child care centers in 2005, driving lots of tiny day cares into bureacratic limbo or out of business altogether. One of requirements that has proved trickiest is that day care centers must have two separate exits (or “means of egress,” in city lingo) onto the sidewalk. . [...]

It’s incredible how different Brits sound if they come from Bristol (South West England) rather than, say, Leicester (East Midlands). Map and audio clips here.

This weekend I am attending the Reason Foundation’s Reason in DC conference, which is something of a release party for their new Reason.tv web site and their Drew Carey Project, a series of shorts hosted by Drew Carey on a variety of policy issues (the first one is now online). They also unveiled a major personnel [...]

Fark.com pointed me to an article about the recent vandalization of a Che Guevara memorial in Venezuela. Why it was made of something as vandal-friendly as glass is beyond me, but its destruction is rather poetic. I think the people of Venezuela get it… as opposed to their ruling class.

Paul Krugman’s new book gets a harsh review… in the New York Times.

Dani Rodrik wonders whether “the econ-blogosphere is sustainable.” Emphasis mine: Two things happened in the last twenty-four hours which made me wonder if some of the best economics blogs may be on their way out. First, an economist with a very high-quality blog told me that he was not sure if he had made the [...]

Three women have been hurt by falling into Tate Modern’s latest installation - a crack in the floor. At 548 feet long, up to three feet deep and 10inches wide, it zigzags the length of the Turbine Hall and has been described as a highly original work of art. From the UK Daily Mail.

So it begins. “First boomer applies for Social Security,” says the Associated Press. Her name is Kathleen Casey-Kirschling. She’s from Cherry Hill, NJ, and she has five grandchildren. You’ve all heard by now of Social Security’s upcoming multi-trillion dollar insolvency, due largely to the baby boomers. Ms. Casey-Kirschling is but the first. Nothing new there. Accounting troubles [...]

I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. – Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957 I think that the government needs to step in and subsidize all housing, a type of rentalcare program. Al americans have a right to affordable, safe housing. We should not let greedy landlords [...]

A former New York classmate of mine just relocated to Sydney, Australia. His new blog documents the cultural differences (no tipping?!) and some surprising similarities. There is Fox News in Australia. Seriously, wtf? I know Rupert Murdoch and News Corps are Australian and all, but FOX NEWS?! And not Fox News Australia. Fox News [...]

Now that more than 26 million Americans play golf, it is hard to imagine that the sport was once enjoyed by only the wealthiest handful of individuals. But until the mid-1800s, golf was prohibitively expensive, and not just because of club membership dues or greens fees. It was also partly due to the [...]

According to Michele Hernandez, who has earned millions advising teenage applicants, the trick is pretending you’re a do-gooder who hates rich people. She thought he might appear to be a privileged teenager without much substance. So she advised him to write about why he had left his public high school in suburban New Jersey. “We had [...]

Via Don Luskin comes this link to the most interesting item of the day: a graph that shows federal income tax rates on various income levels in 1990 (before Clinton raised taxes), in 2000, and in 2005 (after the 2001 Bush tax cuts kicked in). It looks like the 2001 cuts basically restored tax [...]

It’s an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Take U.S. university professors, for instance. Richard Posner writes: An ironic counterpoint to university leftism is the increasing, and increasingly successful, imitation of business firms by America’s colleges and universities. The leading universities are becoming giant corporations with multi-hundred-million dollar (or even billion dollar) budgets. As they grow, they [...]

Partisan Republican Ann Coulter seems to be a devout Christian. Though I do not share her faith, I hope it gives her strength. But I get the impression that she thinks America would be a better place if we were all Christians. Quoth CNN’s Political Ticker: [CNBC personality Donny] Deutsch, himself Jewish, continued to press Coulter [...]

Estrogen?