I somehow summoned the energy necessary to watch the New Hampshire Republican debate on Saturday. Like the seemingly dozens of GOP primary debates held so far, the usual trainwreck transpired. Jon Huntsman spoke in Chinese briefly to try to show how much he knew about China, not realizing that the nationalists in the Republican party… Continue reading Effective corporate tax rates are not that high
Two different kinds of libertarians
Tim Worstall wrote a response to George Monbiot’s recent article and by proxy a blog post I wrote a short while ago. I do not intend to get into a back and forth between different blogs here, but one thing brought up by Worstall — both in a comment he left on my blog and… Continue reading Two different kinds of libertarians
The new study on value-added teacher evaluations and its limitations
One of the most interesting debates surrounding the Education Reform Movement has been about teacher evaluations. Education reformers operate off the assumption that bad teachers and bad schools are to blame for the achievement gap between poor and rich children, making teacher evaluations an important component of their reform program. Problematically for reformers, the value-added… Continue reading The new study on value-added teacher evaluations and its limitations
One other reason libertarians fear environmentalists
George Monbiot has an excellent blog post today explaining more clearly and with more citations a point I made a few weeks ago. Everyone should read Monbiot’s post today, but the short of it is this: libertarians have to deny the existence of environmental harm because not doing so sinks their entire property rights ideology.… Continue reading One other reason libertarians fear environmentalists
Piracy really costs the economy nothing
Brad Plumer wrote an article yesterday trying to determine how much online piracy costs the economy. The Movie Picture Association of America claims it costs $20.5 billion per year. Other analyses of the cost — including one from the Government Accountability Office — call that figure absurd. But this debate is completely wrong from the… Continue reading Piracy really costs the economy nothing