I still think that technocratic economists select better monetary policies than elected politicians would. But after 2008, that’s not saying much.

Philadelphia is in the same big mess for the same reasons as Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, and Oakland: pension promises and public union benefits that cannot possibly be met. It is unfair and immoral to keep raising taxes on city residents to support benefit promises that should not have been made, and cannot possibly be kept no matter how high taxes go. Philadelphia should declare bankruptcy.

It is a really weird mental block we have against paying out of pocket for medical bills, particularly since this is probably the most, not the least, important thing we can spend our money on. Having a high-deductible health insurance plan has been a real eye-opener for me. As in this post from Maggie’s Farm, I too have found doctors will very often give a discount for cash. My son has a great sports medicine guy (he plays 3 varsity sports so we seem to be at the doctor a lot for one injury or another) who gives us a $40 cash rate for a visit. Further, when he needs X-rays, the radiology place downstairs usually does 2-3 films of the injured appendage du jour for around $35. The X-ray place has a special cash price book they pull out when I show up. I shudder to think what rate they charge insurance companies. And t just think of the piles of infrastructure from my doctors office to the insurance company to Washington DC that would have had to come into play had I sought 3rd party payments for these bills. And when it comes to the expensive things, it is amazing what price cuts you can find with just a little shopping. Previously, I had spent less time in my whole life shopping medical care prices than I had price-shopping my last hard drive. But when my son had to get a CT scan on his head (yes, another sports injury) we saved hundreds of dollars just calling a second place for a quote. In fact, even mentioning that we were going to price shop the first quote got a few hundred dollars knocked off. The lack of any rigor in health care pricing is just appalling, and will only get worse as government / single payer solutions crowd out approaches like mine under Obamacare.

Vigorous economic growth does indeed require investment, but the nationalities of the consumers to whom the fruits of this growth are directly sold – no less than the nationalities of the persons whose savings fund the investment – are irrelevant. In principle, economic growth sufficient to “meet the nation’s fiscal challenges” requires no increase in exports. What is required are policies that spur entrepreneurs and investors to produce more goods and services demanded by consumers; whether the persons who directly consume the increased outputs of American firms live in Jakarta or in Jacksonville is of little significance.

A common argument in favor of American education is that it exposes students to a wide variety of career options. How are kids supposed to decide their course in life if they don’t know their choices? Unfortunately, this argument has a big problem: The career options for which the typical American curriculum prepares you are almost completely disconnected from the modern American economy. Indeed, they are almost completely disconnected from any economy - past, present, or future.

As the European Union attempts to force it to accept an aid package, Ireland’s government is close to being unable to sell its debt on the open market, a fate that befell Greece last spring. Bond spreads in Spain, Italy and Portugal are also rising, with the Portuguese finance minister warning on Monday that his country may have to accept a rescue package too. In the short term the EU will kick the can down the road via a temporary Irish bail-out, just as it did with Greece. It is likely to do the same with Portugal. But it has finally dawned on the EU that a rolling process that places private bank losses on to public balance sheets could leave its governments insolvent too.

Janet Yellen, vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, told the Wall Street Journal that without massive printing of money “I’m having a hard time seeing where really robust growth can come from.” Let’s see, just thinking out loud here: enterprise, entrepreneurship, the expansion of the division of labor, savings, investment, capital accumulation, trade, that sort of thing. There are some books variously published for the last 500 years that cover these sorts of issues.

A recent study suggests that simply seeing healthy choices on a menu satisfies our desire to be healthy, causing us to be more likely to choose more indulgent foods when we actually place our order.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said “some work” still needed to be done on bridging divides over currency valuations.
Some work needs to be done? Really? That’s like planning a trip to Mars, drawing a picture of a rocket ship with a crayon and proudly announcing “some work needs to be done”.