Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Paul Campos: Death, Taxes and GOP rhetoric

Campos: "This Arthur Brooks WSJ article illustrates most of the classic tropes of Republican anti-tax rhetoric: (1) Talk only about federal income taxes.... (2) Focus on marginal rates rather effective rates.... (3) Treat taxes as an artificial intrusion on “the market".... This kind of selective blindness allows for statistics such as the claim that “60% of Americans consume more in government services than they pay in taxes.” Such statistics are based on the idea that Bill Gates and a single mother living below the poverty line are consuming precisely the same amount of government services in the form of the existence of courts of law, legislation, police protection, and indeed the entire structure of the contemporary regulatory state. So since Gates isn’t eligible for food stamps, that means he’s consuming less in government services than someone living below the poverty line."

Chong, Jorda, and Taylor: The Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson Hypothesis (pdf)

Andrew Haldane: Banking on the State (pdf)

Andrew Haldane: The $100 Billion Question (pdf)

Matthew Yglesias: The Strange Logic of the Overclass

Yglesias: "Financial advisor Mike Donahue whines in the WSJ: “I have more than most only because I’ve worked harder than most and because I am a saver.” I find it literally shocking that people say things like this. And I always go back to the case of the Salvadoran guys who moved all my furniture.... I certainly make more money than those guys. But whether or not I work longer hours than they do... you’d have to be clinically insane to think that writing my blog entails working harder than they do. In the real world, the reason I earn more than Salvadoran movers is the same as the reason I work less hard—I have more valuable skills, and people with valuable skills can demand both more money and cushier working conditions. But it’s not as if those guys were too lazy to become American political pundits, they were born in El Salvador in the middle of a civil war and never had a chance to obtain the relevant skills."

John Emerson: Competence isn’t the issue

Emerson: "CBS news published a rumor invented by disgraced plagiarist and rightwing operative Ben Domenech.... [A]ll that Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz had to say about the episode was that “the flare-up underscores how quickly the battle over a Supreme Court nominee — or even a potential nominee — can turn searingly personal.” Just another he-said she-said disagreement.... Corrupt, conspiratorial organizations need a demimonde of lowlifes and hoodlums.... After his disgrace, Domenech did not have to get a job in food service.... He wasn’t even banned from the major media for long.... All these people... are completely competent... they don’t see their jobs the way we do.... There should be a camp for liberals who use the words “competent” and “incompetent” all the time. (Call it the Dukakis Memorial Re-education Center)."

Kate Mackenzie: Could self-interest green China’s economy?

Mackenzie: "a recent article by Xie Zhenhua, China’s lead negotiator at Copenhagen and a vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission which oversees China’s economic policymaking, indicates that fears around climate change as a threat to the country’s development are rising: “The scale of economic destruction would be equivalent to that of the two world wars and the Great Depression combined” if global temperatures rise by 3 degrees (5.4 Fahrenheit) to 4 degrees Celsius, Xie said. “Human beings and the Earth cannot afford such disasters.” This argument moves the debate on from “climate change is bad, but development is our first priority” towards “development is our first priority, and climate change may threaten that”. That in turn suggests that the concerns of Mr Xie at least are starting to focus on risks that are longer-term than the next quarterly GDP report. The realpolitik behind this is elegantly laid out by Brad DeLong..." Elegantly?!

Dan Froomkin: Holder Picks Wrong Crowd For Defense Of Military Commissions

Froomkin: "[W]henever he got back around to trying to explain why one would ever pick a military commission over a civilian trial, he was at best amorphous. "When selecting between these two weapons, the choice should be based on a case-specific assessment of the threat at hand, the evidence in possession and a careful consideration of what will best allow us to achieve justice," he said. And don't expect any specific rationales.... Holder's defense of military commissions was ultimately less an argument than a series of assertions. "[M]ilitary commissions are also useful in the proper circumstances, and we need them, too," he said. "[I]n some cases, military commissions are not only appropriate, but also necessary to convict and neutralize terrorists." The nicest thing he was able to say about them, really, was that they are a lot like civilian trials."

Bruce Bartlett: The End Of The Think Tank

Bartlett: "The original think tank was probably the Brookings Institution... a sort of university without students.... Brookings has always had a moderately liberal perspective.... AEI tried to match the quality of Brookings' staff, but it was a lot harder.... This began to change in the 1970s as stagflation made many conservative economic ideas... more academically respectable... increasing demand... among policymakers... frustrated by the slow, plodding style of AEI and Brookings... From Feulner's vision the Heritage Foundation.... Rather than fill its staff with aging Ph.D.s, he hired people with master's degrees who had perhaps studied with the small number of conservatives in academia. Their job wasn't to do original research, but to take the research that had already been done by conservative academics, summarize it and apply it to the specific legislative issues.... Instead of writing books of several hundred pages, Heritage studies were typically 10 pages or less..."

Kate Mackenzie: Brad DeLong begs China and India to get on board with climate