Paradox of Choice Paradoxically Untrue

Tyler Cowen dubs the paradox of choice -- the idea that people become unhappy when given too many choices -- "one of the most overrated and incorrectly cited results in the social sciences."  He cites Tim Harford's recent piece in FT describing research on the subject: Is more choice better? Ten years ago the answer seemed obvious: Yes. Now the conventional ...

Health Care: Better, Faster, Cheaper!

In a much discussed post, Ezra Klein produced a series of graphs showing that Americans pay more for office visits, scans and imaging, drugs, and other aspects of health care -- often, far more -- than is the case in Canada or Western Europe. There is a simple explanation for why American health care costs so much more than health care ...

White House Opaque Transparency

Yesterday afternoon, in a bit of faux transparency like you've never seen before, the administration released the names of everyone who has toured the White House from Obama's inauguration through the end of July.  This, after various Freedom of Information Act requests to determine whether, say, William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright have stopped by. A lot of people visit the White ...

Schwarzenegger’s Veto Sudoku

A minor buzz was generated yesterday by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto message to the state assembly: It seems that, if one ignores the first two and last two paragraphs, there's a hidden message spelled out by the first letter of the remaining sentences. If that's too complicated, Kevin Drum has a version with the message circled in red. Speculation is that ...

Lies, Damned Lies, and Health Care Polls

Ezra Klein points to a new ABC/WaPo poll showing a solid majority support "a law that requires all Americans to have health insurance, either getting it from work, buying it on their own, or through eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid." Further, the same poll finds a third of those who oppose would switch sides "if the government gave financial assistance ...

Regulating Loud Commercials

Peter Suderman and Berin Szoka provide sane, libertarian arguments against the Nanny State regulating the volume of television commercials.  While they both find the longstanding practice where the ads are several decibels higher than the surrounding programming annoying, they nonetheless argue that it's not a matter where government should intervene. Says Suderman, It's easy enough to turn your TV ...

Stimulus Spending Doesn’t Work – Tax Cuts Do

Via Jonathan Adler, I see that world-renowned economist Robert Barro and his student, Charles Redlick, takes to WSJ to summarize their research report showing that stimulus spending doesn't work. Oddly, take cuts do. The bottom line is this: The available empirical evidence does not support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus spending stimulus programs will likely ...

Evolution of Blogging

Scott Payne has an interesting interview with Kevin Drum on the evolution of the blogosphere since the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth circa 2002.    I joined the fray about six months later and think he's dead on. A couple of excerpts: But the political blogosphere did have a bit more of a clubby feel to it back then.  Mainly, this is ...

Van Jones Resigns and Whines

One of the curious controversies I've been half-following on Twitter but haven't been motivated to write about is the case of Van Jones, a leader of the 9/11 "Truther" movement who has served since March as President Obama's Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, or "Green Jobs Tsar" for short. ...

Paper Phone Books Are Obsolete

Claire Thompson issues a call to get rid of the paper phonebooks, citing a recent study paid for by a company that competes directly with same that "only 15.9 percent of U.S. adults recycle their old or unwanted phone books, and that U.S. citizens are largely unaware of the environmental impact of printing and delivering so many phone books."  Said ...

Dick Cheney’s Tell-All Book

Dick Cheney is breaking the mold on how recently-departed vice presidents act. First, he immediately went into attack mode against President Obama. Now, he's going after President Bush, too. Bart Gelman for WaPo: Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy ...

Health Reform: What Liberals Want

Kevin Drum seconds Alex Massie that a British-style nationalized health system is not a politically feasible option in the United States.  Indeed, even Democrats don't want that: [W]ith the exception of a few outliers, the liberal community really, truly doesn't want a fully government owned and operated healthcare system like the NHS.  We want a government-funded healthcare system like Medicare or ...

Conservative Health Policy

Dan Miller laments that "the right has basically abdicated its role in the conversation" on health care reform. Health care has been THE liberal project for literally decades; entire careers (not to mention presidencies) have been built around it.  There’s a vast policy apparatus on the progressive side of the aisle built around health care, with industrious wonks digging into every ...

Stupid Chart of the Day

Conor Clarke has devised the following chart of the federal effective tax rate paid by the wealthiest 1% over the last 15 years: While he doesn't "love the idea," he think it justifies paying for health care for the poor by taxing the rich.  Kevin Drum agrees, adding, The basic story is simple: As their incomes have gotten ever higher, their ...

Social Security ‘Pampering Scandal’

Kevin Drum patiently explains to the folks at Townhall and NRO that holding a three day convention in a central location for $1071 a person is far from a boondoogle. That's unbelievable.  SSA must have some world class penny-pinching accountants and event planners on their staff.  I doubt there's a corporation in America that would even try to budget less than ...