A delightful Times romp

One has to appreciate an op-ed exploring concepts of loss in real estate sales that ends with lines like "Extreme libertarians and fundamentalists make conservative Republicans look moderate."
Full story in the Los Angeles Times

NYT Shocked By Economics

The NY Times ran a piece today expressing a bit of shock that prices have not declined in the market for electricity, despite deregulation, in proportion to declines in the deregulated prices for other commodities (ie: phone service). This would seem to be ignoring two things: 1) electricity is competitive practically nowhere in California and this is mirrored in many other states, 2) new capacity is difficult to build and therefore hasn't, and 3) demand for the commodity has skyrocketed. Hardly surprising that these pressures have failed to reduce prices and indeed put upward pressure on them . . . Full story

A good satire revisited

Revisiting an old topic: another economic argument against charitable giving, and an examination of the reasons for giving. Full story

Economist Roundup

The NYT has a roundup of a new consensus emerging amongst the nation's economists, who are increasingly unified in their support for higher energy taxes. Most prominent convert: Alan Greenspan. The current focus is on the gasoline excise tax.

While transportation advocates and others have cited the need to raise the excise tax on gasoline for quite a while (cf: inflation, increased vehicle fuel economy pinching revenues, and the coming bankruptcy of the Highway Trust Fund), the new consensus includes national security and other arguments to justify the increase.

Full story

Morning Brain Teaser

Try calculating wages and inflation over centuries. Financial Times columnist Tim Hartford has the details.