One of the great things about movies is they can make an experience that only a select group have and make it universal. Moneyball, while a good movie on a number of fronts, became great because it was able to capture the experience of watching baseball.
Baseball isn’t really an exciting game, except for a [...]
My friend Nemo posted a series of political bugfixes, ideas that he thought were no-brainers and relatively separate from ideology. I agree that all of them are economically optimal, and if I were designing a modern state by fiat I would implement most or all of them. My responses below.
- Eliminate mortgage interest deductions.
- Eliminate [...]
When talking to my conservative friends, I often hear them talk about “investment”, which is two related, but distinct concepts, which are often conflated, causing confusion. One is spending by firms in capital goods, and the other is savings by households (and firms). It’s true that these are generally held in equilibrium, where there is [...]
There’s been a lot of whining about the way that Lebron James and now Carmelo Anthony have been the prime movers with regards to deciding where they’ll end up playing. The implicit message is that players have acquired too much power, and the CBA should be re-written to take that power away. This owner-friendly position [...]
I’m generally of the opinion that there are too many elected offices in American politics, but even I was stunned to learn from NPR that the position of coroner is elected in much of the US. These elections are sometimes partisan, and some don’t even require a medical degree. What to do about this [...]
- Decision 2010 I’m a bit more bullish than most about the Democrats’ chances. This is mainly because I believe that polls are much less independent than even Nate Silver suspects. Pollsters were all over the place in 2008, and then mostly converged to a 7-point Obama win. I don’t think numbers are fixed, but [...]
Mary Matalin was on The Colbert Report tonight, and after she was done lying about “deem and pass”, she talked about Republicans’ plans for “repealing” the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka: health care reform). Here’s a tip for seeing through Republican talking points on health care; if they preface their statements by claiming [...]
That radio shack was the largest thing TPM has watched spontaneously implode since the Bush administration