One of the low points in the level of appreciation I have for our Congress came February 12, 1999 when the Senate voted on the impeachment of then President Bill Clinton. The most disturbing thing was neither the proceedings nor the ultimate decision; the most disturbing thing was the distribution of votes. I watched the vote live on television, and remember my growing anger as virtually every Republican (except 5) voted “guilty” and every single Democrat voting “not guilty”.

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Introduction

From the first embers of the first fires, to the lasers, rockets and televisions of the modern world, our eyes have been alight with the delights of discovery. Each progress in human culture has been born of accumulating insight and a wiser manipulation of our physical world and interpersonal society. Better machines, better processes, better politics and better economies. Each discovery has led to increasing the specialization and complexity of society, which has in turn introduced the new opportunities, tools, toys and technology which drive cultural progress.

Indispensable to this progress has been the apprehension, comprehension and application of information. Information, interestingly enough has quite a lot to do with entropy, which cannot be discussed without considering energy – and both of these concepts are indispensable to understanding economics, as was discussed previously.

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Last night I dragged out the old 7.8″ Konus telescope while it was still daylight. I had just received my laser collumnator (or collimator) from the Santa-like UPS man, who shows up at my door now and then with fun new books and toys.

After figuring out how to turn on the gizmo (the collumnator, not the telescope), I proceeded to nearly burn my eye out with the attendant laser-beam. Seems the mirrors in the telescope do indeed reflect light – even laser light! I lept away from the ramshackle raygun and regrouped…

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Introduction

Economists say that economic transactions are not “zero-sum”. Zero sum transactions have a winner and a loser such that the benefits of the winner are exactly offset by the detriments to the loser. Many folks don’t understand economics well enough to know that economic development and transactions are not zero sum; in fact, too many mistakenly believe that for every winner and advancement, others must loose. A nice treatment of this topic by Warren Meyer on his Coyote Blog. My intention is to discover exactly why economic growth can be positive or net-sum. This line of thinking may not be new, but it was so fun to think through that I wanted to share it:

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Test Pingback

Nice Pingback Toutorial

Subject: [Topical] Dialog Concerning Economics and the War on Terror

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From: Thompson,Scott Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 12:31 PM
To: Rob; Joe Baksha
Cc: Shiloh Madsen; T. Scott Thompson
Subject: RE: Fun with Graphs

We spend about 30% of our GDP on government (including entitlements and
defense). Japan spends about 45, England 40, France 50. We have the lowest
per-capital government spending of any nation in the developed world.

Since much-needed Welfare reform (done under a Democratic president), far
fewer deadbeats belly up to the public trough, and yes there are fewer
children in poverty. With Earned Income Tax Credit, people are now
encouraged to work instead of sit and watch Springer reruns. The new TANF
assistance program, which replaced AFDC has helped reduce poverty of
African-American children by about 25%. All these are great things, and I
suspect we would all agree the reforms were necessary and effective.

“Throwing money” at anything is ludicrous. Any money transferred to any
program (social services, education, science research, the arts) should be
used as an investment in infrastructure, human capital (training) or
incentive. “Throwing Money” has the implicit and negative connotation of a
hand-out or a waste, and no rational person would support that. By
characterizing economic support of education as “throwing money” you have
already framed the statement in an overtly negative light. It’s like
saying, “In Iraq military operations kill children. Do you support killing
children?”. Sometimes the way we choose to frame a question or statement,
even in our own minds, has a fantastic impact on the way we consider the
issue, or even *if* we consider it at all. Politicians use the tactic
frequently to elicit an emotional instead of intellectual reaction.

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Rob: When it comes to government, less is better

Scott: If “less is better” regarding government, then surely “no government at all” would be perfect. No national defense, no transportation, education, treaties, environmental regulations, trade policies, national currency. Nirvana!

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