Disqus - Latest Comments for nperrin

Re: Three health care questions

nicole — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:40:45 -0000

Why is the fact that “every other industrial nation provide universal health care coverage” considered evidence for its desirability?

johnnyvenom is right. It's not "industrialized," it's "civilized." Don't you want to be civilized? Aren't you just embarrassed by how uncivilized we are???

The assumptions that go into the particular claim are just staggering when you think about it.

Re: The Poor but Unusually Chipper and Long-Lived Index

nicole — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:02:00 -0000

“[E]veryone is entitled to the same amount of the planet’s natural resources”

I don't necessarily disagree with Christopher Monnier's point above, but also, this needs to take into account human reproduction. If we all get the same number of global hectares, parents are "stealing" global hectares from the pool to give to their children, and that should really be counted as part of their consumption. I mean, we are all entitled to the same amount of space, except that some people will be able to lower the amount of space you're entitled to.

It's especially distorting if children really do make you happy--or even if they only make you say you're happy--that is a big, environmentally-unfriendly consumption good you are giving away for free in this formula.

Re: Arcadia

nicole — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:30:15 -0000

I'll be crossing my fingers for someone to get you a contact. I would love to hear him on EconTalk!

Re: Twitter

nicole — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:47:29 -0000

I am leaning yes to Twitter. I am thinking automated tweets of Cafe Hayek posts and, as EvanM suggests, "I think it would be useful for commentary on smaller news bits. For example, instead of a full-fledged blog entry, we could get stuff like 'Incentives work: http://tinyurl.com/etc'"

It's a good way to get the word out and I think there is a good-sized community on Twitter that would be interested.

Re: Hubris

nicole — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:15:38 -0000

But I think the idea is "we're not going to put off infrastructure spending, health care reform, education reform, etc." Those are the burdens he's not going to place on future generations. But obviously solving those burdens isn't going to be free.

Despite comments to the contrary, I am not being disingenuous (mea culpa, no I did not click through). How is spending now and paying for it later not passing on a burden? If the only "burden" is deciding whether to spend, maybe. Or if you think the burden lies in living with unreformed healthcare and education. And that's assuming his solutions are actually solutions.

On the other hand, if Obama's "reformed" healthcare and education end up being more burdensome both because they are bad policy and because they are expensive, then you're passing on a significantly worse situation to the next generation.

Sorry, I just find it pretty offensive to have him usher in massive spending and at the same time act like he's being responsible toward future taxpayers.

Re: Hubris

nicole — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:32:03 -0000

But Obama explicitly says he's not passing on these problems to the next generation. How does that show a recognition that he is trading off future taxes and inflation for growth now?

Re: They don't know what they're doing

nicole — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:25:31 -0000

Hmm...Rangel...that name sounds familiar. Might this be Rangel who has several illegal rent controlled apartments and doesn't pay his taxes Rangel? Or some other one?

Ahh, there's nothing like accusing people of "murder" for spending LESS THAN 1% of how much oneself has helped to waste.

Re: Canadian Freedom

nicole — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:10:01 -0000

Couldn't agree more. Every time a store was closed on a Sunday, or a line at a supermarket was 20 people long because only 5 people are allowed to work in the whole store past 7pm, I wanted to scream and start driving south. And don't even try to get anything done at a bank.

Let people spend time with their families of their own free will, and I will consume, of mine.

Re: Canadian Freedom

nicole — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:40:46 -0000

I think you might be on to something here. I lived in Canada for five years and I would never want to go back, for exactly such reasons of cultural alienation. The conformity, and especially the conformity as progressives, got to be exhausting, frustrating, and frankly boring. But in terms of actual freedom, and absence of social conservatism, it was nice. Except when I got sick. Then it really did suck.

Re: I’m Back

nicole — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:27:33 -0000

Congratulations, and excited to have you both back!

Re: Dubner on The Price of Everything

nicole — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:37:59 -0000

Funny, I was thinking more along the lines of "Be sure not to read the comments. They are even more upsetting than anticipated." Sigh.

Re: What Books Would You Ban?

nicole — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:05:29 -0000

Certainly if I were going to ban books I'd go right ahead and become a petty aesthetic tyrant. I've never cared for Anne Tyler. Right behind would be chick lit (Devil Wears Prada, etc) and anything marketed as "young adult"—grow up already and deal with some real prose.

Then I would set my sights on general woo: The Secret, Chopra, The Dancing Wu Li Masters. Bad pop nonfiction like Louise Brizendine's The Female Brain and anything by Naomi Klein.

Oh, and Crime and Punishment. One of my all-time most-hated. "Without God anything is permitted" my a**.

Re: Cato Book Forum: Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do

nicole — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:58:59 -0000

Religious and secular voters differ no more in America than in France, Germany, Sweden, and many other European countries.

Isn't this misleading, since there are far fewer religious voters in France, Germany, and Sweden than there are in the US? Religion itself may not be more divisive in the US than it is in other places, but as a divisive factor it's effects are far greater, no?

Re: Frankly Confused

nicole — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:08:14 -0000

Can we at least agree that when you have corporations running the government it's not a free market?

Yeah, that's what I (thought I) was implying in my original post. cpurick is right on.

Re: Frankly Confused

nicole — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:52:34 -0000

Isn't this known as the Naomi Klein Fallacy by now? Republicans talk up the free market while engaging in massive amounts of rent-seeking, and libertarians end up being called corporate shills by the left?

Re: Culturally Appropirate Health-Care

nicole — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:49:33 -0000

Everyone knows white men don't have a culture.

Re: Bastiatian Wisdom

nicole — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:58:50 -0000

What a great letter! After five years living there, I can hardly believe there is anyone in Montreal this sane. I tip my hat to you, M Descôteaux.

Re: The happiest day of your life . . .

nicole — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:23:32 -0000

I think you are right that such a woman would be harshly judged. Nonetheless, I think there is every reason to expect people to be honest in surveys. We really should be able to determine who is less happy: Unwilling non-parents or unwilling parents.

Self-reporting is actually pretty unreliable (c.f. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/why-do-you-lie-the-perils-of-self-reporting/), but beyond that, I'm not necessarily saying people are lying. Between evolution and the fact that these moms have spent their whole lives in a society that expects women not to regret their children, they have been conditioned to believe that children really do increase happiness, so of course they must be happy.

Re: The happiest day of your life . . .

nicole — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:38:49 -0000

First of all, I don't think Will is at all surprised by the results of this research. He's being saying for months now that people vastly underestimate the negatives of parenthood.

My suspicion is that people who want children, but cannot get them are less happy than couples who have an unplanned child.

Will's contention, which would be my own as well, is that people who have an unplanned child are pretty much unable to express regret because of social and/or evolutionary pressures that you must love your child no matter what and never say you wish you hadn't had it. For mothers, especially, there is an enormous stigma involved in saying, "yes, this baby was a mistake, I kept it anyway, and I don't really care for it." How would society judge such a woman?

Re: New on Free Will: Bruce Caldwell on Hayek

nicole — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:36:02 -0000

In fact, I think you are probably right. I think it would be interesting for Will to find out why so much of the atheist/freethinker community (at least, from my vantage point) assumes progressivism as the "rational" or "rationalist" norm. I find this all over the web and don't completely get it. Of course, there are alternative views, e.g., Overcoming Bias, but this could potentially be a good topic.

Re: New on Free Will: Bruce Caldwell on Hayek

nicole — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:39:19 -0000

I don't know about PZ, though it might be interesting. But I'd say he goes beyond hostile. I read Pharyngula for years but had to quit after a particularly nasty sequence of posts and comments starting with something about Patri Friedman's seasteading project. Made me really depressed in fact about how much Democrats, who I had been sympathetic to, will turn against an anti-statist.

Re: Class War!

nicole — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:02:59 -0000

I'm not sure why that should be the case, since benefit compensation is included in total compensation. Personally, not knowing enough specifics to do anything but speculate, I would guess it is a correction for the recent period where compensation grew faster than productivity. There are a couple cycles where the lines swap in the graph. If compensation was growing too fast a few years back, it may just have slowed while productivity catches up.

Re: Class War!

nicole — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:44:14 -0000

Unless you think CEOs are unionized, maybe you should take a closer look at that graph.

Re: Oil Speculation

nicole — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:51:00 -0000

I got this too and sent an annoyed message back (which I had to then send via a customer service form) pointing them to the recent WSJ article on the ban on onion futures trading and telling them how disappointed I was. I was hoping one of the many econblogs I read would comment on it!

Re: Liberaltarianism: Back the Future

nicole — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:21:52 -0000

It’s not the 70’s anymore with big government Democrats trying to fix every problem with a new government program, Socialism is dead, Democrats are not Communists in disguise, and not all government programs are evil.

In general I agree with your post, but with universal healthcare one of the main obsessions of this campaign season, I have to disagree with this statement. Democrats are actually willing to say they don't support Obama's proposal because it doesn't force people to do something they don't want to do. Meanwhile, I don't see Democrats lining up to do anything at all about the obscene and ruinous war on drugs or the militarization of police. If they were actually willing to come out and be pro-legalization, I might reconsider, but as things stand they just are not that "socially liberal"—where do most Democrats stand on prostitution? Gambling? Raw milk? Selling organs? Assisted suicide? Seat belt laws? Trans fats? Gay marriage? &tc. They barely even want to admit they are pro-choice anymore.