DISQUS

Great stuff. Have you written on what you'd like to see in the way of patent reform yet? If not, I'd love to see something on that.

It's always like this. Rose colored glasses, baby.

Lawyer, it is a shame that smart people don't always have the opportunity to go to the most prestigious institutions. Fine, you're right about that. But that point, and unfortunately your anecdotal evidence too, don't have any bearing on whether the average HLS or ILS student is smarter. Sure, there are probably plenty of smart people at both places. But if I were picking a lawyer for myself and only knew where they graduated from, I'd pick the Harvard one. Opportunity should be equal, but that doesn't mean that everyone's abilities are equal.

Devin, your comment sounds like a crock. Inflation went into the teens and twenties in the late seventies and eighties. Why didn't the political process magically produce 2-3% CPI then? And if a few cities turn into desolate war zones, what does that have to do with inflation? Sure, there are some fudge factors involved, but it's a fairly good number as national statistics go. I also love how you complain about the "subjective, political process" for computing CPI and then say you would conduct far superior subjective analyses if you were in charge. Pure Monday morning quarterbacking.

I'm more of a fan of GDP criticisms. In the short term, broken windows get added into GDP, which seems to me to be a big issue. But then, I'm not an economist, so I take my own views with a grain of salt.