There’s broad agreement among the political left in most developed states that we should raise taxes on high earners, if not now then after the economy recovers. The justifications vary somewhat, depending on how one comes at one’s leftism, but in most cases it can be boiled down to the principle of diminishing returns, which holds that the more money you have, the less utility additional money buys you. A homeless person almost always benefits more from a dollar than does a rich person, and if we are seeking to maximize welfare, it is reasonable to redistribute wealth from the rich person to the homeless person. Even some right wingers agree to this, in theory. The trouble is that there is much disagreement as to the extent to which we ought to redistribute empirically. That’s the question I’m going after today.
Author: Benjamin Studebaker
The Wall Street Journal v. Bicycles
New York City has recently started up a bicycle program, similar to the ones that already exist in many European cities like Paris or London. However, the Wall Street Journal is none too pleased. They made a video, which you can find here. The video makes some rather odd claims.
Erick Erickson and Women
Erick Erickson is editor-in-chief of Redstate.com, a conservative blogging website. The other day, Erickson went on FOX, where had a rather controversial reaction to the recent statistic that shows that 40% of mothers are now the highest earners in their respective households in the United States. He said this:
When you look at biology–when you look at the natural world–the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role.
Europeans and Americans
Now that my undergraduate degree in England is over, I’ve started to collate my thoughts regarding the essential distinctions between the European and American variants of civilization. Why do Europeans support universal health care while Americans do not? Why are Europeans more communal? Why are they more supportive of interventionist government policies? These are the sort of things I wish to ponder about today.
Blog News
Regular readers may have noticed that I have been off my usual very-nearly-daily blog schedule the last few days. The reason for this is that I had one last exam to mop up; I finished that today. I am flying back to the United States tomorrow, and so am packing and preparing for that today. Regular blogging should resume on Thursday. I should note that, starting right this very moment, I also plan to make a stylistic change–I will be writing these posts in American English rather than British English. American English is the style I grew up with; I was writing in British English not to be pretentious as some of you might have thought, but because I was writing essays and exams in British English for the University of Warwick. As of today, I no longer have any more exams or essays to write for Warwick–next year I become a grad student at the University of Chicago. In consequence, I will be writing all of my papers in American English henceforth, and that includes these blog posts. I thank you, the reader, for your continued readership, and promise to endeavor to make it well worth your while when I return on the 30th.
