Tag: economics
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Politics vs Economics
I am not surprised that there are big ideas that make perfect sense from an economic perspective which are politically unpopular – after all, doing what has been deemed to be politically possible has led us to a dire economic position.
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Taxes: Supply vs Demand
The bulk of the discussion at the legislative town hall meeting last week was focused on fiscal issues of one kind or another. One thing that was briefly touched on was the potential return of sales tax on unprepared food. I have always been a fan of not having that tax, because of its supposedly…
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Defined Benefit Pensions: A Failed Experiment
photo credit: inspecie.co.uk After the town hall meeting I attended on Wednesday I have been thinking about pension plans generally. The state of Utah is looking at changing their pension offerings for new employees to save the state from future financial ruin. I have seen other companies go through that process already. As a nation…
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Roll Your Own . . .
photo credit: She Who Shall Not Be Named When I wrote about the importance of investing in yourself I was having trouble trying to find the words to convey what I meant. I finally found a way to explain what I mean so that nobody should be confused (I hope). Virtually every book on financial…
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Invest in Yourself
photo credit: Cambodia Trust I drove in to work later than usual today and caught a bit of Glenn Beck. Like many conservative talk radio hosts I have heard he was promoting the value of gold as an investment. What caught my attention was the way he started out. I’m going to paraphrase here but…
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Public to Private is a One Way Economic Street
photo credit: taberandrew A post entitled The New Robber Barons got me thinking about what happens when public and private enterprises compete in a marketplace. Thinking about that led to some interesting observations. The first of which is that progressives are right in their assertion that public and private enterprises can compete without eradicating each…
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Your Employer: Competitor or Collaborator?
photo credit: Trypode This question is framed in terms of employer sponsored health care benefits, but it really applies to any employer/employee interaction. Are you working with your employer, or are you competing with your employer? To put it another way, is your employer working with you, or simply working you? I ask this because…
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Too Rich to Go Bankrupt
photo credit: Stowe Boyd By “too rich to go bankrupt” I don’t mean someone so rich that they never will go bankrupt. What I mean by that is someone so rich that them going bankrupt would destabilize our economy and thus they deserve a bailout if bankruptcy ever threatens them. (Think Bill Gates plus Warren…
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A New Federal Role in Economic Recovery
My post on fundamental assumptions generated some good discussion which began waxing economic in flavor. As part of that discussion I had a new idea about a more reasonable approach the federal government could take to soften economic hard times without outright manipulating our expectations of reality as they do now. I should start by…
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Budget Hero Revisited
A post from last year that came up in my daily archive caught my attention with its title, A Budgetary Hat-Trick, I had a look to remind myself and rediscovered Budget Hero. When I played last year the budget was projected to go bust in 2033 barring any changes and I managed to balance the…