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Margaret Thatcher
I've seen people on my FL repost something that starts out, "if Baroness Thatcher is given a state funeral, I will leave the country for the day, because what her policies did, what her belief did, what her legacy did, is doing to this day are things that are anathema to me ( Read more... ) -
Quotidian quotation: moral hazard
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for ( Read more... ) -
Quotidian quotation: gentrification
"It is goodness that gives to a neighborhood its beauty. One who is free to choose, yet does not prefer to dwell among the Good-- how can he be accorded the name of wise?"
-- Confucius (551 B.C. - 479 B.C.) -
Quotidian quotation: healing
"The best doctors in the world are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet and Dr. Merriman."
-- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) -
Quotidian quotation: success
"The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil."
-- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) -
Too Big to Fail, 1873 style
I recently picked up an 1888 copy of Walter Bagehot's classic Lombard Street: a Description of the Money Market. It's excellent. Bagehot was the second editor of The Economist, and it's both interesting and impressive that its clarity of writing and thinking dates back at least to him. The book first came out in 1873. This passage strikes me as ( Read more... ) -
life in old age
I really like the old people in this post at Get Rich Slowly. Now that's the way to live when you're old. -
Election reaction
My reaction to the election results is not so much surprise, since this was the pretty likely result, and not so much joy or horror, since I supported Gary Johnson who I knew wasn't going to win anyway. My reaction is relief that the whole thing is over and I can plug my landline back in (it's a layer of defense against telemarketers, there so we ( Read more... ) -
The truth about American politics
Will Wilkinson just wrote one of the best blog posts on American politics (and maybe politics in any Western democracy) that I've ever read.
The GOP is not, in fact, committed to replacing "a free-market system balanced with government regulations, tax-funded social programs and legislative and judicial guarantees of civil rights" with "one that ( Read more... )
