Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in Caesar's Bath

Re: Caesar's Bath

U.s.a = GAY — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:10:11 -0000

tut tut tut...typical Yanks, your fucking losers, honestly! you think your the best of the best - not the case. You mudering scum think capital punishment is ok? yeah cool =| eeewww you people make me sick.. sweden forever..woooooo

Re: Caesar's Bath

Anonymous — Wed, 04 May 2005 19:51:37 -0000

What it's worth is zero, more or less. The HDI uses the logarithm of personal income as a proxy for wealth--thus tightening the income spread between Western nations and allowing those with generous welfare states to pull ahead in the other categories. I wrote in a 2003 column that "for industrialized countries... an extra $2,000 a year in income is outweighed in the [HDI's] balance by the delicious raptures of an 80th year of life." The exercise is skewed against income as a quality-of-life indicator, skewed against countries who welcome immigrants or possess ethnocultural sub-populations with pre-existing health problems, and openly subjective anyway (there's no revealed-preference data to support the weightings of various QOL criteria). About what you expect from the UN, in other words--an annual excuse to trash the United States, and not much else.

Re: Caesar's Bath

Javier — Mon, 02 May 2005 15:52:21 -0000

Econotarian, Sweden may be poor by American standards, but they seem to do better than the aggregate U.S. population on other measures of human development such as life expectancy and infant mortality. In fact, Sweden outranks the United States on the Human Development Index, for whatever that's worth.

Re: Caesar's Bath

Mr. Econotarian — Mon, 02 May 2005 08:09:48 -0000

To get the low-down on Sweden, check out Johan Norberg's blog, also his article Swede and Sour. It begins:

If Sweden left the European Union and joined the United States we would be the poorest state of America. Using fixed prices and purchasing power parity adjusted data, the median household income in Sweden in the late 1990s was the equivalent of $26,800 compared with a median of $39,400 for U.S. households - before taxes. And then we should remember that Sweden has the world´s highest taxes.

Re: Caesar's Bath

wkwillis — Sun, 01 May 2005 08:43:27 -0000

There are techniques to attribute authorship to individuals by comparing vocabulary, etc. Some of these techniques can be embodied in computer programs, and have been. If Paine wrote the the first draft of the Declaration, it would differ from other writings by Jefferson and resemble his, and these programs would pick it out from the other Jefferson material.

Re: Caesar's Bath

Will Baude — Sun, 01 May 2005 07:46:38 -0000

At the risk of responding to a comment surely not meant seriously, we have copies of Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence, with some pretty fascinating language taken out because the others thought that TJ was being a bit too impolitic. It's available in just about any collection of Jefferson's writings, and worth a read.

Re: Caesar's Bath

Bill Millan — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 21:26:43 -0000

If it will make you feel better about Jefferson, he didn't write the Declaration of Independence, Tom Paine did. Read Paine, Read Jefferson, and it's obvious.

Re: Caesar's Bath

David Rossie — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 15:06:39 -0000

I'm fairly certain - Cato refer's to Cato's letters, a series of letters sent to English newspapers in the early 18th century. As you might have guessed, they were about liberty.

I agree with the bit about Sweeden. Harping about their domestically popular policies, which do not really affect us here in the US, is the international equivalent of anti-smoking and anti-obesity crusaders criticizing what others do in their own homes

Re: Caesar's Bath

bjr@yahoo.com — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 13:55:40 -0000

How many "Sweden is falling apart" articles have I seen in the Economist? It's a perennial.

Re: Caesar's Bath

Gareth — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 13:02:37 -0000

When [Jefferson's] visage appears on Cato's promotional material, as it so often does, I try to stay positive.

Leaving Jefferson aside, what's up with naming yourself after Cato? I mean, the Elder was an obsessive adovcate of genocide and the younger was a prig. Did one of them advocate deregulating the Antioch slave futures market or something?

Re: Caesar's Bath

Maestro — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 10:05:07 -0000

I understand your feelings on Levitt, but I think he has a valuable role to play. (Hopefully) people will start to think in more general equilibrium ways after reading him, seeing that a change in this one area can lead to large changes in other, seemingly disconnected, areas. Not exactly a new idea, but one that is forgotten most of the time.

Re: Caesar's Bath

John Thacker — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 08:56:19 -0000

The thing about Sweden is that it actually has, among other things, a low tax on capital. People incorrectly like to think of Sweden and the other Nordic states as extremely socialist. They're not. They tend to have a relatively small amount of serious socialist industrial policy, but coupled with a very high amount of redistribution and welfare state activities. For the most part, when and where the Nordic countries have been successful (let's ignore their horrible track record on agriculture, what little there is is heavily subsidized), they've been content to let the market mostly work, and then just redistribute the profits. It's a workeable solution if done well, even if it's not to my taste.