Home Cooking

Most who know me at home know I find it enjoyable to cook, and especially enjoyable to eat. So riddle me this: what comestible did I make recently with just four ingredients.

1. A common household cleaner.
2. Something containing trace amounts of cyanide.
3. Something that kills your cells on contact in high enough concentrations.
4. A substitute for gasoline.

I'll give you just one more hint: it's delicious!

Mankiw On Tax Rates

Greg Mankiw, author of the most common introductory texts in economics, lays it on the line with a clever little treatment of tax incentives in the NYTimes.

If there were no taxes of any kind, $1,000 of income would translate into $1,000 in extra saving. If I invested it in the stock of a company that earned, say, 8 percent a year on its capital, then 30 years from now, when I pass on, my children would inherit about $10,000.

Now let’s put taxes into the calculus... 39.6 percent in federal income taxes on that extra income... 1.2 percentage points... Medicare tax, which the recent health care bill is raising to 3.8 percent... 5.3 percent in state income taxes... that $1,000 of pretax income becomes only $523 of saving, and no longer earns 8 percent... 35 percent corporate tax on its earnings... the $523 in saving grows to $1,700 after 30 years... estate tax...

My kids will get, at most, $1,000 of it.

I wonder how many Econ professors will assign this article along with Mankiws textbook this semester? Hat tip to AidWatch.

Capitalism and Underground Survival

WSJ has a paean to the innovators whose products saved the lives of the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped a full half-mile below the earth's surface.

If those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men? Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit.

It's a valid point: while mining accidents have occurred for hundreds of years, high-stakes mine rescues are relatively new. Twenty-five years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, these guys would have died. Instead, high-tech companies offered some really tremendous industrial products.

Center Rock Inc. is a private company in Berlin, Pa. It has 74 employees... Seeing the disaster, Center Rock's president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive...

The high-strength cable winding around the big wheel atop that simple rig is from Germany. Japan supplied the super-flexible, fiber-optic communications cable that linked the miners to the world above...Samsung of South Korea supplied a cellphone that has its own projector. Jeffrey Gabbay, the founder of Cupron Inc. in Richmond, Va., supplied socks made with copper fiber that consumed foot bacteria, and minimized odor and infection.

Whether the companies above donated their items or sold them to the Chilean government is not mentioned in the article: and it's beside the point. The main point is that the companies created something almost ex nihilo. They created markets for their products by meeting human needs or desires, they charged prices that would give salaries to their workers and profits to their investors, and they improved - and in this case saved - human lives.

The author points out that government response in disasters is vital, and can be brilliant (as Chile's in both the mine and 8.8 earthquake) or awful (the U.S. in Hurricane Katrina and the BP spill; China frequently). But the government's less dramatic policies - free trade agreements, taxes on capital - will determine whether technology advances rapidly or slowly, and thus whether the frontier of human ability is advanced ahead of future disasters.

Taxing the Poor

A new study reports that the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts will hurt the poor most. The tax increase scheduled for January 1 would eat up 6.7% of the income of a family of 4 earning $40,000. That's enormous! But Pelosi and company decided to adjourn Congress early rather than deal with the most pressing economic issue facing Americans.

Hat tip to BOTWT.

Columbus Day and Hypocrites

Lots of people will say politically correct things about how wrong and evil Christopher Columbus was in discovering the western Hemisphere and initiating the subjugation of its inhabitants. My only question: when are you selling your house and moving back to Europe?

Transparency

This comedically dumb corruption in New Jersey - Democrats planted a Tea Party candidate to split the conservative vote - shows why there isn't more corruption in American politics. It's just too easy to get caught.

Map of the Internet

The long awaited update to the Map of the Internet is out! XKCD reprises their popular visual aid in today's comic