Megan McArdle

The National Association of Realtors is (quelle surprise!) quite bullish on the future of the housing market. Not so fast, says Lance Roberts of StreetTalk Advisors:He sees 2012 as another year of lagging sales, considering the average household debt for Americans over the age of 16 comes to $96,229 per person. In addition, the average income before taxes is roughly $54,110 and many Americans have a debt-to-income ratio of 177.8%, making it difficult for them to… More »

The Washington Post is reporting that Ron Paul actively signed off on the not-so-veiled racism in the newsletters published under his name in the 1980s. I'm sure that in the next few days, there will be some hot denials, and some Paulistas and paleolibertarians complaining about the Koch-funded conspiracy to destroy him. (See, liberals? You're not the only ones who think that Charles Koch is spending his massive fortune to destroy America). I think the… More »

Thanks to ABC, we now have a number on the difference between Warren Buffett's tax rate, and his secretary's. According to the network, "Bosanek pays a tax rate of 35.8 percent of income, while Buffett pays a rate at 17.4 percent."Conservatives have swooped on this. What sort of income is implied by a 35.8% tax rate? A very, very high one. Various commentators have suggested that she must be making north of $200,000.Well, it's clear that we're not just talking… More »

I was on Stossel's State of the Union special last night, so I watched the speech in the company of David Boaz, Matt Welch, and Governor Gary Johnson. I had a lot to say about it on television, which you can watch here. I thought the speech was better-written and better-delivered than many of the critics I read this morning; it had a lot of good applause lines (along with, yes, the groaner about spilled milk), and the president is stylistically a very good… More »

Yesterday's post about the internet challenge to brick-and-mortar retail has triggered a number of really interesting discussions in the comments about things like big box supply chains, the sustainability of Amazon's Prime strategy, and the future of teenaged jobs in a world without physical retail. I highly recommend reading them.One of the sub-discussions caused my thoughts to turn--as they so often do--to neighborhood politics in DC. Yes, those of you who are… More »

It's kind of embarassing how often I see the UPS man.My household has made extravagent use of the benefits of Amazon Prime. We order grocery staples, hardware, paper goods, electronic accessories, air filters for the furnace, and oh yeah, sometimes books. The brown truck stops in front of our house several times a week. Since I am almost always the one who answers the door, I am beginning to worry that our unusually young and good looking UPS guy thinks there is… More »

There has been a lot of excitement about Zelboraf, a new drug to treat metastatic melanoma. Since the previous standard of care was to try a bunch of futile chemotherapy and then die pretty much on schedule, this was a rather heartwarming breakthrough in a field that doesn't have enough of those.Now Derek Lowe brings the bad news: A bigger problem is that (as mentioned in my older post on this drug) resistant melanoma crops up pretty quickly after initial treatment… More »

So the story-of-the-week seems to be Mitt Romney's off-shore investments. I am deeply confused by the reporting. Either that, or the reporters are.I first saw this story via Sarah Kliff at the Washington Post: One possibility is that the tax rate might not be the only politically troublesome revelation in Romney's returns. Over at Reuters, Sam Youngman suggests that his work with Bain Capital might have led Romney to shelter income offshoreThe Sam Youngman piece… More »

Andrew Sullivan's feature about Barack Obama's critics has stirred up a lot of controversy over the last few days. On one charge, I'll defend him: it is a little known fact that writers do not choose their headlines (or even necessarily see them). So the next time you are set to fire off an angry letter to a writer, pause for a moment and ask yourself: "am I reacting to the piece, or to the headline?" Of course, the publication is responsible for what headlines… More »

I was always skeptical of the projections that ObamaCare would reduce the budget. In fact, I made some counter-predictions of my own. The cuts needed were very deep, and likely to be politically difficult; the benefits claimed in terms of actual improving health or even personal finances had been far too large.So far, events have borne me out. About half the projected deficit reduction has now evaporated, because programs added to the bill in order to raise… More »

Like Ross Douthat, I've been following the recent blog conversation about income inequality and income mobility. I'm not going to summarize the arguments about how closely they're connected--you should read Ross's excellent post for a good overview. And I'm certainly not going to insert myself into an argument between two very smart economists who spend a lot of time studying this question. But I was struck by a very troubling thought while I was reading through… More »

After a disappointing year, the big banks are pulling back on their bonus pools. A lot. This is going to be hard on bankers whose salaries are usually a very small part of their overall compensation--and yes, yes, before you drag out the world's smallest violin, let me agree that they have no entitlement to anything more. Nonetheless, people tend to build their life around their expected salaries, and in New York, this choice is particularly important. You not… More »

The 2010 primary election that unseated mayor Adrian Fenty in favor of former council chief Vincent Gray was mostly portrayed as gentrifiers versus the poor, black versus white. But another key dynamic was "incumbent versus newcomer". DC's absurd zone fare system used to be a way for taxi drivers who lived in the district to fleece affluent people who mostly didn't; the DC school system was viewed as a jobs program, as well as a way to educate kids. Fenty… More »

Part of Obamacare was a transitional "High Risk Pool" program to cover people who were unable to get insurance until the rest of the law's provisions kicked in in 2014. The program allocated $5 billion. Medicare's chief actuary assumed that it would attract 400,000 people; the CBO projected 200,000--but only because they assumed that HHS would use its authority to limit enrollment in order to keep the program below its budgetary cap.The experience was not quite… More »

So, as I could have predicted, the comments section on my post about "non-rivalrous" goods and the nature of property rights has turned into a a rather contentious brawl. It currently has 600 comments, and counting.One of the most common responses has been "that's not theft, that's fraud"--for example, with regards to identity theft.This simply isn't true. As you can see, many of the relevant statutes in fact refer to "taking", "stealing", or "theft" of another… More »

Kevin Drum takes a courageous and rare stand on the internet, arguing that yes, downloading millions of files from JSTOR while evading attempts by both JSTOR, and the owner of the network you're using, to stop you, is, well, pretty close to stealing:This affair has raised a lot of hackles among the infovore set, but I'm a little stumped about why I should be outraged. As James Joyner says, maybe this should have been a civil matter, not a criminal one (though… More »

At any time, the Wall Street Journal's article on the fate of companies that Bain Capital invested in during Romney's tenure would have probably made a splash. But luckily for the commentariat, Romney gave the story a nice push by making a really incredibly stupid gaffe--remarkably, the biggest one he's made in months of hard campaigning.The result has been predictable: the left (and some of his opponents) are accusing Romney of exemplifying predatory capitalism… More »

In response to my post on silly hypertension advice, commenter Edgehopper has a great point: "Everyone, as they get older, will get sick for some reason and die at some point." More »

High blood pressure is bad for you. So is Lou Gehrig's disease. But it's not useful to tell people they will be better off not contracting these. More »

On Friday I wrote that I doubted that credit unions were going to be able to provide a painless substitute for payday loans. Felix Salmon has responded at length, making three core arguments:1. Credit unions already pay their overhead with current operations, so adding on a payday lending service should give them a cost advantage over payday lenders.2. Credit unions have a very low cost of funds, particularly in today's environment, where savings accounts might… More »