Giancarlo Angulo's Blog
The charity tax
The estimated social pressure cost of saying no to a solicitor is $3.5 for an in-state charity and $1.4 for an out-of-state charity. Our welfare calculations suggest that our door-to-door fund-raising campaigns on average lower utility of the potential donors.
via Marginal Revolution: The charity tax.
We hate not doing/giving, but we don’t have enough resources to be very generous. This produces guilt. This guilt lowers our self-image. I think this is the mechanism.
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I wonder what philippine law has to say with local currency? must find a lawyer, must ask!
(link from Freakonomics blog)
The Brooklyn Torch project is a local currency project aimed at providing Brooklynites with a tangible medium of exchange that will circulate and support the resident community. We are starting the Brooklyn Torch project in North Brooklyn. In these uncertain economic times, the Brooklyn Torch Project aims to create a local currency to benefit both local area businesses and artists. The Brooklyn Torch will bring together both artist communities and immigrant communities in our area to improve integration of social groups and economies as well as boost our pride.
What is a Local Currency?
A local currency is a method of trading goods and services meant to supplement other means of trade while improving the community wealth. Local currencies circulate in a defined region. Money does not leave the area because trade is restricted by the currency boundaries.
Where have Local Currencies Succeeded?
In Ithaca, NY since 1991. Founder, Stephen Burke describes, “An Ithaca HOUR will generate 30 times more economic activity than [a dollar] will,” This means more money for their community. Some communities even have wages paid in the local currency because the local money is worth more in the community than Federal dollars.
Is a Local Currency Legal?
Yes. Law professor Lewis Solomon states in his book, Rethinking Our Centralized Monetary System, that there is no legal prohibition to creating a local currency system in the United States. The IRS, FBI, US Secret Service, Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have all declared the printing and use of local currencies to be legal.
via Brooklyn Torch Project.
Performed by The Beatles
Composed by George Harrison
One, two, three, four…
Hmmm!
One, two, (one, two, three, four!)
Let me tell you how it will be;
There’s one for you, nineteen for me.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
(if you drive a car, car;) – I’ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) – I’ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) – I’ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) – I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman!
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Don’t ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more. (ah-ah, mister heath)
Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
And you’re working for no one but me.
Taxman!
Of course I’d like more money to spend, but I acknowledge the fact that I am far more lucky than alot of people from simply being born to the parents I was born to. It wasn’t because I had anything special, it simply is. All taxation is a redistribution and I have no qualms about helping pay for roads or the mrt or healthcare for people who cannot afford it. It simply is in our best interest to help each other in this crazy and sometimes hopeless world we live in.
“I think our fans now are getting a little bit spoiled,” Spoelstra said. “We’re trying to win them back and give them something to remember every time out. I think they got their money’s worth.”
via Utah vs. Miami – Recap – March 14, 2009 – ESPN.
“I think our fans now are getting a little bit spoiled,” Spoelstra said. “We’re trying to win them back and give them something to remember every time out. I think they got their money’s worth.”
via Utah vs. Miami – Recap – March 14, 2009 – ESPN.
from Paul Krugman. His musings on bad English food.
So what does all this have to do with economics? Well, the whole
point of a market system is supposed to be that it serves consumers,
providing us with what we want and thereby maximizing our collective
welfare. But the history of English food suggests that even on so
basic a matter as eating, a free-market economy can get trapped for
an extended period in a bad equilibrium in which good things are not
demanded because they have never been supplied, and are not supplied
because not enough people demand them.
Supply, Demand, and English Food.
I was, of course, only saying something that critics of conventional theory had been saying for decades. Yet my point was not part of the mainstream of international economics. Why? Because it had never been expressed in nice models. The new monopolistic competition models gave me a tool to open cleanly what had previously been regarded as a can of worms. More important, however, I suddenly realized the remarkable extent to which the methodology of economics creates blind spots. We just don’t see what we can’t formalize. And the biggest blind spot of all has involved increasing returns. So there, right at hand, was my mission: to look at things from a slightly different angle, and in so doing to reveal the obvious, things that had been right under our noses all the time.
Gregory Clark Is Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of California at Davis
Greg Clark writes:
Dismal scientists: how the crash is reshaping economics: The current recession has revealed the weaknesses in the structures of modern capitalism. But it also revealed as useless the mathematical contortions of academic economics…. The debate about the bank bailout, and the stimulus package, has all revolved around issues that are entirely at the level of Econ 1. What is the multiplier from government spending? Does government spending crowd out private spending? How quickly can you increase government spending? If you got a A in college in Econ 1 you are an expert in this debate: fully an equal of Summers and Geithner. The bailout debate has also been conducted in terms that would be quite familiar to economists in the 1920s and 1930s. There has essentially been no advance in our knowledge in 80 years.
It has seen people like Brad DeLong accuse distinguished macro-economists like Eugene Fama and John Cochrane of the University of Chicago of at least one “elementary, freshman mistake.”
Well, Greg? Don’t be shy. Be brave! Tell us: Is Fama right? Does the NIPA savings-investment identity guarantee that the stimulus cannot work because of 100% crowding out? Or has he made an elementary, freshman mistake?
Greg goes on:
Bizarrely, suddenly everyone is interested in economics, but most academic economists are ill-equipped to address these issues. Recently a group of economists affiliated with the Cato Institute ran an ad in the New York Times opposing the Obama’s stimulus plan. As chair of my department I tried to arrange a public debate between one of the signatories and a proponent of fiscal stimulus — thinking that would be a timely and lively session. But the signatory, a fully accredited university macroeconomist, declined the opportunity for public defense of his position on the grounds that “all I know on this issue I got from Greg Mankiw‘s blog — I really am not equipped to debate this with anyone”…
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Gregory Clark Is Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of California at Davis.