Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

SpaceX

38 Comments

OK, several people have asked, in off-topic comments and email, about this announcement by SpaceX from last week, and wondering why I haven’t noted it.

Two reasons: first, a lot of it is in a piece I wrote for Popular Mechanics last week, and expected to run last week, and I didn’t want to step on the story here. Second, I didn’t think it was that big a piece of news. There’s little here that hasn’t been known for years to people who have been following the company and Elon’s plans. All it does is flesh out numbers on the thrust of the Merlin 2 and payload for the BFR.

As for whether I think that it is a challenge to my ongoing jihad against heavy lift, well, maybe. As I told Max Vozoff at lunch the other week, I’m not opposed to heavy lift in principle — I just think that it is unnecessary at the present time, and that it will be ghastly expensive if done using NASA legacy hardware and work force (and perhaps even ULA-legacy hardware, too, though that will be somewhat more affordable). If Elon can make it work economically, then more power to him, but I expect him to do it on a fixed-price contract that has to fairly compete with solutions not requiring it. For instance, if he wants to bid for propellant delivery, and thinks that he can beat the price at the depot of other bidders, go for it. I just don’t want the taxpayer to subsidize the development of what I consider an unneeded vehicle.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Better Late Than Never

5 Comments

Paul Krugman (inadvertently) explains to his moron readership why the CBO numbers for the health-care deform bill were bogus.

[Update a while later]

More on Paul Krugman’s ignorance (and by implication, that of anyone who pays any attention to him):

Last night, a few of us were discussing Paul Krugman’s apparent erroneous belief that Paul Ryan should have gotten the CBO to score the revenue side of his plan, but didn’t because he was attempting to put one over on the American people. As far as I know, scoring tax bills is still the job of the Joint Committee on Taxation, not the CBO–but no one bothered to blog it because, as far as I can tell, we all assumed that we must be misreading Paul Krugman.

But no, I didn’t misread; Krugman has two follow-up posts on the topic. It seems as if he’s really not aware that the JCT, not the CBO, typically handles the official scoring of tax legislation; “CBO” is not, in any of the policy circles I’ve run in, some sort of shorthand for the JCT (especially since there’s–ahem!–some rivalry there).

I haven’t read the work that got Krugman the Nobel prize, but those who have tell me he deserved it. I sure don’t know what he’s done since then that was worth a damn.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Well, Now We Know Why He Hired Her

17 Comments

Christina Romer says that we need a higher growth rate to reduce unemployment.

In related news, the Pope remains Catholic.

[Update a while later]

Good riddance, Christina Romer:

The ordinary function of government is to destroy talented people, but Romer’s epic failure has an additional element of tragedy. As an economist, Romer did an excellent job [pdf] of establishing that New Deal stimulus failed to end or seriously mitigate the Great Depression. As an Obama team player (and poignantly, a sunny supporter of the then-senator’s campaign), she made a 180-degree turn toward pro-stimulus hocus pocus. Romer will be remembered as the main advocate of the mythical “multiplier” phenomenon, in which every federal dollar spent producers more than 100 pennies worth of economic activity. This is the kind of economics you’d expect to hear from a fine arts major.

I wonder what she’ll say in the future? This reminds me of so many smart people who, after leaving NASA, say things like, “…how could I have made that decision”?

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Housing Insanity

9 Comments

Megan McArdle:

If you want to know why us libertarian types are skeptical of the government’s ability to prevent housing market bubbles, well, I give you Exhibit 9,824: the government’s new $1000 down housing program.

No, really. The government has apparently decided, in its infinite wisdom, that what the American economy really needs is more homebuyers with no equity.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

Business, Economics, Space

Is Scaled Having Engine Development Problems?

17 Comments

Thoughts from Trent Waddington. I’m on pretty long record of thinking that hybrids were a mistake, as was Scaled attempting to develop in house. The Mojave accident could have provided an opportunity to rethink the approach, but I guess they didn’t want to bite off the vehicle redesign issues of going to a liquid, and as Trent says, much of the sales hype has revolved around the supposed safety of hybrids. But as Dave Salt notes in comments there, continuing down that path will put them at a competitive disadvantage in terms of ops tempo and cost.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

The Rich

21 Comments

…have options:

Leaving aside the morality of abridging property rights based on income level, and the meaningless puddle this practice has melted our Constitution into, it seems reasonable to conclude there is a sweet spot on the Laffer curve: a point at which tax and regulatory burdens are low enough to encourage the most growth-oriented behavior from wealthy individuals and large corporations, but high enough to generate the income necessary to fund government without running huge deficits. The government must, in turn, live within its means. It must be small enough to survive on the funding provided by this optimum rate of taxation. Obviously, our current federal government has swollen far beyond this size, becoming a tumor that murders its host organism with increasingly frantic demands for greater nourishment.

Soak-the-rich policies are dismal failures, because they rely on controlling the behavior of people who have many options to escape. The promises of such systems depend on capturing extremely agile dollars. Those of us with fewer options, and less liquid income, always end up suffering the fallout from these failures. We live the dusty spaces left behind when billionaires decide not to follow the scripts prepared for them by Washington social engineers.

Unfortunately, the country is being run by economic ignorami. At least for another few months.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Parasite Has Been Growing

21 Comments

…while the host has been losing weight:

[Rasmussen] asked likely voters — his usual sample, which tilts more Republican than all adults — whether increased government spending is good or bad for the economy.

The results were unambiguous. Good for the country? 28 percent. Bad for the country? 52 percent.

He got similar results when he asked whether increasing the federal debt is good or bad for the economy. Likely voters believe it’s bad for the economy by a 56 percent to 17 percent margin.

There is some dissent, from the voters Rasmussen labels the Political Class. These are voters who trust the judgment of America’s political leaders over that of the American people, who do not believe the federal government has become a special interest group and who don’t believe government and big business work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

In other words, they’re the people the New York Times’ David Brooks refers to as “the educated class.” Or those voters in Cambridge and Brookline who stuck with the Democratic nominee in the special Senate election last January.

Around here, we refer to them as the parasitic idiot class. And David Brooks is at the head of the class.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This seems related: thoughts on the academic/industrial complex. I wonder if it will survive the bursting of the academic bubble?

[Update a while later]

Gee, this seems related, too. Electric car subsidies as handouts for the rich.

And thoughts from Roger Simon on the continuing myth of Democrats as the party of the people:

We live in an era — the worst economically since the Depression — when the daughter of the first couple of the Democratic Party has a multi-million dollar, Marie Antoinette-style wedding with port-a-potties almost as luxurious as a toilette in Baden Baden; it’s self-proclaimed environmental leader, the first global warming billionaire, sprouts “green” McMansions from Nashville to Montecito; and its already multi-billionaire senator from Massachusetts moors his yacht in another state to escape taxes we hoi polloi could only dream of paying.

But wait, as they say, there’s more. At this moment, two of their leaders from a supposedly disadvantaged minority are about to be tried for ethical transgressions (read: thievery) even Congress couldn’t sweep under the rug. Never mind that these transgressions mostly exploit the very minority these people purport to represent. It’s part of the game. Convince minorities they should act like victims. Extort guilt payments from the majority and keep the change. Meanwhile, nothing improves for the minority because it would interrupt the system.

They’re the new Bourbons, of whom it was said that they have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. But I think they’re in for a big lesson this fall.