http://dept.lamar.edu/kvlu/listen.html

It will be rebroadcast at 9am on New Year’s Day.

Last night on “60 Minutes” (HT IndianaJim) President Obama said to interviewer Steve Croft about tax cuts:

Steve, the math is the math. You can’t lower rates and raise revenue, unless you’re getting revenue from someplace else.

This answer reveals a deplorable understanding of either economics or math or both.

Revenues are the product of the “price” per unit (for example, the tax rate on a dollar of income) multiplied by the number of units for which that price is paid. If the percentage cut in the price per unit is smaller than a corresponding percentage increase in the number of units for which the now-lower price is paid, revenues don’t fall; they rise. The math, indeed, is the math.

Obama’s math works only in a bizzaro economic world – a world where changes in prices have no, or never more than a de minimis, effect on people’s behavior.

In that bizzaro world producers would never lower prices. (Why do so if lowering prices won’t result in a larger sales volume and higher revenues?) In that bizzaro world McDonald’s would charge $1,000 for each Big Mac. (Why not, if prices don’t affect people’s consumption choices?) In that bizzaro world no one would propose taxing cigarettes to discourage smoking. (Why do so if higher prices don’t affect behavior?) And in that bizzaro world no one would ever call for higher tariffs to protect domestic producers from foreign competition. (Why do so if raising tariffs does not reduce the number of imports that people buy?)

It’s one thing to question a claim’s empirical relevance; it’s quite another to dismiss it categorically as being an alleged violation of the laws of mathematics.

What sorry testimony about the “reality-based” political community that the current President of the United States believes it to be simply a matter of “math” that lower tax rates necessarily result in lower tax revenues.

[From Obama’s Math Works Only in BizzaroEcon World]

By David Rittgers

Department of Education officers employed a SWAT team because of unpaid student loans. I am not making this up:

Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday…

As it turned out, the person law enforcement was looking for was not there – Wright’s estranged wife.

“They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids,” Wright said.

Wright said he later went to the mayor and Stockton Police Department, but the City of Stockton had nothing to do with Wright’s search warrant.

The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife’s defaulted student loans.

This, along with the Jose Guerena case, demonstrates how the militarization of police terminology and tactics is incompatible with a free society. Police officers aren’t “operators” like Green Berets or Navy SEALs.

This is just one more reason to abolish the Department of Education and oppose police militarization and federal overcriminalization.

Department of Education SWAT Raid for Unpaid Student Loans is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog

[From Department of Education SWAT Raid for Unpaid Student Loans]

But in the 21 states that were fully affected [by the federal increase in the minimum wage in 2007], about 13,200 black young adults lost their job as a direct result of the recession, versus 18,500 who lost their job as a result of the minimum-wage mandates. “In other words,” write Messrs. Even and Macpherson, “the consequences of the minimum wage for this subgroup were more harmful than the consequences of the recession.” [From "The consequences of the minimum wage for this subgroup were more harmful than the consequences of the recession" from Reason-Hit & Run]

Here is an updated version of Case-Shiller’s housing index for the country. (The source for the updating and the image is The Big Picture and TBP reader Steve Barry.) It is of course somewhat misleading because there is not a national housing market. But it does capture factors that affect all housing markets.

Some people explain the recent 15 years as being caused by “animal spirits” arguing that if you think prices of an asset will go up, then that belief can be sufficient to cause a bubble. True, no doubt. But what causes that belief to take hold. Some people say it’s just random. A fad. The madness of crowds. Could be. I suspect that the systematic attempt by federal government policy that began in earnest in 1995 and ran through the Clinton and Bush II administrations had a lot to do with it.

[From The housing boom and bust]

Leopold Hawelka, founder of famous Austrian cafe, turns 100 amid much fanfare – The Washington Post]

What to Look for in a Touring Bike

[From The Most Illegal Wrestling Move of All Time!! (with VIDEO) - Houston News - Hair Balls]

If you struggle to remember which direction is clockwise, and which is counterclockwise, here is another instructive example.

Seen from your vantage point, the puppies in this video are rotating in the COUNTERCLOCKWISE direction:

(Thanks to investigator Geri Sullivan for bringing this to our attention.)

[From Counterclockwise puppy rotation]