--E. Frank Stephenson

A new video from the maker of the "I'm in Love with Friedrich Hayek" video:

--Brad Smith

In a column today in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer excoriates President Obama's new style of more aggressively "scapegoating" Republicans and "the rich," and giving succor to the OWS crowd. But while Krauthammer calls it "dangerous," he concludes, "it's working."

Is it? In it's August monthly poll, Gallup showed the President leading a generic Republican by 45-39%. On September 8, the President kicked off his re-election campaign with his call for the "American Jobs Act," (the AJA) and spent the next several days pushing for it. Gallup conducted its September monthly from September 8 through the 11th. The result: Generic Republican led the President by 46% to 38%. In late September, Occupy Wall Street began to garner attention - it crowded the Brooklyn Bridge on the last weekend of the month and has been almost non-stop in the news since. But Gallup's October poll, released today, shows a generic Republican leading the President by 46-38% - exactly the same as a month before.

Amongst Independent voters, the generic Republican edge has grown from 40-35% in August to 43-30% in October (though down slightly from September).

When he gave his AJA speech in September, Obama's average approval was 43.8, per Real Clear Politics. Today it stands at 43.6, though with a slight uptick in the last week - almost entirely the result of a surprisingly strong (for the President) poll from Rasmussen, the pollster liberals love to hate. The most recent polls from other pollsters in the field since OWS briefly seized the Brooklyn Bridge, compared to their prior poll, show him down in Gallup, flat in Ipsos/Reuters, down in ABC/Washington Post, and down in Fox New.

Meanwhile, the old "right track/wrong track" numbers have reached a ridiculously (and historically) bad 17-76%. That's slightly worse than the 19-74% split at the time of his AJA speech, and down from 21-72% when OWS seized the Bridge. These small declines are probably just statistical noise, but they certainly don't show OWS or the President moving the needle.

The President's numbers against his specific possible Republican opponents, however, remain stable. In September, as in August, he was competitive, with slight leads or slightly behind, depending on the particular match-up. The latest round of such polling (by Gallup) should be out soon, and we'll see how he looks then. He'll also have a huge cash advantage over his GOP opposition, and by February if not sooner we should expect to see that money being deployed to bash Republicans.

So the President remains a formidable opponent. But that's because of his cash advantage, and the weakness of the GOP field. There's no sign - yet anyway - that his new style is moving things in his direction.

--Wilson Mixon

George Will provides this summation of the "message" (he dignifies it by calling it the meta-theory) of the Occupy Wall Street bunch: Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful.

--E. Frank Stephenson

--E. Frank Stephenson

The organization criticized the effects of [Mexico's] Special Tax on Production and Services, or IEPS, which was approved a year ago and raised the price of a pack of cigarettes by 7 pesos ($0.52).

The tax bolstered the illegal cigarette trade and caused the SAT tax agency's revenues from tobacco taxes to fall 29.2 percent in the first half of 2011 ...

Source.

--Michael Munger

So, I had written about the decision by a young woman in Michigan to sue because she hated the movite "Drive."

But my effort was totally outclassed by Patrick. Well played, sir.

--Michael Munger

I'd like to ask a favor. Just started a new blog, whose goal it is to document resources and commentary regarding "euvoluntary exchange."

Started thinking about this problem when I was wondering why in the world these folks clapped. They were standing in line....but clapped when the sellers were arrested?

Read More »

--E. Frank Stephenson

In response to this awful column by Peter Morici, I sent this letter to the editor:

Dear Editor,

Regarding Peter Morici’s column “China currency bill: America fights back”: It would be easy to point out the many economic flaws with Prof. Morici’s argument. To give just one example, it’s not clear that an increasing value of the yuan will lead to more U.S. jobs because a significant portion of U.S. imports from China are inputs for things that are produced here in the U.S. Making imported inputs from China more expensive might actually reduce employment here.

However, when Mr. Morici is not bemoaning the “surging subsidized imports from China,” he appears in television commercials for Kyocera copiers which are manufactured a plant in China and two in Japan (another country with which the U.S. runs one of those awful trade deficit thingies). So, whlle President Obama may typify “food co-op capitalism” and Speaker Boehner may exemplify “knickers era capitalism,” whatever they may be, Mr. Morici seems to practice “hypocrite capitalism.” Perhaps Mr. Morici’s next column can explain why pitching Chinese made copiers doesn’t contribute to “destroying more American jobs than the mortgage crisis, too much business regulation and high health care costs combined,” the ills that he claims result from Americans’ trade with China.

E. Frank Stephenson
Rome, Ga.

See also this response by Don Boudreaux.

UPDATE: See also this letter in the WSJ.

UPDATE (10/12): To my surprise (because I'm not in the Baltimore area), the Sun did run my letter.

--E. Frank Stephenson

The abstracts of two papers (gated) in the new edition of AEJ: Macro; first from the paper by L. Rachel Ngai and Christopher A. Pissarides:

We examine the allocation of hours of work across industrial sectors in OECD countries. We find large disparities across three sector groups, one that produces goods without home substitutes, and two others that have home substitutes but are treated differently by welfare policy. We attribute the disparities to the countries' tax and subsidy policies. High taxation substantially reduces hours in sectors that have close home substitutes but less so in other sectors. Subsidies increase hours in the subsidized sectors that have home substitutes.

Now the paper by Cara McDaniel:

The goal of this paper is to examine the role of taxes and productivity growth as forces influencing market hours. To achieve this goal, the paper considers a calibrated growth model extended to include home production and subsistence consumption, both of which are found to be key features influencing market hours. The model is simulated for 15 OECD countries. The primary force driving changes in market hours is found to be changing labor income tax rates. Productivity catch-up relative to the United States is found to be an important secondary force.

--Robert Lawson

My wife and I are collecting stories from people who lived in Soviet and other Communist-bloc nations during the "Soviet times". Specifically, we want to hear about your first Coca-Cola. When and where did you have your first Coke? What did it mean to you? Did you like it? Tell us your story!

Is your story more about your first pair of Levi's or McDonald's burger? That's ok! We want to hear that story too.

Please email your story directly to us at tracy.s.lawson@gmail.com.

Please forward to all your friends who may have stories to share.