Action alert

Dear Congressman Doyle,

I am an American citizen and voter residing in Pittsburgh.  As a student at [the best school ever], I am surrounded many amazingly talented international students.  These students often obtain Masters or Ph.D. degrees after several years of study in the U.S., and yet, upon graduation, these fantastic individuals often find themselves facing the possibility that they must leave the U.S. due to difficulty in obtaining a green card.  We stand to gain enormous benefits by encouraging these students to stay and make their careers in the U.S. instead of forcing them to take all that expertise back home.  I hope you will support any immigration reform measure that makes it easier for international students with advanced degrees to obtain green cards and citizenship.

Sincerely,
[The Freakwenter]

Federal Deficits: The Blame Game

Assigning blame for the national deficits is an excellent intellectual past-time for those not occupied by watching sports or filling out crossword puzzles.  Many explanations exist for rising federal deficits, including the bad economic "weather" (which even most economists failed to forecast), the rise of socialism, global warming, or even the End of the World.  While all of these explanations may contain elements of truth, a far simpler explanation lurks just outside the realm of direct cause:  The President.

The figure below illustrates the federal deficit in each of the years 2000 to 2012.  The source of this data is none other than Obama's minions:  See Table 1.  (Technical note:  As of today, Table 1 contained only an estimate for 2012.  I substituted a lower figure from the liberal media.)

At face value, considering the years he was in office (2001-2008), Bush's average deficit was about 250 billion.  Obama's (2009-2012) was about 1300 billion.  But this is probably not a fair comparison.  When a president takes office, spending for the coming year has already largely been determined by Congress and the previous president.  Supposing that it takes one full year before a new President deserves significant responsibility for spending levels, we must give Bush credit for the whopper 2009 deficit, and take away his little 2001 surplus.  This little adjustment would put Bush's average at about 450 billion and reduce Obama's average to about 1250 billion.  The remaining difference shrinks a bit if we also take into account inflation, or consider the deficit as a fraction of GDP, which has continued to rise overall despite the brief recession.

For those who are particularly concerned with wars and military spending, it seems that defense spending has shifted in focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, but the overall level of spending has remained quite stable in the transition from the Bush years to the Obama years.

Notes from the Dead

This horrible bit of news at the top of the Google feed brought me to tears.  I'm not sure why; maybe because it reminds me of my times of sadness.

Looking back in my files, I received a grand total of three short emails from Mr. Swartz last summer, after I applied for a job/consulting gig on his team.  Evidently I didn't make the cut, being a relatively ordinary person, which has its advantages.

The Greatest Economic Writers of Our Time

Hayek is dead.  Milton Friedman is dead.  Paul Krugman is riddled with populist partisanship.  Who from the dismal science of economics remains to guide the intellectually impoverished, inform the semi-rational agents, and herd the sheep of modern democracy?

Herein the Freakwenter announces the winners of the never-before-announced Greatest Economic Writers of Our Time Award.  This is a prestigious and rare award, appearing only once every generation or so on this blog.

The first award goes to Steven E. Landsburg, whose concise analysis of Ebenezer Scrooge includes every economic insight that ever passed through the pen of the Freakwenter, even before the Freakwenter's birth.  Unfortunately, like the old Scrooge, Landsburg is a purely rational thinker, having no heart.  Thus it seems appropriate to name a second, relatively human, award winner.

The second award goes to Gregory N. Mankiw, author of this recent eat-this-truth-or-we-will-all-die column in the NYT.  Unfortunately, Mankiw has yet to gain 501c3 status for spending so much of his time in public service, running a blog on economics.  I urge his followers to send him cash in the mail.