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Inequality and Inequality Propaganda

21 Saturday Dec 2019

Posted by pnoetx in Income Distribution, Inequality, Uncategorized

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Capitalism, Consumer Surplus, David Splinter, Declaration of Independence, Declination blog, Diffusion of Technology, Economic Mobility, Edward F. Leamer, Elizabeth Warren, Gerald Auten, Income Distribution, Inequality, J. Rodrigo Fuentes, Jeff Jacoby, Luddite, Marginal cost, Mark Perry, Marriage Rates, Pass-Through Income, Redistribution, Robert Samuelson, Scalability, Thales, Uber, Workaholics

I’m an “inequality skeptic”, first, with respect to its measurement and trends; and second, with respect to its consequences. Economic inequality in the U.S. has not increased over the past 60 years as often claimed. And some degree of ex post inequality, in and of itself, has no implication for real economic well-being at any point on the socioeconomic spectrum, the growls of class-warmongers aside. So I’m not just a skeptic. I’m telling you the inequality narrative is BS! The media has been far too eager to promote distorted metrics that suggest widening disparities and presumed injustice. Left-wing politicians such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez pounce on these reports with opportunistic zeal, fueling the flames of class warfare among their sycophants.

Measurement

Comparisons of income groups and their gains over time have been plagued by a number of shortcomings. Jeff Jacoby reviews issues underlying the myth of a widening income gap. Today, the top 1% earns about the same share of income as in the early 1960s, according to a recent study by two government economists, Gerald Auten and David Splinter.

Jacoby recounts distortions in the standard measures of income inequality:

  • The comparisons do not account for tax burdens and redistributive government transfer payments, which level incomes considerably. As for tax burdens, the top 1% paid more taxes in 2018 than the bottom 90% combined.
  • The focus of inequality metrics is typically on households, the number of which has expanded drastically with declines in marriage rates, especially at lower income levels. Incomes, however, are more equal on a per capital basis.
  • The use of pension and retirement funds like IRAs and 401(k) plans has increased substantially over the years. The share of stock market value owned by retirement funds increased from just 4% in 1960 to more than 50% now. As Jacoby says, this has “democratized” gains in asset prices.
  • A change in the tax law in 1986 led to reporting of more small business income on individual returns, which exaggerated the growth of incomes at the high-end. That income had already been there.
  • People earn less when they are young and more as they reach later stages of their careers. That means they move up through the income distribution over time, yet the usual statistics seem to suggest that the income groups are static. Jacoby says:

“Contrary to progressive belief, America is not divided into rigid economic strata. The incomes of the wealthy often decline, while many taxpayers go from being poor at one point to not-poor at another. Research shows that more than one-tenth of Americans will make it all the way to the top 1 percent for at least one year during their working lives.”

Mark Perry recently discussed America’s record middle-class earnings, emphasizing some of the same subtletles listed above. A middle income class ($35k-$100k in constant dollars) has indeed shrunk over the past 50 years, but most of that decrease was replaced by growth in the high income strata (>$100k), and the lower income class (<$35k) shrank almost as much as the middle group in percentage terms.

Causes

What drives the inequality we actually observe, after eliminating the distortions mentioned above? The reflexive answer from the Left is capitalism, but capitalism fosters great social and economic mobility relative to authoritarian or socialist regimes. That a few get fabulously rich under capitalism is often a positive attribute. A friend of mine contends that most of the great fortunes made in recent history involve jobs for which the product or service produced is highly scalable. So, for example, on-line software and networks “scale” and have produced tremendous fortunes. Another way of saying this is that the marginal cost of serving additional customers is near zero. However, those fortunes are earned because consumers extract great value from these products or services: they benefit to an extent exceeding price. So while the modern software tycoon is enriched in a way that produces inequality in measured income, his customers are enriched in ways that aren’t reflected in inequality statistics.

Mutually beneficial trade creates income for parties on only one side of a given transaction, but a surplus is harvested on both sides. For example, an estimate of the consumer surplus earned in transactions with the Uber ride-sharing service in 2015 was $1.60 for every dollar of revenue earned by Uber! That came to a total of $18 billion of consumer surplus in 2015 from Uber alone. These benefits of free exchange are difficult to measure, and are understandably ignored by official statistics. They are real nevertheless, another reason to take those statistics, and inequality metrics, with a grain of salt.

Certain less lucrative jobs can also scale. For example, the work of a systems security manager at a bank produces benefits for all customers of the bank, and at very low marginal cost for new customers. Conversely, jobs that don’t scale can produce great wealth, such as the work of a highly-skilled surgeon. While technology might make him even more productive over time, the scalability of his efforts are clearly subject to limits. Yet the demand for his services and the limited supply of surgical skills leads to high income. Here again, both parties at the operating table make gains (if all goes well), but only one party earns income from the transaction. These examples demonstrate that standard metrics of economic inequality have severe shortcomings if the real objective is to measure differences in well-being. 

Economist Robert Samuelson asserts that “workaholics drive inequality“, citing a recent study by Edward E. Leamer and J. Rodrigo Fuentes that appeals to statistics on incomes and hours worked. They find the largest income gains have accrued to earners with high educational attainment. It stands to reason that higher degrees, and the longer hours worked by those who possess them, have generated relatively large income gains. Samuelson also cites the ability of these workers to harness technology. So far, so good: smart, hard-working students turn into smart, hard workers, and they produce a disproportionate share of value in the marketplace. That seems right and just. And consumers are enriched by those efforts. But Samuelson dwells on the negative. He subscribes to the Ludditical view that the gains from technology will accrue to the few:

“The Leamer-Fuentes study adds to our understanding by illuminating how these trends are already changing the way labor markets function. … The present trends, if continued, do not bode well for the future. If the labor force splits between well-paid workaholics and everyone else, there is bound to be a backlash — there already is — among people who feel they’re working hard but can’t find the results in their paychecks.“

That conclusion is insane in view of the income trends reviewed above, and as a matter of economic logic: large income gains might accrue to the technological avant guarde, but those individuals buy things, generating additional demand and income gains for other workers. And new technology diffuses over time, allowing broader swaths of the populace to capture value both in consumption and production. Does technology displace some workers? Of course, but it also creates new, previously unimagined opportunities. The history of technological progress gives lie to Samuelson’s perspective, but there will always be pundits to say “this time it’s different”, and it probably sounds heroic to their ears.

Consequences

The usual discussions of economic inequality in media and politics revolve around an egalitarian ideal, that somehow we should all be equal in an absolute and ex post sense. That view is ignorant and dangerous. People are not equal in terms of talent and their willingness to expend effort. In a free society, the most talented and motivated individuals will produce and capture more value. Attempts to make it otherwise can only interfere with freedoms and undermine social welfare across the spectrum. This post on the Declination blog, “The Myth of Equality“, is broader in its scope but makes the point definitively. It quotes the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

The poster, “Thales”, goes on to say:

“The context of this was within an implied legal framework of basic rights. All men have equal rights granted by God, and a government is unjust if it seeks to deprive a man of these God-given rights. … This level of equality is both the basis for a legal framework limiting the power of government, and a reference to the fact that we all have souls; that God may judge them. God, being omniscient, can be an absolute neutral arbiter of justice, having all the facts, and thus may treat us with absolute equality. No man could ever do this, though justice is often better served by man at least making a passing attempt at neutrality….”

Attempts to go beyond this concept of ex ante equality are doomed to failure. To accept that inequalities must always exist is to acknowledge reality, and it serves to protect rights and opportunities broadly. To do otherwise requires coercion, which is violent by definition. In any case, inequality is not as extreme as standard metrics would have us believe, and it has not grown more extreme.

The Tyranny of the Job Saviors

17 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by pnoetx in Automation, Free markets, Technology

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Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Capital-Labor Substitution, Creative Destruction, Dierdre McCloskey, Don Boudreaux, Frederic Bastiat, James Pethokoukas, Opportunity Costs, Robert Samuelson, Robot Tax, Seen and Unseen, Technological Displacement, Universal Basic Income

Many jobs have been lost to technology over the last few centuries, yet more people are employed today than ever before. Despite this favorable experience, politicians can’t help the temptation to cast aspersions at certain production technologies, constantly advocating intervention in markets to “save jobs”. Today, some serious anti-tech policy proposals and legislative efforts are underway: regional bans on autonomous vehicles, “robot taxes” (advocated by Bill Gates!!), and even continuing legal resistance to technology-enabled services such as ride sharing and home sharing. At the link above, James Pethokoukas expresses trepidation about one legislative proposal taking shape, sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), to create a federal review board with the potential to throttle innovation and the deployment of technology, particularly artificial intelligence.

Last week I mentioned the popular anxiety regarding automation and artificial intelligence in my post on the Universal Basic Income. This anxiety is based on an incomplete accounting of the “seen” and “unseen” effects of technological advance, to borrow the words of Frederic Bastiat, and of course it is unsupported by historical precedent. Dierdre McCloskey reviews the history of technological innovations and its positive impact on dynamic labor markets:

“In 1910, one out of 20 of the American workforce was on the railways. In the late 1940s, 350,000 manual telephone operators worked for AT&T alone. In the 1950s, elevator operators by the hundreds of thousands lost their jobs to passengers pushing buttons. Typists have vanished from offices. But if blacksmiths unemployed by cars or TV repairmen unemployed by printed circuits never got another job, unemployment would not be 5 percent, or 10 percent in a bad year. It would be 50 percent and climbing.

Each month in the United States—a place with about 160 million civilian jobs—1.7 million of them vanish. Every 30 days, in a perfectly normal manifestation of creative destruction, over 1 percent of the jobs go the way of the parlor maids of 1910. Not because people quit. The positions are no longer available. The companies go out of business, or get merged or downsized, or just decide the extra salesperson on the floor of the big-box store isn’t worth the costs of employment.“

Robert Samuelson discusses a recent study that found that technological advance consistently improves opportunities for labor income. This is caused by cost reductions in the innovating industries, which are subsequently passed through to consumers, business profits, and higher pay to retained workers whose productivity is enhanced by the improved technology inputs. These gains consistently outweigh losses to those who are displaced by the new capital. Ultimately, the gains diffuse throughout society, manifesting in an improved standard of living.

In a brief, favorable review of Samuelson’s piece, Don Boudreaux adds some interesting thoughts on the dynamics of technological advance and capital-labor substitution:

“… innovations release real resources, including labor, to be used in other productive activities – activities that become profitable only because of this increased availability of resources.  Entrepreneurs, ever intent on seizing profitable opportunities, hire and buy these newly available resources to expand existing businesses and to create new ones.  Think of all the new industries made possible when motorized tractors, chemical fertilizers and insecticides, improved food-packaging, and other labor-saving innovations released all but a tiny fraction of the workforce from agriculture.

Labor-saving techniques promote economic growth not so much because they increase monetary profits that are then spent but, instead, because they release real resources that are then used to create and expand productive activities that would otherwise be too costly.”

Those released resources, having lower opportunity costs than in their former, now obsolete uses, can find new and profitable uses provided they are priced competitively. Some displaced resources might only justify use after undergoing dramatic transformations, such as recycling of raw components or, for workers, education in new fields or vocations. Indeed, some of  those transformations are unforeeeable prior to the innovations, and might well add more value than was lost via displacement. But that is how the process of creative destruction often unfolds.

A government that seeks to intervene in this process can do only harm to the long-run interests of its citizens. “Saving a job” from technological displacement surely appeals to the mental and emotive mindset of the populist, and it has obvious value as a progressive virtue-signalling tool. These reactions, however, demonstrate a perspective limited to first-order, “seen” changes. What is less obvious to these observers is the impact of politically-induced tech inertia on consumers’ standard of living. This is accompanied by a stultifying impact on market competition, long-run penalization of the most productive workers, and a degradation of freedom from restraints on private decision-makers. As each “visible” advance is impeded, the negative impact compounds with the loss of future, unseen, but path-dependent advances that cannot ever occur.

Robots and Tradeoffs

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by pnoetx in Living Wage, Markets, Technology

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Biohacking, Capital Intensity, Collaborative Automation, Cyborgization, David Autor, Don Boudreaux, Exoskeletons, Factor Substitution, Farmbots, George Selgin, gier.org, Hal Varian, Human Augmentation, Labor Productivity, Minimum Wage, Owning Machines, Pew Research Center, Resource Allocation, Robert Samuelson, Robotics, Scarcity, Singularity Hub, Superabundance, Work-Leisure Tradeoff

image

The other day, a few colleagues were lamenting the incipient robot domination of the workplace. It is true that advances in automation and robotics are likely to displace workers in a variety of fields over the next few decades. However, the substitution of capital for labor is not a new phenomenon. It’s been happening since the start of the industrial age. At the same time, capital has been augmenting labor, making it more productive and freeing it up for higher-valued uses, many of which were previously unimagined. The large-scale addition of capital to the production process has succeeded in raising labor productivity dramatically, and labor income has soared as a consequence. That is likely to continue as increasingly sophisticated robots assume certain tasks entirely and collaborate with workers on others, even in the service sector.

Advanced forms of automation are another step in the progression of technology. The process itself, however, and the adoption of robotics, might well be hastened by public policy that pushes labor costs to levels not commensurate with productivity. I wrote about this process in “Automate No Job Before Its Time” on Sacred Cow Chips late last year. The point of that essay was that government-imposed wage floors create an incentive for automation. Because a wage floor has its impact at the bottom of the wage scale, at which workers are the least-skilled, this form of government intervention creates a regrettable and unnatural acceleration in the automation process. Other mandated benefits and workplace regulations can have similar effects.

Robert Samuelson makes the same points in “Our Robot Panic Is Overblown“. He notes the effectiveness of the U.S. economy in creating jobs over time in the presence of increasing capital-intensity. But he also warns of potential missteps, including the dangers of government activism:

“There are two dangers for the future. One is that the new jobs created by new technologies will require knowledge and skills that are in short supply, leaving unskilled workers without income and the economy with skill scarcities. … The second danger is that government will damage or destroy the job creation process. We live in a profit-making economic system. Government’s main role is to maintain the conditions that make hiring profitable. … If we make it too costly for private firms to hire (through high minimum wages, mandated costs and expensive regulations) — or too difficult to fire — guess what? They won’t hire. That’s what ought to worry us, not the specter of more robots.“

Historically, automation has actually created more jobs than it has destroyed. In general, however, the new jobs have required higher levels of skills than the jobs lost. In “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation“, David Autor of MIT says it this way:

“Automation does indeed substitute for labor—as it is typically intended to do. However, automation also complements labor, raises output in ways that lead to higher demand for labor, and interacts with adjustments in labor supply. … journalists and even expert commentators tend to overstate the extent of machine substitution for human labor and ignore the strong complementarities between automation and labor that increase productivity, raise earnings, and augment demand for labor.“

As with almost all automation, robots will replace workers in the most routine tasks. Tasks involving less routine will not be as readily assumed by robots. To a large degree, people misunderstand the nature of automation in the workplace. The introduction of robots often requires collaboration with humans, but again, these humans must have more highly-developed skills than a typical line worker.

Hal Varian, who is the chief economist at Google, describes the positive implications of the ongoing trend to automate (see the link in the last paragraph of this post), namely, less drudgery and more leisure:

“If ‘displace more jobs’ means ‘eliminate dull, repetitive, and unpleasant work,’ the answer would be yes. How unhappy are you that your dishwasher has replaced washing dishes by hand, or your vacuum cleaner has replaced hand cleaning? My guess is this ‘job displacement’ has been very welcome, as will the ‘job displacement’ that will occur over the next 10 years. The work week has fallen from 70 hours a week to about 37 hours now, and I expect that it will continue to fall. This is a good thing. Everyone wants more jobs and less work. Robots of various forms will result in less work, but the conventional work week will decrease, so there will be the same number of jobs (adjusted for demographics, of course).“

An extreme version of the “robot domination” narrative is that one day in the not-too-distant future, human labor will be obsolete. Automation is not limited to repetitive or menial tasks by any means. A wide variety of jobs requiring advanced skills have the potential to be automated. Already, robots are performing certain tasks formerly done only by the likes of attorneys, surgeons, and computer programmers. Robots have the potential to repair each other, to self-replicate, to solve high-order analytical problems and to engage in self-improvement. With advances in artificial intelligence (AI), might humans one day become wholly obsolete for productive tasks? What does that portend for the future of so many human beings and their dependents who, heretofore, have relied only on their labor to earn a living?

There are any number of paths along which the evolution of technology, and its relationship to workers and consumers, might play out. The following paragraphs examine some of the details:

The Human Touch: There will probably always be consumers who prefer to transact with humans, as opposed machines. This might be limited to a subsegment of the population, and it might be limited to the manufacture of certain artisan goods, such as hand-rolled cigars, or certain services. Some of these services might require qualities that are more uniquely human, such as empathy, and the knowledge that one is dealing with a human would be paramount. This niche market might be willing to pay premium prices, much as consumers of organic foods are willing to pay an extra margin. However, it will be necessary to retain the perceived quality of the human touch and to remain reasonably competitive with automated alternatives on price.

Human Augmentation: Another path for the development of technology is the cyborgization of labor. This might seem rather distasteful to current sensibilities, but it’s a change that is probably inevitable. At least some will choose it. Here is an interesting definition offered by geir.org:

“Cyborgization is the enhancement of a biological being with mechanical or non-genetically delivered biological devices or capabilities. It includes organ or limb replacements, internal electronics, advanced nanomachines, and enhanced or additional capabilities, limbs, or senses.“

These types of modifications can make “enhanced” humans competitive with machines in all kinds of tasks. The development of these kinds of technologies is taking place within the context of rehabilitative medical care and even military technology, such as powerful exoskeletons, but the advances will make their way into normal civilian life. There is also development activity taking place among extreme hobbyists underground, such as “biohackers” who perform self-experimentation, embedding magnets or electronic chips in their bodies in attempts to develop a “sixth sense” or enhanced physical abilities. Even these informal efforts, while potentially risky to the biohackers themselves, might lead to changes that will benefit mankind, much like the many great garage tinkerers who have been important to innovation in the past.

Owning Machines: Ownership of capital will take on a greater role in providing for lifetime earnings. Can the distribution of capital ever be broadened to the extent needed to replace lost labor income? There are ways in which this can occur. The first thing to note is that the transition to a labor-free economy, were that to transpire, would play out over many years. Second, we have witnessed an impressive diffusion of advanced technologies in recent decades. Today, consumers across the income spectrum hold computers in their pockets that are more than the equivalent of the supercomputers that existed 50 years ago. Today’s little computers are far more useful in many ways, given wireless internet connectivity. There are many individuals for whom these devices are integral to earning an income. Thus, the rate of return on these machines can be quite impressive. The same is true of computers, software (sometimes viewed as capital) and printers, not to mention other “modern” contrivances with income-earning potential such as cars, trucks and a vast array of other tools and hardware. Machines with productive potential will continue to make their way into our lives, both as consumers and as individual producers. This also will include value-added production of goods at home, even for use or consumption within the household (think 3D printers, or backyard “farmbots”).

Saving Constructs: Most of the examples above involve machines that require some degree of human collaboration. Of course, even the act of consuming involves labor: I must lift the fork to my mouth for every bite! But in terms of earning income from machines, are there other ways in which ownership of capital can be broadened? The first answer is an old one: saving! But there is no way most individuals at the start of their “careers” can garner a significant share of income from capital. Other social arrangements are probably necessary. One of great importance is the family and family continuity. Many who have contemplated a zero-labor future imagine a world in which there are only two kinds of actors: individuals and the state. Stable families, however, hold the potential for accumulating capital over time to provide a flow of income for their members. Other forms of social organization can fill this role, but they must be able to accumulate capital endowments across generations. Of course, in an imagined world with minimal opportunities for labor, some have concluded that society must collectively provide a guaranteed income. To indulge that view for just a moment, a world of complete automation would almost certainly be a world of superabundance, so goods would be extremely cheap. That means a safety net could be provided at a very low cost. Nonetheless, it would be far preferable to do so by distributing a minimal number of shares of ownership in machines. These shares would have some value, and to improve resource allocation, it should be the individual’s responsibility to manage those shares.

Economic Transition: The dynamics of the transition to robot-dominated production raise some interesting economic questions. Should the advancement of robotics and artificial intelligence create a massive substitution away from labor, it will be spurred by 1) massive upward shifts in the productivity of capital relative to its cost; and 2) real wages that exceed labor’s marginal productivity. There will be stages of surging demand for the kinds of advanced labor skills that are complementary to robots. The demand for less advanced labor services does not have to fall to zero, however. There will be new opportunities that cannot be predicted today. Bidding for scarce capital resources and the flow of available saving will drive up capital costs, slowing the transition. And as long as materials, energy and replacement parts have a cost, and as long as savers demand a positive real return, there will be a margin along which it will be profitable to employ various forms of labor. But downward adjustment of real wages will be required. Government wage-floor policies must be abandoned. That will not be as difficult as it might sound: the kind of automation envisioned here would have profound effects on overall costs and the supply of goods, leading to deflation in the prices of consumables. As long as real factor prices can adjust, there will almost certainly remain a balance between the amounts of capital and labor employed.

In “Robots Are Nothing New“, Don Boudreaux passes along this comment from George Selgin:

“I’ve always been aghast at finding many otherwise intelligent economists arguing as if technology had a mind of its own, developing willy-nilly, or even perversely, in relation to the relative scarcity of available factors, including labor. Only thus can it happen that labor-saving technology develops to a point where labor, instead of being relatively scarce, becomes superabundant!

The fundamental problem, I believe, is confusion of the role of technological change with that of government interference with the pricing of labor services that is among the things to which technology in turn responds. Labor-saving technology becomes associated with unemployment, not because the last is a consequence of the former, but because both are contemporaneous consequences of a common cause, to wit: minimum wage laws and other such interference that sets wage rates above their market-clearing levels.“

There is much disagreement on the implications of automation. This excellent survey of experts by the Pew Research Center contains a number of insights. Also, visit Singularity Hub for a number of great articles on automation and AI, some of which are surprising. I believe that these technologies hold a great deal of promise for humanity. The process will not take place as suddenly as some fear, but ill-conceived policies such as a mandated “living wage” would put us on an unnaturally speedy trajectory. Opportunities for the least-skilled workers will be foreclosed too soon, before those individuals can develop skills and improve their odds of establishing a life free of dependency. Too rapid an adoption of advanced automation and AI would increase the likelihood of choosing suboptimal production methods that might be difficult to change later, and it would leave little time for education and training for workers who might otherwise leverage new technologies. The benefits of automation and their diffusion can be maximized by allowing advances to take a natural course, guided by market forces, with as little interference from government as possible.

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