The Joneses play at Phillippi Mansion Park in Sarasota, Florida. I’ve always loved this song, and this is a fine, unadorned version of it.

I believe the economic prediction economy has recovered and is now quite healthy. Indeed, here in Florida economists never really felt a recession. If anything, the recession created a greater market for them than ever, since local news media here have been running, “Economist says real estate has bottomed, now is the time to buy,” stories at least once a month since real estate prices started to drop in 2005.
Read the rest of this entry »

We seem to have collectively decided that at least 15% of our working-age population is no longer necessary to keep our country’s businesses running, and every year we have a larger number of surplus people as we shift more jobs overseas or automate them out of existence. We basically have two choices: we can either remove some of the connection between work and income or we can build tariff barriers that eliminate at least some competition for American workers from people in other, lower-cost countries. Or we can come up with some combination of these two solutions.
Read the rest of this entry »

A video I didn’t make that shows just about every TV news cliche I avoid in my own work.

If you live in or near the Fair Lanes Acres mobile home community in Bradenton, Florida, or you like to attend local classic car shows, you’ve probably spotted Sherwood Moore tooling around in his 1923 Model T Ford. He likes to drive it, not just show it off, and loves to give people rides.

Children, even more than adults, love Sherwood and his Model T. He even has funny hats for them to wear when they ride with him.

You can hear that “ah-oo-gah horn blocks away. Then comes that classic Model T engine mutter.

Sadly, this video is as close as most people today will get to an actual ride in a Model T, an experience once so common that no one thought about it for a second

The overwhelming majority of governments over the centuries and millenia have been dictatorships.
Read the rest of this entry »

In a fantasy libertarian paradise, each citizen works hard out of enlightened self-interest. No one uses force on anyone else, since my rights stop where your nose begins. If you accumulate a whole bunch of property, bully for you! If I fail in business or some other endeavor and suddenly have no money for food, clothing or medical care, too bad for me. Maybe some of my enlightened neighbors, out of self-interest, will help me out with voluntary donations. And maybe they won’t. Under communism, the opposite is true. Each citizen works to his or her maximum capacity in order to benefit society as a whole, and society as a whole owns the major means of production, including farms, factories, and mines. No one goes without the basics of life, and the idea of any one person owning a yacht disappears, because no citizen needs a private yacht when he or she can freely use state-owned boats for anything from fishing to partying. Under either system, everyone is happy and fair and treats other members of society with respect.
Read the rest of this entry »

One of my wife’s friends is a doctor’s wife — who is now on an austerity budget because, she says, her husband’s pediatric practice now sees an average of seven patients per day, down from an average of thirty patients per day a year ago. He’s laying off two more of his office staff people this week, and this is not his first layoff. The reason? My wife’s friend says it’s because many patients’ parents have lost their jobs and health insurance and can no longer afford to take their kids to a doctor for minor illnesses or regular checkups. And if something happens to their children that makes medical care necessary rather than optional, these newly-impoverished families seek out public health clinics or go to the local emergency rooms, and will only call their old pediatrition as a last resort.
Read the rest of this entry »

…says a Washington Post article. In the article, an auto industry analyst is quoted, who says, “There are better-value alternatives to the ForTwo, which starts at $11,900.” No sheet, shylock. The ForTwo would be a nice little contraption for buzzing to the grocery store or to the beach or for other local trips, but there is no way I’d be comfortable driving something much smaller than a Hyundai Accent to Orlando via I-75 and I-4. Even if I suddenly got enough money to be be looking at new cars, I would only consider a Smart if it cost $5000, maybe $6000 tops. Any more than that, I’d rather have a “real” car. And even for $5000 or $6000, I’d think long and hard before I bought a Smart instead of a highway-worthy, slightly larger vehicle.