ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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Of course a lot of those higher income folks in those counties are not government employees per se, but employed by private consulting or other firms that work for the government, many of them the beneficiaries of "private outsourcing" by the government to make it more market based, whoop de doo. And at least the share of the federal government spending in GDP has not risen all that much, although it has gone up some during the Bush presidency.
Shameful and a very bad indicator for the future of the US. . .
Ugh. Makes me ill.
This doesn't make much sense if you are talking about the best and the brightest, as opposed to the above average. Median incomes need not correlate to the highest incomes that the very best and the brightest would seek. Save for a few lobbyists, the highest incomes will still be in private industry.
You're getting pretty good at this new brand of libertarian populism. The $116 million Obama inaugural bash, with all its celebrities, at a time when so much of the country is struggling, should help this message reverberate.
Keep it up!
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We're becoming like a third world country in which the highest paying jobs are in government. As a result, few people aspire to work in the private sector.
@ fundamentalist
Private sector still pays far better at the top end, but for benefits and job security the government has no equal.
Do the "best and brightest" really earn the most money?
I am an unapologetic free marketer (with a couple of idiosyncratic socialist leanings) and am certain the "best and brightest" do not always (usually, even) make it to the top, especially in what is now a corporatist America.
That's just the halo effect/attribution bias rearing its ugly head.
Add to this the fact that the number of new IPO's introduced into our economy has dropped to almost zero and no new centers of free enterprise, like Detroit once was and Silicon Valley was in the 90's, are being formed. The new administration talks about thousands of new "green" jobs from government investment, but enterprise does not work that way. Have we killed the goose that lays the golden eggs?
I think the larger point is probably fair, but as a former resident of Douglas County, I'd like to point out that it's an exurban community of McMansions, tract homes and 10-acre ranchettes. It was bound to take a beating in a housing downturn. It probably won't be in the top 20 next year.