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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"Aargh"? Why, Mr. Henderson! Where is your sense of romance!
david,
Where is your sense of humor? :-) Seriously, I meant that paragraph as an appreciative compliment. I'm an incurable romantic.
Best,
David
Okay, more seriously.
On Presidential pay - for a variety of reasons, people get truly annoyed when we pay national leaders a CEO's wage. Singapore does so - the Prime Minister of Singapore is the highest-paid chief executive of any country - and Singaporeans grumble a lot about it.
It's virtually the only country that does so, in fact - the second-highest is Hong Kong, which only pays roughly a fifth of Singapore's PM wage (counting wage per population makes the disparity more dramatic. The PM of Singapore gets roughly 50 cents USD per capita. HK pays 7 cents per capita. The President of the USA gets 0.1 cent per capita).
But the way Singapore does things - if you get a car grant (as part of your wage as a cabinet appointee, say), then you don't get a state car. If you get a state car, then you aren't given a car grant.
Do you think the average American would be so blasé about the President receiving benefits of this magnitude if this non-monetary compensation were changed to monetary compensation instead? If the President were paid millions instead, and asked to hire his own jet and pay for the USAF guard? I doubt so. On the whole, it's not that Americans are disregarding the shift of wealth to the political elite - apparently, Americans just really want to dictate what the President spends on.
Pirates didn't say "aargh." They said "arrr," which means "yes," much like "aye" does.
See
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/howto.html#basic
which is the best possible source proving my assertion.
Chris
I just read a great paper by Leeson called "Two Cheers for Capitalism." He pretty conclusively shows the superiority of capitalism in creating good things.