This webpage econphd.net provides an inside look at mainstream economics. It includes information on rankings, admission standards, graduate textbooks, lecture notes ect. It would seem that the mathemization of economics is complete and there is no longer any actual economics in economics, at least in graduate training at the major universities. Disturbing, but not necessarily surprising.

For the entrepreneur in a market economy, nothing is a sure thing. Every business is only a short step from bankruptcy. No business possesses the power to make people buy what they do not want. All success is potentially fleeting.

Lawrence Kotlikoff has responded to Laurence Vance’s criticism of the FairTax idea. So that it doesn’t get lost in the ever-longer thread here, here it is as a separate post. It seems to me that that his whole response underscores what a great job Vance did. Smoke and mirrors indeed!

Reviewing Laurence Vance’s Book Review

“There’s No Such Thing as a Fair Tax”

Dr. Laurence J. Kotlikoff

Professor of Economics, Boston University

In the latest issue of Meeting News, a trade publication for for meeting planners, the front page article talks about the growing problem of finding that your meeting has been placed in a ball room right next door to an “alternative-lifestyle” group of some kind.

A story on Slashdot, the popular “News for Nerds” site expresses concerns about Internet Service Providers trying to create a two-tiered Internet. The top comment on the story (meaning it was posted quickly and then rated highly by Slashdot readers) is by A.B. Dada who seems to be a Mises.org and LRC reader. He writes:

declares Newsweek.

It’s a mystery—even to the number crunchers. “We’d like to say it’s because economics is so interesting and because economists are so handsome and intelligent,” says John Siegfried, an econ professor at Vanderbilt University. “But there’s no good answer.”

Sure, Siegfried. Of course the Austrian School is by far the sexiest because we don’t bore the gals with dry discussions about econometrics.

Tim Harford offers an interesting analysis of the great XBox shortage of 2005. They are selling for $300, except that they are not selling because there is a massive shortage. He asks the question: why doesn’t Microsoft raise the price to $700 or more in order to clear the market, since that’s the price they are selling for on Ebay?

I just received an email from a person who follows the work of the Mises Institute, and was confused by this site’s large archive of audio by Robert LeFevre, the founder of the Freedom School and a great libertarian publicist in the last century. This correspondent said that LeFevre was interested in politics only, so it makes no sense for him to be so heavily featured on an economics site.

Listening to Verdi’s La Traviata for Sunday night entertainment, I’m charmed yet again by the scene when the lovers Alfredo and Violetta decide to move to the country and out of the city, no matter what the cost. Everyone is scandalized by this decision to live so luxuriously instead of choosing the cheaper route of city living. Then it turns out that the the maid, Annina, reveals that Violetta has pawned her jewels to keep the house. Alfredo leaves for the city to try to raise money to pay her back, and one disaster after another occurs.