“This basic framework for tax law doesn’t make much sense,” writes Yale’s Robert Shiller in today’s New York Times.   “Instead, future tax brackets and rates should be contingent on the extent of future inequality.

While Ann Coulter has driven me nuts lately with her support of the war in Iraq and her shilling for George Bush, I think she does a wonderful job here skewering the New York Times for its recent scandal with Jayson Blair.  Howell Raines is one of those nuisances for which there is no cure. 

U.S. Officials Ground an Entrepreneur in Iraq

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
 

AGHDAD, Iraq, May 14 — As the Bush administration rushes to jump-start the reconstruction of postwar Iraq, it may want to consider the recent woes of Pete Henderson.

HE falling dollar has raised alarms in certain circles. But it is just what the doctor ordered for a weak American economy. And if it falls some more, all the better,” writes Jeff Madrick in the New York Times.

Paul Kasriel of Northern Trust documents the myth of falling prices with some very interesting charts. He notes that the year-over-year percent change in the core intermediate and crude PPI is actually on an uptrend relative to 2001. He further shows that the only existing deflation is observed in the portion of the CPI called “owners’ equivalent rent” (OER), which accounts for 28% of the overall core CPI. Rents have fallen as house prices have increased.

• James Grant weighs in on the prospects for deflation.

“Internet users tend to ignore pop-up messages. So advertisers have now found a less intrusive - and even useful - way to get their message across, says Wendy Grossman.”

If pop-up ads bother you as they once bothered me, download the free Alexa toolbar, which includes the greatest anti-pop-up program on the web.

“In the theory of the state that John Stuart Mill sketched in On Liberty, the government’s role is to provide an unobtrusive framework for private activities. Government provides certain goods, such as national defense and (in some versions) education, that private markets will not provide in sufficient quantities. But beyond that it merely protects a handful of entitlements (property rights and some personal liberties) that are necessary to prevent markets from not working at all or from running off the rails, as would happen, for example, if there were no sanctions for theft.

An excerpt from an infamous blog apparently run by an educated professional Iraqi pseudo-named Salam Pax (another source of news around the official organs):