For decades (at least as long as I've been alive), people have used the expressions "marriage bonus" and "marriage penalty" to describe what happens to the income tax liability of a couple before and after they formally wed. But focusing attention on changes in income tax liability has resulted in a totally inadequate amount of attention being paid to the actual marriage … [Read more...] about Means-testing and the real marriage penalties (wonkish)
3 questions about Americans and money
It's a slow, rainy Sunday around here, which is as good an occasion as any to contemplate the mysteries of life. In that spirit, here are three questions I genuinely don't know the answers to about Americans and their financial habits. Why don't Americans save in other currencies? I'm fascinated by currency risk and have written before about exposure to currency risk in the … [Read more...] about 3 questions about Americans and money
“Suicide of the West” is not a very good book
Last week I got into a discussion on Twitter with a long-time conservative reader who was upset about something he called "tribalism." We went back and forth for a while but I couldn't figure out what he was talking about, and then I remembered that I had recently heard the National Review "The Editors" podcast endorse a book by an NRO staffer named Jonah Goldberg called … [Read more...] about “Suicide of the West” is not a very good book
Cumulative losses as the psychic cost of investing
I was playing around with a pretty cool tool called Portfolio Visualizer and got to thinking about the difference between how finance professionals and ordinary people talk about investing. For finance types, an asset or a portfolio has an expected return, which might be calculated using historical returns or a forward-looking rule like Jack Bogle's "reasonable expectations" … [Read more...] about Cumulative losses as the psychic cost of investing
What a culture of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship would look like
I write a lot about entrepreneurship. This is not because I think everyone should be an entrepreneur. For one thing, not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, and part of having an economy that works for everyone means making room for folks who just want to show up at work and do their job. The problem with our current system of social and economic organization is that we've … [Read more...] about What a culture of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship would look like