Newmark's Door

In the beginning, no. Now? Mostly yes. But there are a couple of differences and they're nicely stated by David Henderson:

There are two main differences between Ponzi’s original scam and the Social Security system. The first difference is that Social Security is run by government and, whatever its constitutionality and its questionable ethics, is legal. The second difference follows from the first: Whereas Ponzi had to rely on suckers, the government can and does use force.

The claim of "$1 trillion" is quite questionable. But I agree the scope is "staggering". (Here's a link to the report. Scroll down a bit.) 

RELATED. One of the faculty members at my former employer, NC State, is fighting back: "I've Declared War on DEI at NC State". 

They'll need to get this fixed before AI can run the world.

RELATED: "None of current LLMs can truly reason and cannot be used for any serious purposes without human expert supervision - a bitter truth pill for some people in this sub".

Nice piece at Econlib:

Commenting on a recent post by Scott Sumner, Mactoul argued “Authoritarianism is useful when you are trying to downsize the federal bureaucracy.”  This sort of love affair with arbitrary power is common when the authoritarian does what you want.  It’s why authoritarianism is so seductive, even to those who abhor power.  Many days and nights I have spent dreaming of the utopia that would exist if only I, and I alone, wielded absolute power. Even Adam Smith discusses how certain evils, like slavery, are more likely to be abolished or mitigated under an arbitrary government as opposed to a more limited government . . . 

But lest we be seduced by this ability for authoritarianism to do good, we must remember that it is arbitrary.

Another mess I hope the current administration can clean up.

The FBI doesn’t just have a transparency problem. They’re actually distorting data to skew important crime statistics.

Ibra, Beckham, Maradona, Roberto Carlos, and you know who is #1.

Liverpool fans are something else.

Them.

Live at Monterey Pop, Buffalo Springfield.

Live, accompanied by a band of all-stars, Al Green sings "Let's Stay Together".

With Jools Holland, Fats Domino. (On X.) (Link courtesy of Michael G.)

From Heartbreakers, "Back in the USSR".

The "science" says "no". But women, on the other hand . . . 

I'd like it to be true, but I'm skeptical. Especially since the study was "led by" an economist. (It seems a little out of field for an economist, even an excellent one as here.)

Well, it's a blue state but maybe not much longer. "It's a true gift to the parental choice movement".

"This is an interactive map of Museums in the United States. It shows Science, History, Geology Museums and more displayed in different colors. For names, hover over the map. For more detail, zoom in. For more information, scroll down."

I agree wholeheartedly with the main argument advanced here. (I ignore the last three paragraph where the standard we-hate-Trump stuff is. A lot of Washington Post articles--except the recipes--have that nowadays.)

See also "Daylight Saving Time and Early School Start Times Cost The Economy Billions".

"Universities are like supertankers moving through the ocean: there is enormous momentum behind their present direction, whichever way that might be."

See also the shorter "The fight to fix higher ed is just beginning — here’s the hard road forward".

In my recent visit to Labcorp the results can back with my "biological age". 

I certainly hope not. It is a very useful resource.

Sabine Hossenfelder doesn't argue we should close all the universities. She doesn't argue we should stop all funding of academic research. But she does argue that we should cut government funding of a lot of academic research and replace it, if the research is sufficiently valuable, with private funding. She also argues that the arguments often advanced for why government funding is "necessary" are weak. (20-minute YouTube.)

RELATED: As you might well imagine some folks were not happy with Ms. Hossenfelder's video. So she posted a tweet. It begins this way:

I'll tell you something about the psychology that is going on here.

The content of my video is taking the 5 most common arguments that people in academia make for tax-paid research and explain why they are bad arguments.

Everyone who has previously made these arguments is now embarrassed, so they lash out at me.

Bryan Caplan:

Simple: As the Congressional Budget Office confirmed years ago, federal workers are vastly overcompensated. . . .

To be fair, prudent quitting takes time. During the next year or so, federal workers’ quit rate could conceivably spike. I’m happy to bet that it won’t. Any takers?

If you are interested in stock market investing a lot of what Clifford Asness writes (here he is the co-author) is worth reading. (If link doesn't work try this.)

Fair:

Redistributing daylight is the kind of zero-sum game that underlies the liberals’ vision of the world. The hour of daylight in the evening comes at the expense of the morning. 

A worthy addition to Conquest's Three Laws of Politics.

By David Friedman. This, it seems to me, is important:

It is hard, especially for someone in a position of authority, to admit that there is nothing to be done.

Warning: if you don't like blunt talk, you really won't like Cliff Asness.

A sovereign wealth fund for the U.S., which President Trump has also begun planning, is inappropriate, unneeded, likely harmful, and potentially quite corrupt. But a strategic cryptocurrency reserve looks at a “normal” sovereign wealth fund and says, “Hold my beer,” as we are going to plaid.