Even though Occupy Wall Street has lost some of its muster, the message has been loud and clear, people are pissed off.  The easiest target has been Wall Street, and it will likely remain that way for some time.  They certainly deserve a lot of the blame, blame they’ve been getting since 2007.  Over the [...]

There is no shortage of examples out there of government waste.  Fiscal conservatives believe that government, especially the federal government, just gets in the way.  In some cases, this is very true. When governments fund programs or initiatives, they often come with a number of strings attached.  This is likely a result of paranoia over [...]

This week I read an article about an executive at Google.  Google is famous for asking interesting questions in interviews, they are usually brain teasers designed to find candidates that are different.  Mind you, Google only picks the best of the best.  So they’re looking for the most interesting among that crop.  There were two [...]

“Call it a consumption tax, a luxury tax, or whatever. The name doesn’t matter. It’s a tax on buying more than you actually need. Taxing for the sake of taxing is bad, but taxing items with externalities on the surrounding world may not be a bad idea. The best example of this, especially in the [...]

Call it a consumption tax, a luxury tax, or whatever.  The name doesn’t matter.  It’s a tax on buying more than you actually need.  Taxing for the sake of taxing is bad, but taxing items with externalities on the surrounding world may not be a bad idea.  The best example of this, especially in the [...]

Made up words are my thing.  Just a few are Freeconomy, Egoeconomics, Hypotheory, and this blog’s namesake.  My childhood, and much of my adult life, has been filled with making up words when the real ones escape me.  But I can’t take credit for Prosumers, a word the predates my conception.  Prosumers is an awesome [...]

Local honey is one of the tastiest things in the world.  Maybe I just like the flowers near my home, maybe because when I was a kid it helped with my allergies, maybe I’ve been an eat local enthusiast all my life.  Okay, maybe not the last one.  But I love local honey. It’s not [...]

The green bars are retail sales in every December since 1992.  The red bars are the average monthly sales for the first 11 months of the year.  Keep in mind the red bars include Black Friday. It’s clear that not only are December sales about 30% higher on average, but based on the compression in [...]