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Procedure and Substance in the US Budget
Megan McArdle discusses budget negotiating strategies. She’s right. Ezra Klein outlines why liberals don’t like it. He’s also right: Obama’s got 156 million people splitting $214 billion in tax cuts and benefits. The GOP’s got 4[.8] million people splitting $133 billion in tax cuts. On a per-person level, the GOP’s tax cuts are much larger.…
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Democracy: The Game Show
I’ve been thinking about a game show version of Ackerman and Fishkin’s “Deliberation Day” or David Estlund’s “Queen for the Day.” In both cases, they asked: why not let ordinary folks take a shot at solving our nation’s hardest problems? My question is: why not let them do it on national television as a form…
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The Problem with Honor: Cold Wars and Hard Hearts
Dr. J responds to my criticism of her position on plagiarism detection. I am, she accuses, guilty of Cold War paranoia and preemptive warfare with my students: That is to say, the classroom is a millieu in which everyone is suspicious and noone can be trusted, so every preemptive security mechanism one can employ should be employed. This is,…
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Why I use plagiarism detection services
Dr. J protests that her school has purchased access to the service Turnitin.com: If I participate in Turnitin, I am negating their Honor Code promise and, effectively, treating my students as if they never signed it. Quite simply, I do not know how I can reasonably expect students to take the Honor Code seriously when…
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How Taxation Effects Income Share (Not Much)
Last week, Greg Mankiw posted this graph without comment: I thought there was something weird about the graph, and it’s been nagging at me. For one thing, it compares the bottom four quintiles to the top 5 percent of Americans. For another, it ignores non-federal taxation. (State and local taxes are more difficult to calculate,…