Posts Tagged "economics"

Serious question about urban planning policy

Skye retweeted an article today which made me realize that I really don't understand something: what do people who are profoundly anti-gentrification want? The argument that I see usually goes like this:

  1. Rich people are moving into a traditionally mixed neighborhood
  2. The big spike in demand drastically drives up rent
  3. "Normal" folk can't afford to live there (usually "normal" is defined as "poor and racially diverse", sometimes it's instead defined as "people who've lived here longer than these whippersnappers")
  4. This is bad

I generally agree that a lack of diversity is bad but, uh, what's would society do instead?

  • Is …
read more

Debt Free Since 2012

As of today, February 10, 2012, I am now officially debt-free. I decided to use my tax refund to pay off the rest of my student loans, which have been sucking down thousands of dollars a month since I graduated. Here are the results:

debt status

Yep. It took a few days longer than expected, because Sallie Mae is terrible at ACH. And, of course, their obnoxious rounding means that at some point in the next six months, I'm going to get a cheque from Sallie Mae for 80¢ (presumably plus 6.8% interest). But it's pretty nice to be free...

This …

read more

What I Want: The Moonbat List


read more

Random Thought

The underlying principal of free-market economics is that individual actors will, in the aggregate, make optimal choices. Why should we believe this to be true?

read more