That was really funny. Thanks for the link.

I am a health nut, and I would argue that all except the cigarette are good for you--assuming the grease in the greasy side is not monounsaturated, except maybe olive oil. Saturated fats and cholesterol have gotten a bad rap. The people I know who drink diet soda and eat fat-free this or that, and butter substitutes, protein bars made of soy, and other so-called healthy foods, are the ones who have a really hard time controlling their cravings and weight and just generally have a lot of unpleasant issues regarding food. I think their bodies are actually starving for real food, despite all the calories they are consuming. I know someone will point it out, so let me just go ahead and say that I know that correlation doesn't equal causation and that my anecdotes a clinical trial does not make. Still, the conclusion I draw is that the vast majority of so-called health food is anything but.

Not an over-reaction. It happened.

http://www.global-reality.com/biotech/articles/othernews022.htm

http://www.nben.ca/environews/media/mediaarchives/04/jan/percy.htm

No, apparently we didn't learn that. Because the Fed turned right around and started pumping again after the dotcom bust. Remains to be seen whether we will learn the easy-credit-fuels-bubbles lesson after the bursting of this latest bubble. My guess: probably not.

I was getting so down after reading his comment... But then I saw yours. Thanks.

Yes, on the one hand, there is some abuse of maternity and family leave policies. People think they should be able to shrug their work off on others and then still get the credit for it when they return, in terms of advancement, etc. As a single, childless woman, that really irks me. The other side of the issue is that it is in society's best interest for mothers to spend a lot of time with their newborns. It's in society's best interest to have children who feel secure, breast fed when possible, etc., etc. There is a middle ground. It's up to us to find it and to push for it, and not to be completely blind to one side of the issue.

Falling stock prices often contribute to bankruptcy because of lot of debt structures are at least partly short-term, requiring it to be rolled over from time to time, and creditors are less willing to roll over the debt when the stock price is tanking. They get nervous.

And layoffs announcements often cause a bump in share price when times are good or just okay, because it signals lower future expenses. But in times like these, when investors are nervous, unexpected layoff announcements can be taken as a signal that things are the company are worse than people thought. It signals that management thinks future revenues are likely to be lower, and that they are trying to cut expenses to help compensate.

Or maybe he doesn't want his salary forever associated with his username.

Uh, yeah, unless some qualification dictates otherwise. A man or woman supporting a family shouldn't necessarily be paid more than a single person. That's discrimination. Welcome to the real world. The nightmare of the 1950's is over.

Are you kidding? If you want to take away someone else's liberty to do something, the burden of proof that the something in question is so harmful to society as to justify that restriction of liberty should fall on you.

How is this different from alcohol use? Or the societal costs of some people eating way too much? Should diets in excess of 2,000 calories per day be illegal? If you think they should be illegal, you are a scary person, but at least your argument is consistent.

Oh yeah, that's right. And the Dutch also gave us option contracts, as they were necessary to facilitate tulip mania. So, in a sense, the Dutch invented derivatives.* So this global financial crisis is really your fault. Of course.

* Unless you consider more traditional insurance contracts derivatives, which some do, and which were used in Italy and probably elsewhere well before tulip mania.

(Yes, this is tongue in cheek.)

No self-respecting economist still believes this nonsense. It's not worth a serious reply.

Basically correct. There was no federal income tax until during the Civil War, when we needed a way to pay for soldiers and supplies. We were like a teenager who learned for the first time about this thing called credit. We've had a national debt since then, and thus of course federal income taxes. No one would lend to the federal government if it didn't have the power to tax to pay the debt back. A lot of people don't seem to get this connection between debt and taxes. I;m a fiscal conservative, but when so-called fiscal conservatives push through income tax cuts, that just raise our national debt. Future taxes will be higher. In total, we'll pay even more than we would have if we hadn't put it off because more interest is added. Some idiots claim "debt doesn't matter" because we basically owe the money to ourselves. But US Treasuries are now obviously held in large part by non-US institutions. But even that is not the biggest point. The biggest point is the shifting of the burden from one generation to the next.

This is long-winded and may seem off-topic, but I think it's very relevant to a discussion of individual rights. Whether the federal government had the power to incur a national debt and then to tax to pay it off was hotly debated for a long time. Now, the vast majority just accepts it. Yes, the federal government needs some revenue. I'm not an anti-government crackpot. But look at our national debt. Look toward the future at the taxes we and the next generations will have to pay to pay off our debt. At what point does it stop? Should our government have the power to make us all debtors to the rest of the world?