As far as I’m concerned, all the jokes about economists “lacking the personality to be accountants” fall flat. The truth is, we’re the life of the world’s intellectual party. In evidence, I present this hysterical set of pics from the webpage of Catalonian economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin.
Not convinced? How about this?
Aug 23 2006
Tyler Cowen finds advice on what to buy used. We just helped my daughter move to an apartment in Boston. She asked, "How did people sell their used furniture before Craigslist?" My wife and I decided that part of the answer is that people moved more stuff back in the old days. The transactions cost in buying and se...
Aug 23 2006
I've long been suspicious of international comparisons that weight all nations equally. When someone says "Former British colonies do better than former French colonies," my reaction is "Yes, but India did badly for decades, and it's probably got more people than all other British and French colonies put together." N...
Aug 22 2006
As far as I'm concerned, all the jokes about economists "lacking the personality to be accountants" fall flat. The truth is, we're the life of the world's intellectual party. In evidence, I present this hysterical set of pics from the webpage of Catalonian economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin. Not convinced? How about th...
READER COMMENTS
Antonio
Aug 23 2006 at 6:58am
What about this
I’m spanish, from Madrid. My feelings about Mr. Sala-i-Marti are mixed, as you can imagine.
I dont know if you can read spanish, but if you can let me recomend you this really awful article (from a euro-liberal point of view).
Patrick R. Sullivan
Aug 24 2006 at 11:17am
Antonio, ?porque ‘awful’?
As I read it, he’s just saying that if there is not a pure public goods argument for Catalan language films, you can make a network effects one. But the taxpayers ought to foot the bill for the translation, not obligate the producers and distributors to do so.
I don’t think it’s a very strong argument, but I don’t think its completely illegitimate.
Biopolitical
Aug 24 2006 at 5:15pm
Sala-i-Martín states that the Catalan language is a public good and he advocates the use of government force to promote its use among Catalonians. In that article he advocates forcing people to pay (through taxes) for something they don’t want to pay in the free market – movies dubbed in Catalan. Sala-i-Martín seems to be a classical liberal in most matters, but not in those related to his Catalonian nationalist ideology.
liberty
Aug 26 2006 at 10:42am
Those pics are very funny. However, government is not the only one to make those kinds of mistakes – those without English language skills are almost as bad; if you have not seen these you’ll have a very good laugh: http://engrish.com/
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