Search Results

Editor’s note: This extra-rich recipe was originally shared on Yoram’s own blog at The Stand-Up Economist. Check it out! The National Association of Manufacturers just released a scathing report on carbon taxes (the full report was produced—unfortunately—with the assistance of my friends at NERA), but in reality all their analysis shows is that paying down the Federal debt is the poison pill of economic policy: as long as the economy...

Anna Too big to fail is one thing. Now John Cassidy asks in The New Yorker if the S.E.C. is for sale. Krugman on the claim we’re “cheating our children” with deficit spending: Contrary to almost everything you read in the papers or see on TV, debt doesn’t directly make our nation poorer…Yet there is, as I said, a lot of truth to the charge that we’re cheating our children....

Clark Observers in the Twin Cities notice Peak VMT – and raise some good questions about whether local governments ought to be projecting traffic growth. (They don’t seem to be particularly good at it.) In the same vein, Charles Marohn at Strong Towns suggests that we flat-out stop using traffic forecasts to plan new roads: “infrastructure spending should never be in anticipation of growth, but only in support of places...

Last time, we reviewed accessory dwelling units’ (ADUs’) paucity and slow pace of development in most of the Northwest outside of Vancouver, BC. This time: the constraints that bind them. Why are accessory apartments and cottages so rare? One reason, no doubt, is that many homeowners do not want to host an ADU. But a more pernicious reason is that winning approval to rent out an ADU in most cities...

Eric If you have a young child, this is mandatory viewing: photos of kids around the world with their favorite toys. I found clicking through the pictures to be a surprisingly emotional experience, in part because of the tremendous wealth disparities in evidence, but I think more because of the intrinsic awesomeness in the way that children play. (A couple of photos are a bit concerning though.) My award for...

In 2002, 26 percent of Norwegian contraceptive users relied on a long acting method that they could simply fit and forget, the IUD. In the United States, that rate was 2 percent. Long acting reversible contraceptives (aka LARCs) such as IUDs and implants are rapidly growing in popularity, but the US and Canada lag behind many other countries in making these top tier methods widely available. Around the world, IUDs...

Futurist Sara Robinson has called modern contraception the most disruptive technology of the last hundred years. From the time our ancestors first walked out of the Great Rift Valley—perhaps even before—culture, religion, and division of labor enshrined the simple, universal fact that women had little control over their fertility. When modern contraception arrived in the middle of the 20th Century, it triggered a tidal wave of culture change that left...

Anna: This is from the Ringside Seat email I get from the American Prospect. The climate impact analogies are vivid and alarming: “Mother Jones follows climate-change dynamo Jason Box to Greenland’s ice sheet to learn that it’s halfway to snowcone and might go full slushie way ahead of schedule.” Are you one of Seattle’s thrift store fashionistas? The Seattle Times and local fashion blogger Dana Landon just launched a contest...

From sunny Southern California, some gloomy news on highway tolls. Here’s the Orange County Register… Orange County’s toll roads have slid farther and farther behind the confident projections of ridership and revenue on which they were built, prompting an unusual state review of their finances. The roads were the first of their kind in California, a bet that drivers would be willing to pay to escape the grind of Southern...

Nowadays, in the Northwest as across North America, most people live in houses or apartments that they own or rent. But not so long ago, other, less-expensive choices were just as common: renting space in a family’s home, for example, or living in a residential hotel. Rooming houses, with small private bedrooms and shared bathrooms down the hall, were particularly numerous. This affordable, efficient form of basic housing is overdue...