Articles while busy

It's time I review my schedule

I curse myself for forgetting to keep my excel files on my zip drive, or having a lap top to work with.  The weekend left me with plenty of time to work on my next instalment on a statistical view of what makes nations prosperous, however, the aforementioned brain fart left me with non of the materials I want available.  Coupled with work and post-undergrad classes, no the classes are not on neolithic pottery making and its effect on establishing the patriarchy, leave me little time on the weekdays for any thing involving analytical reviews.  I aim to change that.  But in the interim I have been reading the blogs of others and generating ideas.

One such idea is to examine the long term growth rates of the United States.  I like Captain Capitalism's idea of viewing a 20 year revolving average to get a good idea of how nations are doing.  I am going to use that method, and instead of going back to the 1960s or 1950s, take it back further.  I don't disagree with the Captain when he says we implemented policies and ideas that resulting in a much healthier economy, however, I am reticent to simply stop at the 'golden era' of America growth because I think a) it is somewhat fictitious, and b) that it merely wounds our economic enemies rather than putting them down for the kill.  What do I mean by this.  Well both points are related in so much that much of the damage that we are suffering either was already implemented or in its nascent stages during this period; government involvement in the economy, unsustainable entitlements, and the general trust in 'top men' that has crippled us today.  Moreover, I think the growth rates were pushed up because the rest of the world was in such bad shape relative to the United States. We were certainly an economically vibrant and massive, however, I think we overestimate this point.  And that is part of the problem.  Socialist will point to this era and say, see we had increasing government programs and it didn't hurt economic growth.  The financially and economically literate amongst us will see the sophistry for what it is, but unfortunately too many other Americans will be convinced.  So that is one project I want to work on.  Take the Captains idea and methodology and go just a little further.

On other news, I saw that Save Capitalism just did a post about Argentina, a rather good one as well, disproving the so-called Argentinian miracle. I contrasted this nation with Chile not to long ago in one of my blog posts. I even attempted to us excel to run some statistical analysis, before I found out that excel isn't the best tool to use. His charts are useful, and I think I will go back and run the same statistics to compare the two nations more thoroughly.  Given what I find we might discover that a Chile v Argentina will be a great case study in how two different economic modes and governance lead to two different economic outcomes.