The Wrongologist quotes Joseph Heller:
“You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.”
There's a lot of it around these days, too.
Two links that are definitely worth your time:
Cooley and LeRoy (1981) have argued that a close correspondence tends to exist between the advocacy of a theory and the results of scientific investigation.
From "The Monetary-Fiscal Policy Debate and the Andersen-Jordan Equation"
by Dallas S. Batten and Daniel L. Thornton (1986).
Alan Greenspan, in a 1998 speech, said:
Certainly, the degree of confidence that future outcomes are perceivable and projectable, and hence valued, depends in large part on the underlying political stability of any country with a market-oriented economy. Unless market participants are assured that their future commitments and contracts are protected by a rule of law, such commitments will not be made; productive efforts will be focused to address only the immediate short-term imperatives of survival; and efforts to build an infrastructure to provide for future needs will be stunted.
From "Table 13.21-- TOP WEALTHHOLDERS: 1962 TO 1989":
Top wealthholders are defined as persons with a gross estate in excess of specified amounts, rising from $60,000 in 1962 to $600,000 in 1989.
From "Top 12 States for Wealthy Taxpayers, as Defined by the IRS":
The Internal Revenue Service defines wealthy individuals using the estate tax threshold, calling this group "top wealthholders." In 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, the threshold was $11.4 million.
And then there is "The Share of Top Wealth-Holders in Personal Wealth, 1922-56":
As defined in the text, a "top wealth-holder"is a living person with more wealth than the estate tax exemption level.
They look at top wealthholders as a fraction of the total population, and their share of the total wealth, and that sort of thing. But I don't find a list of estate tax exemption levels by date.
They also say data after 1948 is not comparable with earlier data because the marital deduction was introduced that year.
"Congressional costs since 1953 have risen six times as fast as the rest of the federal budget"
From The General Theory Chapter 24, section IV:
War has several causes. Dictators and others such, to whom war offers, in expectation at least, a pleasurable excitement, find it easy to work on the natural bellicosity of their peoples. But, over and above this, facilitating their task of fanning the popular flame, are the economic causes of war, namely, the pressure of population and the competitive struggle for markets...
[U]nder the system of domestic laissez-faire and an international gold standard such as was orthodox in the latter half of the nineteenth century, there was no means open to a government whereby to mitigate economic distress at home except through the competitive struggle for markets...
But if nations can learn to provide themselves with full employment by their domestic policy (and, we must add, if they can also attain equilibrium in the trend of their population), there need be no important economic forces calculated to set the interest of one country against that of its neighbours. There would still be room for the international division of labour and for international lending in appropriate conditions. But there would no longer be a pressing motive why one country need force its wares on another or repulse the offerings of its neighbour, not because this was necessary to enable it to pay for what it wished to purchase, but with the express object of upsetting the equilibrium of payments so as to develop a balance of trade in its own favour. International trade would cease to be what it is, namely, a desperate expedient to maintain employment at home by forcing sales on foreign markets and restricting purchases, which, if successful, will merely shift the problem of unemployment to the neighbour which is worsted in the struggle, but a willing and unimpeded exchange of goods and services in conditions of mutual advantage.
Peace.
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