It seems like the “Depardieu Brigade” is growing. Brigitte Bardot* is considering taking advantage of the Russian 13% flat tax as well, it seems. Russia might be on to something here. Just imagine being able to get 13% of all the celebrity income in Europe. Like ZeroHedge said the other day, this might be the new Swiss bank account – a Russian passport.
I suspect the Russians can think of nothing more amusing than robbing the West of all its rich people by becoming a tax haven. Hell, I myself can’t think of anything more amusing. Socialism dies when someone realizes that solidarity among criminals is for suckers.
*On closer inspection, this had nothing to do with taxes. Mrs. Bardot is claiming it has to do with elephants. Still funny.
Russians have also been robbing the West of all of its news reporting integrity. I found myself watching and reading RT articles because they do a much better job pointing out America’s problems than any of the pathetic newspapers and channels here. Hopefully Al Jazeera America will do the same thing.
Anyway, I finally have both Greg Mankiw’s Principles of Macroeconomics and Principles of Microeconomics on my computer. Can’t wait to read both of them and see if the ideas still hold up or a relevant. I have a feeling I might find the microeconomics stuff more useful. As I said before, I’ve already read Principles of Economics, Mankiw’s other more introductory textbook, in 2011, so I’m hoping Mankiw will go into more depth with these two textbooks. This year is already turning out to be a big low for economics. Just look at this article. It’s really hard to stay optimistic with the ignorance of the masses taking over.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/05/paul-krugman-obama-treasury-secretary
What are these leftist moonbat lunatics thinking? Paul Krugman isn’t even a macroeconomist, but a TRADE economist and won that Nobel Prize for purely political reasons.
Paul Krugman has gone completely off the rails. Give a man political influence, and he’ll turn a million times worse. And Krugman wasn’t THAT good to begin with, although I have heard that his trade stuff is actually pretty accurate.
I have to ask, why are you bothering with Mankiw? Sure, it can be interesting to read with a critical eye, and I guess one should read the standard macro-textbooks even if we know that theres a lot of nonsense in it. Still though, I haven’t managed to make myself do it….
RT is interesting, AlJazeera too. I don’t believe everything they say, but at least the picture widens a bit from the regular well-chewed info-bytes from the msm.
I’ve asked various economists throughout the blogosphere and even Tumblr about various books I should read and I’ve gotten a lot of varied, yet interesting answers like “Man Economy and State,” Menger’s “Principles of Economics,” and even Post-Keynesian texts like “Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.” Mankiw’s textbooks and the Freakonomics books were offered as suggestions too and Polanyi’s “The Great Transformation” was also suggested. I believe all the economists I asked were libertarians and mostly of the Austrian school, though the guy who recommended Mankiw is more of a monetarist in the Milton Friedman tradition.
I just wanna make sure that I understand exactly where a lot of these various economists, including the macroeconomists, are coming from and that I don’t have a straw man version of their theories and so I might learn something new that I didn’t know before. Paul Krugman seems to be more and more influenced by the Post Keynesian school of economics in his writings, so that’s probably why he’s gotten a lot more progressive with his work.
I can tell that you are younger than me – you have not yet lost your enthusiasm for learning even the wrong side of the story
I’ve tried to read Keynes “General Theory”, but realized that it is such a waste of time that it will be postponed until I have nothing better to do. Credit to you for wading through the swamps though!
This reminds me of the time I went down to Florida and it rained the whole week I was there.
Gotta hate when that happens, I guess. Once, I was out running and my left shoe got stuck and disappeared in the mud after just 200 meters. The rest just wasn’t any fun, with one shoe…..