Month: February 2019

Recently I logged onto Facebook to be greeted with a new page named, “Boycott Magoo’s.”  Magoo’s is a local college bar, famous for five dollar pitchers of beer that University of Puget Sound students would flock to go buy on Thursday nights.  Recently however, Magoo’s has decided to increase their prices by $1.50 so that a pitcher now costs a hefty $6.50. Students appalled by this stormed to social media to take action and posts followed such as the following which was found on the Facebook page by a fellow student, “Magoos has begun what will be their long reign Continue reading The Economics of Magoo’s→

While it’s been 6 years since the Governor of Kansas, Sam Brownback, embarked on what is now known as the “Kansas Experiment”,  its impact is still being felt by the economy and politics of Kansas today. Given the outcome, the real question is, was Kansas moving in a downward economic trend before the tax cut or was the tax cut the cause? The answer is: it was. I wish I could have drawn it out to a surprise conclusion or at least had some ambiguity to work with, but it is clear from the downgrading of the state credit rating Continue reading The Kansas Experiment: Was Kansas Going to Fail Anyway?→

The choice to vote can be seen as a voluntary contribution mechanism.  This isn’t a perfect perspective, but it hold the basic concept. The payoff would be amount of democracy or a leader that accurately depicts their representatives.  From this perspective our voting system could be considered very successful. Convincing a little less than half a nation to contribute to a VCM game is impressive. clarification: the nash equilibrium isn’t zero.  As less and less people vote the more your vote matters, eventually surpassing the cost of going out and voting. Why do so many people vote?  In the recent Continue reading The Paradox of Voting (part 1)→

With a little more than a month until the Brexit deadline, and without a British exit plan in place, the world has its eyes set on Britain, the European Union, and how this whole situation is going to play out come march 29th. Britain is historic for maintaining the largest banking sector in Europe, home to banks such as HSBC and Standard Chartered, which influence over 5 trillion pounds. Since Britain announced Brexit in 2014 nearly 1 trillion pounds have flowed from the banking headquarters in the UK to other countries in the EU for the purpose of spreading the Continue reading Na Trioblóidí “The Troubles” that come with Brexit→