“Lately, I’ve found myself re-watching the old Milton Friedman series, “Free to Choose.” It’s a pity he’s not around to offer some advise and wisdom in times like these.”

No, it’s a mercy: the passage of the monstrous “stimulus” bill (most of which is post-2009 spending) would surely have killed him.

From the Wikipedia description I am inclined to agree. I got an MIT engineering degree in EECS in 2003/4 and I wish I had been forced to take more project-based courses.

But one disadvantage this school has is the absence of a long, well-established alumni network. I certainly benefit from this network for my school. Also, wouldn’t Olin have difficulty attracting the best faculty if it doesn’t offer tenure? Phil, you yourself have taught at MIT and now Harvard…

I’m not sure what a decent rate of return for a mortgage is (and it depends on inflation), but let’s just say it’s 9%, what I paid to my house in about 1995.

With the collusion between the fed and wall street, we’ve seen rates on a continual decline and a continual relaxing of lending rules, all to keep the mortgage industry poppin’. That made housing scarce, and pushed the prices up to an unnatural level.

Now that we’ve burst the bubble, nobody knows what houses are really worth, but my guess is that the news is not good. Way too much inventory coupled with the fact that most of the appreciation was illusory means that prices are likely to keep heading down.

The only thing propping them up right now is the continued available of low interest rates. I just locked in 5.125 percent for 15 years (no points) on a refi, but I think that anybody who writes that loan right now is an absolute moron.

What I find more than a bit annoying is that nobody is talking about the overall effect on the consumer of higher house prices across the board, and how much of that increase was managed by wall street for their own benefit.

The kid will pay taxes in the Netherlands, of course, but he will get a lot of services in return (see David Wihl’s comment above). More to my point, he will be leaving the rest of us to pay for our ineffective schools, automaker bailouts, Wall Street’s taxpayer-funded bonuses, public employee pensions promised back in the 1970s, Long Island Railroad pension and disability (see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/nyregion/21lirr.html ), etc.

I always thought the foreign exemption was to prevent double taxation. It also has the side effect of bringing foreign money into our economy. For example, I live and work in Australia for an Australian company and I am still paying a mortgage in the USA. Also, you can’t find consumer goods cheaper than you can find them in the US. Whenever I go home, I bring suitcases full of crap bought in the USA back to Australia.

Although it’s a book dealing with a much earlier time, Geoffrey Parker’s Success is Never Final: Empire, War and Faith in Early Modern Europe (link goes to my post on the subject) strikes similar themes about how the traits that tend to fuel the rise of the nations eventually shift into different traits that undermine the very attributes that made nations successful in the first place. The premise is more interesting than some of the essays within, but I still think it worth reading.