Quotes of the day

... there has never been a better time to bet against Warren Buffett.--Michael Lewis

Do you understand the concept of an average, Mr. Trump?--Andrew Ceresney, author Timothy O'Brien's lawyer

The [airline] tickets were remarkably cheap — only $438.82 per passenger round trip. How much of that money goes to the airline? A paltry $138. The rest — over $300 — is taxes. Percentage-wise, that’s even higher than the cigarette taxes in Chicago.--Steven Levitt

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.--Art Laffer and Stephen Moore

We may have seen the last of America as a dynamic economy with a competitive political system. Instead, we may be headed toward a stagnant economy and a one-party political system. Have a nice day.--Arnold Kling

A carbon tax pushes one very powerful and interested group, the large energy firms, into the opposition. If tradable allowances are instead given to firms initially, there is a better chance of bringing the large energy firms into the coalition. Perhaps it’s not fair that politically powerful groups must be bought off but as Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s first chancellor, once said,“Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” We can only add that producing both laws and sausages requires some pork.--Alex Tabarrok

Ah, transparency. Perhaps you've read that the new era of candor in government spending has arrived. Except, apparently, when it comes to the $750 billion that the Obama Administration and other nations have agreed to provide the International Monetary Fund. In this case, it's all opacity all the time. ... The wheels are greased in Congress to pass this before the public notices, but South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint is trying to force a Senate floor vote on the $108 billion. He'll lose, but at least he's honoring Mr. Obama's pledge of transparency.--WSJ Editorial Board

Congressional Democrats are acting as if there is something sinister in the CIA releasing the records of its briefings ... But the deal with congressional oversight is that if members of Congress are briefed on a subject and don't object, they shouldn't trash the agency later in public when there's a flap. That undermines not just CIA morale but the integrity of the oversight process itself. Pelosi's apparent rewriting of the record would be shocking, if it weren't so typical of congressional behavior on this subject.--David Ignatius

But incarceration also provided [Zhao Ziyang] with time to read and reflect broadly on China's situation in history. At the end of "Prisoner of the State," we see Zhao arrive at positions more radical than any he had taken before -- positions that the Chinese government had long been calling "dissident." For instance, Zhao eventually concluded that China needs a free press, freedom to organize and an independent judiciary. The Communist Party will have to release its monopoly on power. Ultimately, China will need parliamentary democracy. --Perry Link

Slang is like a breeze; it softly comes and goes, as new times bring new buzzwords. Some stick ("cool" defiantly endures); some induce cringes when dusted off ("groovy" is now in the dustbin of irony).--Nick Stillman