Matther Yglesias is under attack from the forces of evil.mil

This means that I will post my comments on his site here, since one of them seems
to have fallen into a black hole.

I quote

"The New York Times describes the wide variety of inconveniences that New Yorkers will face during the Republican convention. Then we hear Mayor Bloomber for the defense:

After describing the security measures, the mayor told radio listeners that the Republican convention would benefit the city as a whole, saying that it would generate an estimated $250 million for the local economy and create thousands of jobs. "So this is a good economic deal for the city," the mayor said. "The disruptions will be a little bit annoying, but minimal. There's no reason for businesses to close down."

Now $250 million over a four day period comes out to $62.5 million per day, which averaged out across 8 million people turns out to be less than $7 per person per day. And that's the gross haul. The city will, I assume, be spending a lot of money on police overtime, barricade construction, etc., which will probably bring the average net economic gain down even further. ...
It doesn't look like a very good deal to me."


Also the costs are not just police ovrertime and inconvenience. The conventioneers will demand goods and services in exchange for their $250 Million. People who work in hotels and restaurants will have to work more. $1 in sales is good for sellers but it is not as good as $1 for nothing.

However the point that got my interest is $62.5 M divided by $7 > 8.92 Million > 8 million. Looks like Matt made a boo boo while fighting innumeracy.

Did he do that on purpose just to get this link ?

"Samuel Huntington has gotten tons of play from both The Clash of Civilizations and Who Are We specifically because his theses are wrongheaded, somewhat offensive, and argued for in a rather sloppy manner."


Elisabetta Addis and I call the deliberate attempt to get attention by being outrageously wrong Fukayaming after Francis Fukayama author of "The End of History". It's like the guy had registered history TM. For a year, every time any TNR type journalist commentator wrote about anything happening anywhere s/he would add a comment like "people in slavogria haven't yet read Fukayama so history hasn't ended here just yet."

Now it's hard to top that. In fact, this means that writing is obsolete. No one will be able to write anything useful or interesting again. Try to prove me wrong (and cite me when you do).