Bastiat's Window

Bastiat's Window

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June 2025

May 2025

Banzai, Miss American Pie — Did American Ideals Veto Kamikaze Tactics?
AI helps me navigate a long-ago old classroom anecdote about WWII history, economic theory, cognitive bias, and ethical norms. A strange thought…
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Robert F. Graboyes
42
Central Planning Meets Socialist Realism
After reading my "The Other Manhattan Project," a reader asked why central economic planning worked so well for America in WWII but so badly almost…
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Robert F. Graboyes
48
Farm-to-Table International Economics
Knowing that (X-M)=(S-I)+(T-G) is absolutely essential to understanding international trade and finance. Here, we turn two towns and two crops into…
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Robert F. Graboyes
18
The Other Manhattan Project
While Robert Oppenheimer's team developed the atomic bomb, Simon Kuznets's team developed national income accounting. Debate topic: Which was more…
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Robert F. Graboyes
21
Persuasive Beats Abrasive
12 suggestions for Democrats on how they might win back skeptical voters.
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Robert F. Graboyes
98

April 2025

The Software Bigotry of Low Expectations
ChatGPT happily parodied Donald Trump & friends for me but refused to do a parallel parody of Kamala Harris & friends. In a HAL9000-like tone, ChatGPT…
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Robert F. Graboyes
24
Lincoln from Chaucer, Pesci and Grampa, Marley and Burns and the King and Picard
Abraham Lincoln uses AI to speak micro-varieties of English. Fake album cover recalls the real musical connection between Joe Pesci and Jimi Hendrix…
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Robert F. Graboyes
24
Trade Winds 2025—Seriously and Literally
The third and final installment of my April trilogy on Trump and tariffs. This one summarizes my discussions over the past week. (If you're short on…
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Robert F. Graboyes
33
Real-World Trade-Deficit Math-Magic
Long ago, I helped bankers lending billions of dollars in Africa by teaching them a few equations related to trade deficits. Those equations are…
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Robert F. Graboyes
143
© 2025 Robert F. Graboyes
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