Things I don't understand and Things I don't know

Things I don't understand:

• Why do people trust governments when they don't trust markets or firms?
• Do people really think the US markets have truly been unregulated and our government has a laissez faire economic policy?
• Why do people think we're worse off than we were 10, 20, even 50 years ago?

Things I don't know:

• Is American medical care generally better, worse or equal to other first world countries'?
• What's the current state of the art in economic auction theory?
• Statistics. And Math, at least not enough of either to feel comfortable applying to grad school in Economics.
• Why does Cheapo seem to stock vastly more new CDs than used CDs but Half Price seem to stock primarily used books, and their new books are sold at a deep discount where Cheapo's new CDs aren't discounted much, if at all?
• Why is US medical care so expensive?
• If Keynes and other undergrad macro isn't what has been taught in graduate programs for a couple decades, what has been and why didn't it make its way to undergrad programs?
• How have American wages compared to European wages over the past few decades? How about total compensation?
• How competitive are markets in MMOs like World of Warcraft and Ragnarok Online?
• What kind of goop should I use in my hair?

These aren't necessarily topics I intend to explore here, but they are the type of question I find interesting.

I'm going to make one big, well researched post a week on this blog, and try to get at least some small tidbit a day in on something that piques my interest. I still haven't decided on when to make that post, probably a Wednesday or Thursday since that meshes with my work schedule well.



Right now I'm researching the US medical system for a first large post. Obviously the whole health care legislation thing is going on, and both sides have reasonable arguments about why they believe US health care is better or worse than the alternative. Most of what I've seen is light on data, at best using only one or two measures: Life expectancy, survival rates for a couple types of cancer, etc. I want to gather a broad spectrum of data to develop an opinion I can support.

The Cheapo verses Half Price question might be really interesting and I want to do an actual review of the literature, so that may take a while.