So Americans have a choice. We can spend 40 percent of our G.D.P., and provide services like Britain’s national health care. If we spent like the Nordic countries, we could provide government-paid maternity leave, subsidize college tuition and offer a health plan that was close to free for all Americans. But this would leave significantly less money for taxpayers to spend as they want.

Sounds good to me! Bring everyone on board!

*Yes, that Bob Packwood. (Geez — Newt, Eliot, now Bob Packwood, too? Is everyone going to be rehabilitated at some point?)

[A] “counterintuitive” finding is more interesting, and thus more likely to get published, than an intuitive one. But maybe lots of our intuitive ideas are correct and the “counterinuitive” selection bias is obscuring that. Certainly this is a problem in punditry and (especially) magazine writing, where the key to getting a lot of column inches is to have an interesting idea rather than a true one.

Sullivan, we’re gunning for you . . .

Conceptually Contrarian jumping-off point: The absurd resurrection and reevaluation of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career.