1. Can a current Congress bind a future Congress?
3. What's in the Guantanamo gift shop?
4. Are pets less "green" than Indians?
5. The best food books of the decade?
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Just got my wife gift cards for the movie close to our home. We go there regularly and it is something we enjoy doing together. I figured it would be a way to pre-commiting to paying here entrance (which I usually don’t do)
Personally, I like gift cards. Particularly, I like GCs to places to eat. GCs for places like Best Buy would go unused for years for me, but now my family knows to get me ones for food establishments I use them all the time. If the budget is running low and my wife still wants to eat out, we can. It’s pretty nice.
Last night’s offer: 25 dollar iTunes card for 10 bucks.
I turned it down hoping to get it for 5 dollars.
No deal in the end, and so the guy probably won’t use it.
I’m surprised that you have a link to what may be one of the worst posts Eric Posner has written. You can read comments to his post in The Volokh Conspiracy to know about his poor arguments. In particular, I think his last point about the ability of Congress to bind the future in uncontroversial ways is terrible–all decisions bind the future but in the future Congress can take new decisions to stop or at least change the effects of previous decisions (for example, regarding deficits and the debt, Congress can first solve the “flow” problem and then quickly solve or mitigate the “stock” problem).
You should have linked to the posts Eric has written on Copenhagen, in particular this one
http://volokh.com/2009/12/23/china’s-victory-at-copenhagen/
in which he applies the Tullock’s approach to government decisionmaking.
Curious,
Of course, you are assuming that in the absence of pets those materials would have no other use but landfill. This may or may not be true, but it does factor into the calculation.
sigh. dudes. come on. obviously it’s not zero impact. but equally obviously, this particular impact calculation is BS.
i’m just calling it like it is.
The statistic about unused gift cards is not compelling, because we don’t have a propert comparison. The argument assumes that in-kind gifts are appreciated at their fair market value, but that is not a good assumption. Without knowing how many billions of dollars of in-kind gifts are thrown away or stuck in a closet and forgotten about, we don’t know if gift cards are more efficient or less efficient than their alternative. For example, if I give my secretary a $50 gift card, I’m sure it would be appreciated much more than if I picked out a $50 sweater for her. While it may be true that she’ll appreciate $50 cash even more, that is not a relevant comparison if gift cards are bigger substitutes for in-kind gifts than they are substitutes for cash gifts.
Ritholz is full of it.
They don’t show that one isn’t thoughtful, they show that one knows that the recipient is better at fulfilling their desires than the giver is.
(Giving gift cards *and nothing else* (and especially a completely generic “gift VISA” or the like) to a lover or spouse who reasonably expects something of sentimental import, might be a bad idea.
But in general, and even as a component in such a case? They’re fine.
As Kat hints at, they’re a great way to encourage someone to buy something they want but would otherwise not splurge on. That sort of thing is a great gift – and there’s no chance that they just got the thing you got them on their own or from someone else…)
More debunking of the carbon footprint for pets claim .
As an Indian, I feel I’ve environmentally redeemed myself.
PS. Anyone want to swap me in for your German Shepherd?
Good Lord, Americans are uptight about Christmas gifts.
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