My Corner of the Blogosphere: As of July 1, 2012

I find it interesting to see how the blogosphere is interconnected. Not counting RSS feed subscribers, there were 14,956 total visits to my blog between when I first had Google Analytics set up on June 3 and June 30th. Of those 9,174 were referrals from a link on some other site. I have listed the top 30 sources of referrals. I also listed the 65th, since like the 17th, it illustrates that some blogs are so big that even a comment on them can be a noticeable source of referrals. In the caption for “Mark Thoma on Rainy Day Funds for States” I wrote that Mark’s Economist’s View blog is the center of the economics blogosphere. It is indeed the largest source of referrals to my blog, followed by Greg Mankiw, Google, Twitter, and Noah Smith.

Number of Visits from Each Referral Source

1. Mark Thoma: 1558

2. Greg Mankiw (US): 1213

3. Google: 850

4. Twitter: 844

5. Noah Smith (US):  803

6. Mike Konczal (Rortybomb at nextnewdeal):   313

7. Ezra Klein (washington post): 300

8. Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution): 233

9. Facebook: 212

10. Scott Sumner (The Money Illusion): 202

11. Stephen Williamson: 143

12. Brad DeLong: 119

13. Karl Smith and Adam Ozimek (Modeled Behavior): 92

14. Clive Crook (theatlantic.com): 83

15. David Andolfatto: 75

16. Noah Smith (UK):  75

17. Comment on a Matthew Yglesias slate.com article: 68

Adam: Yup. Miles Kimball has an excellent post on this topic too: http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/25423469963…

18. Greg Mankiw (Germany): 62

19. Evilsax (DiaryofaRepublicanHater): 57

20. Real Clear Policy: 57

21. Stephen Williamson (Spain):  56

22. Greg Mankiw (UK): 52

23. Tumblr: 50

24. Greg Mankiw (Australia): 43

25. Greg Mankiw (India): 41

26. Stephen Williamson (Germany): 39

27. Greg Mankiw (Italy): 38

28. Greg Mankiw (Canada): 37

29. Noah Smith (Germany):  37

30. Noah Smith (Canada): 35

…

65. Comment on Mark Shea (patheos.com): 14

So, I as a “progressive” and a Catholic have always had a lot of suspicion of free-market Economics, be it Austrian or Chicago school. My first Economics class came as a sophomore in college after some snobby Republican sniffed at me “You just don’t understand Economics.” My plan was to make sure no-one could tell me that with a straight face again. So I took an Economics class with an extreme libertarian professor (who currently writes at this blog:

http://www.thebigquestions.com/blog/.

I couldn’t help it, I liked him (still do). He would indulge me after class in long conversations about trade, taxation, redistribution, utility theory, etc. I also discovered that I really liked Economics. One Economics class became two, two became a double major, and a double major in Math and Economics became a three year stint in a PhD program in another “conservative” Economics department. Now I would call myself a “supply-side liberal.”

http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/23959666073/what-is-a-supply-side-liberal

I still believe strongly that our society has a basic responsibility to minister to the poor, provide health care for the sick, educate the young (all of them!), and so on. However, I now believe (and the evidence for this appears overwhelming) that taxation and regulation have real manifest costs to economic growth, which is necessary for social welfare for rich and poor alike. I think it’s irresponsible to consider a policy without considering those costs.

I am also quite irritated with the self-entitled attitude so many wealthy people appear to have. Accusations of “class war” from the wealthy to the poor are absurd. The wealthy in this country have it great. They will continue to have it great no matter who runs our government. Their concerns have no relevance to me, it’s how our policies impact their actions that I consider relevant. As one more link (and beware of profanity), I think this video sums up their point of view quite well.

The physical geography of visitors to supplysideliberal.com is also interesting. It shows how international the blogosphere is. Here is the breakdown of visits by city:

  1. New York: 936
  2. Ann Arbor: 667
  3. Washington: 650
  4. London: 313
  5. Chicago: 293
  6. Toronto: 154
  7. Seattle: 149
  8. Los Angeles: 142
  9. San Francisco: 142
  10. Boston: 134
  11. Sydney: 118
  12. Houston: 114
  13. Cambridge: 111
  14. Borlange, Sweden: 101
  15. Philadelphia: 100
  16. Minneapolis: 98
  17. Singapore: 94
  18. Arlington: 93
  19. Bonn: 92
  20. Columbia, MD: 92
  21. Tucson: 91
  22. Montreal: 90
  23. Berlin: 89
  24. Austin: 87
  25. Miami: 83
  26. Paris: 75
  27. Melbourne: 74
  28. San Diego: 71
  29. Atlanta: 71
  30. Canberra: 67
  31. Nei-Hu (near Taipei): 63
  32. Ottawa: 60
  33. Berkeley: 59
  34. Dunn Loring: 58
  35. Brisbane: 57
  36. Oakland: 55
  37. Buenos Aires: 54
  38. Goteborg: 54
  39. Portland: 53
  40. Bethesda: 52
  41. Jakarta: 51
  42. Barcelona: 49
  43. Hong Kong: 49
  44. Vienna: 45
  45. Copenhagen: 45
  46. Madrid: 43
  47. Amsterdam: 43
  48. Munich: 42
  49. Staten Island: 42
  50. Dallas: 42