Breakfast Links: August 25, 2011

— Aaron Swartz on Apple from last month.

— I, personally, have a MacBook Air, an iPad, an Apple TV, an Airport Extreme, and an iPod Nano along with various peripherals and will likely ditch my Motorola Atrix in favor of an iPhone 5 when they come out, so obviously from where I sit, Apple is a very successful company.

— My question about Japan and the Tyler Cowen worldview is why does the “Great Stagnation” hit Japan first?

— Gains in home appliance efficiency have been eaten up by increases in house size.

— Howard Schulz doesn’t know how to get what he wants from the political system.

— Paul Ryan likes to create new tax deductions and those who benefit from those deductions like to give Paul Ryan money.

— Mike Konczal has some ideas for unilateral administration action.

— “But government officials cautioned that Fannie and Freddie do not do the administration’s bidding, even though they are essentially owned by taxpayers.”

— Americans still more inclined to blame Bush than Obama.