Still Working on that Essay

You may have noticed I haven't posted a Social Security opt-out essay yet. :) It's taking longer than I expected. It's also becoming longer than I expected.

What's the current status? I've reviewed everything I've ever blogged about the topic to make sure I don't forget about any important arguments I've made in the past. I've made brief sketches of all the arguments I plan to use, but they're not organized into a good outline yet. I've written the actual text for only two of the arguments. I think those will turn out to be the most time consuming of the whole bunch, because they were empirical and involve lots of links. They have some graphs too — I'm starting to get handy with gnuplot.

I think this essay is trending to be about the same size as, or longer than, my pro-globalization one, previously the longest thing I've blogged by a significant margin. I hope it doesn't take as long to write…

I can't resist adding a plug for my previous Social Security essay. I wrote that almost two years ago and I'm very proud of it. I will be re-using several of its arguments.

While I'm focusing on this essay, I'm unlikely to do any substantive blogging. I might not even do a link roundup. This is the sort of writing project that consumes me until it's done — and I'm a very slow deliberate writer.

I don't anticipate the essay will be done until next weekend, now. I promise the wait will be worthwhile. In the meantime, check out a few of the other fine blogs in my blogroll.