We are who we thought we were!

Yesterday....my governor in action:

(Gov. Beverly) Perdue said, according to her staff. "We are North Carolina, and we have chosen to become that because of our generational legacy of education."

1. I have no idea what that means. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually mean anything.

2. That was not a direct quote. That was the part of what Bev said that her staff thought was hard-hitting and meaningful. Imagine what they left out.

Here's the thing. NC's Dept of Public Instruction employs hundreds of androids and goof-offs who NEVER go near a classroom. Our state DPI has a huge building right down from the Leg Office Building with a big mural. "You are suitable to be awed."

(Nope, not a clue what that means, either. Guy must write for all the state offices, including Bev.)

Prime real estate. Has to be worth $10 million or more, with a payroll of another $10 million. I'd say, "you are suitable to be SOLD," NCDPI building.

How about this: abolish the NCDPI, sell the giant admin building. That would be $10 million this year for schools, and $10 million a year from now on in savings. AND NOT ONE ACTUAL TEACHER WOULD BE LAID OFF. Just a bunch of professional Democrats sucking on the public teat.

Seems to me the Gov should get back to her real specialty, taking money from poor people and pretending to help them.

UPDATE: Got this email... "I looked at the pic of the dept of ed building, and it looks like it actually says: "You are a child. You are suitable to be awed." Of course I first thought it was a translation from a well-known Japanese saying, or maybe some unique translation from the bible. But after reading it again I'm convinced they got it from a child molester that used it as a pick up line. "And ya know what will awe you? DEEZ!"

What kid doesn't want to be "awed" - even if they don't know what it means.

It's really creepy, I hope you're planning to run again...please."

New Americans Proud, Dept Homeland Security Americans Not So Much

An account from a reader, about citizenship. He is a citizen; his spouse, Alician, has a green card and has finally qualified for full U.S. citizenship. (No, Alician is not her real name). I have inserted some comments in [ ] branckets.

[A while ago ] at 5pm Alician got a call from the gubmint. Homeland Security said that they finally found her file [misplaced for six weeks! No explanation...] and to show up at 3pm the next day at the [regional] office, to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen. We showed up at 3 and were herded into a windowless conference room with about 20 other people. I started to think this was a set-up and everyone was going to be handcuffed and led onto a bus [or maybe a "shower"?].

But then a clearly bored "official" turned on the dvd player and left. We watched a 20 minute video showing pictures of 19th century immigrants while inspiring piano music played. After that another video began, which consisted of more pictures of immigrants with "I'm proud to be an American" as the soundtrack...the entire song!
[If you want the experience, here is the Lee Greenwood video...]


I think DHS saw this as their last chance to torture foreigners before they become citizens. After that video ended nothing happened, no actual person was around, and so we waited half an hour. Eventually, some soon to be ex-immigrant showed the entrepreneurial spirit [and that's why we need immigrants!] and flagged someone down to point out that we were all waiting to be sworn in.

Finally a woman showed up looking completely flustered and proceeded muy rapidamente to give the oath and pass out certificates. Then we were told to leave, quite abruptly. I think she was too busy not processing paperwork to be interrupted from not swearing in new citizens. Balancing the not-doing of all that work has to be pretty stressful.

So: After over five years, thousands of dollars in fees (as it's not supposed to cost the taxpayers any $), and hundreds of documents, it came down to this... "Would you just take your pathetic certificate and leave? We don't really have time for this, and we don't have any more awful videos to show you. We certainly don't have time to say anything, because then you would see we ourselves don't believe in all this patriotism crap. We at DHS actually hate Americans."

I felt bad for the people in uniform [a number of U.S. soldiers were gaining their citizenship for the first time] and from war-torn countries. They should have been treated better on their first day as U.S. citizens. Alician had the perfect one-word description: "Graceless." Still, she actually is proud to be an American, even if those DHS folks aren't.

Photo of the day

(clic the pic for a more glorious perp walk)

People, who will join me in contributing to a fund to purchase razors and decent neckties for the NYPD??

Hurtful, MOST Hurtful.

Darn, that hurts.

I thought Paul and me was tight, ya heard?

But apparently NOT, since "ALL his favorite libertarians" write for one blog, JUST ONE BLOG.

That's aaight, Paul, I see how it is. That's cool, you go ahead on. I'll get over it. If you really think that that brazen hussy Zwolinsky is cuter than Angus and I, FINE.

Fair Trade Revealed As Feel-Good Hoax

I have for some time been a basher and hater of "Fair Trade," in coffee and other commodities. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, Russ Roberts and I podcastrated the whole issue nearly four years ago. Sarah Marchmont wrote a very fair-minded article about it.

Here is the basic economics--a rent is being created: a price above market price is being charged. In countries where property rights, contracts, and rule of law is tenuous, feel-gooders and scam artists have put together an unholy coalition. The feel-gooders create something called "Fair Trade" certification, which means that the farmers get paid well above market price for the coffee they produce.

Not surprisingly, many farmers want to get in on this action. But less than all can be certified "fair trade" recipients, since a price that much above the market price would create a surplus. The fair trade feel-gooders would never be able to sell the glut of coffee if EVERYONE gets fair trade certification.

So, the feel-gooders stick their fingers in their ears and shout "LA-LA-LA-LA-LA" and pretend that their partners the scam artists are doing the right thing when they hand out the "fair trade" certifications.

But remember that these are countries with little rule of law, and shoddy police enforcement. So what the scam artists in effect do is sell off the rent (the high price of fair trade certification) to the highest bidder.

The result is that, after a fairly short period, three years at most, the "fair trade" farmers are getting no more, and maybe less, than everyone else, and no more than they got before the "fair trade" scam was started. The scam artists, it's true, are skimming the profits, but the competition to become a scam artist then becomes the valuable commodity, and rent-seeking to get to be the guy who certifies "fair trade" then also dissipates THAT rent. Some government official in the country, the one who licenses the guy who licenses the guy who certifies "fair trade" farmers ends up sucking down the rent.

Consumers pay more, and feel good about themselves. The feel-gooders who started the program move on to abuse some other group of farmers with false promises. And the results are a substantial increase in dead-weight loss.

Don't believe me? Article in the National Post, by Lawrence Solomon, founder of Green Beanery in Toronto, a suburb of Buffalo.

And the German study that really reveals how it all works. In fact, as the Hohenheimers note, the certification process is so corrupt many don't even bother, and just mislabel the coffee as "fair trade" from the get-go.

All you need to know to figure out why "fair trade" and similar feel good programs are dumb is have lunch with Bob Tollison once, and have him explain what rent-seeking is. Or you can read this, I suppose, though Bob is a better bet. (Dr. Henderson gives a nice short history.) The point is that once you understand rent-seeking, you can PREDICT that stuff like "fair trade" won't work. It can't work. And it doesn't work.

UPDATE: Dalibor Rohac has a nice piece on same subject. Thanks for the tip, DR!

Note to Anonyman: Anonywife Is NOT Pleased....

Anonyman was passing the sink, there in lovely Anonytown. And noticed this:


Dude, go out RIGHT NOW, get some nice flowers, and just start saying "I'm sorry, honey I'm sorry, look, I'm sorry." Do NOT wait to find out what "the matter" is. Go. Et bon chance...

A cultural bouillabaisse

1. The culture that is France; the enablement of DSK. (Hat tip to LeBron)

2. The culture that is Australia; "boozed-up idiots running wild all over the country"

3. The culture that is Mexico; the toes knows!

I guess Paul Krugman shops at the Gap...

....because he doesn't know much about Banana Republic!

Paul says trying to link spending cuts to raising the debt ceiling makes America more likely to be seen as a Banana Republic, because it will show that "crazy extremists" have so much "blocking power" that we can't "get our house in order".

I would venture the view that the opposite is more likely to be true. Unconditionally raising the debt ceiling (again) without changes to path of future spending is likely to re-confirm the view that America is well on the road to becoming the mother of all Banana Republics.

Historically, Banana Republics were not run by "crazy extremists", they were run by corrupt plutocrats who governed in favor of foreign companies that controlled the export of the country's primary product (Wow, is Goldman Sachs the USA's United Fruit??).

Not the Onion?

As many as one, or more, of these stories may be the Onion. Or, not.

1. In addition to being a terrorist mastermind, Osama Bin Laden was also kind of an underminer. Bin Laden's hand-written diary lists the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as major targets, but the head of Joe Biden? Meh, maybe later. A counter-terrorism official tells the Telegraph, “There is a note indicating that the vice president is not an important target because that position has less weight.” Notes in the journal also paint a picture of bin Laden as the kind of boss that would peer into your cubicle if he wasn't hiding out in a compound: "You could describe him as a micro-manager," a U.S. official said. "The cumbersome process he had to follow for security reasons did not prevent him from playing a role...He was down in the weeds as far as best operatives, best targets, best timing." (LINK)

2. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange now makes his associates sign a complex, multi-page nondisclosure agreement that, among other things, asserts that the organization’s huge trove of leaked material is “solely the property of WikiLeaks,” according to a report Wednesday. “You accept and agree that the information disclosed, or to be disclosed to you pursuant to this agreement is, by its nature, valuable proprietary commercial information,” the agreement reads, “the misuse or unauthorized disclosure of which would be likely to cause us considerable damage.” Assange said, "The last thing we need is some tosser leaking all of our documents. I mean, wtf?" (LINK)


3. PALO ALTO, CA—Hewlett-Packard announced Friday the release of the first-ever non-computer, a device specifally designed to address the demands of individuals who have absolutely no need to own a computer. CEO Léo Apotheker told reporters the non-computer was a long-overdue innovation that would finally allow consumers with zero interest in computers to enjoy all the benefits of not having one. (LINK)

4. Really Gross "Person Who Had Been Dead for a Long Time Before Anybody Noticed" of the Day Story: Police have confirmed the discovery of human remains inside — from an elderly person who passed away years ago. Police showed up Thursday night, but because of the filth inside they couldn’t go in without a full-scale HAZMAT team. That team was assembled Friday morning, and the elderly man’s remains were found already decomposed on a bedroom floor. Neighbors said the daughter should be held responsible. “The father just happened to disappear one day, and nobody knew what happened to him. She kept saying he was fine, in a nursing home, then upstate,” neighbor David Welch added. Of course, for most New Yorkers, living "upstate" is no different from being dead, so the daughter may just have been speaking metaphorically. (LINK)

(Nod to Flo and Anonyman)

Minnesota: Behold your Senator!

I expect moronic stuff like this from Senator Al Franken, but I am actually a little bit surprised at Ezra Klein's cheerleading.

Ezra, in his WAPO column proposes some "no brainers", proposed legislation that everyone should be able to agree on.

According to him, no-brainer #4 is the Franken-sponsored "Pay for War Act".

As Franken puts it, "war shouldn't add to the deficit".

Now, I'm guessing Al is opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (me too!!), but that is just a completely idiotic principle.

People, in WWII the deficit reached 25% of GDP. Good thing for us Al Franken wasn't in office then!

"Gee whiz Hirohito, we sure don't like what you're doing, but we've about maxed out this year's tax revenues and hey, war shouldn't add to the deficit, so......."

Look at this picture and then reflect on the fact that Al Franken is a US Senator (clic the pic for a more glorious image)!

WWI and WWII stick out like wagging fingers rebuking Senator Al (and his boy Ezra).

If the US is in a war that poses a serious threat, we need to be able to spend whatever it takes to win. That's just common sense, as Al likes to say.

Trying to hamstring the future defense of this country as a reaction to the current situation certainly is a no-brainer, just not in the way Ezra means the term.

Bad Spam: These Kids Today...

Spammers used to take a little pride in their work. Make up a story, about a war, a widow, and a desperate last chance to make things right. Some romance, some mystery, knamean?

But now, these kids today simply do not take any pride in their work. Look at this spam I got yesterday: Really? If you are going to send a stupid spam phish to a million people, wouldn't you spend more than 20 seconds writing the thing? I understand spammers are busy, but where's the craftsmanship?

Two Very Cool Articles: Coopertation

Wow. Interesting.

The joker effect: Cooperation driven by destructive agents

Alex Arenas et al.
Journal of Theoretical Biology, 21 June 2011, Pages 113-119

Abstract: Understanding the emergence of cooperation is a central issue in
evolutionary game theory. The hardest setup for the attainment of cooperation in a population of individuals is the Public Goods game in which cooperative agents generate a common good at their own expenses, while defectors “free-ride” this good. Eventually this causes the exhaustion of the good, a situation which is bad for everybody. Previous results have shown that introducing reputation, allowing for volunteer participation, punishing defectors, rewarding cooperators or structuring agents, can enhance cooperation. Here we present a model which shows how the introduction of rare, malicious agents – that we term jokers – performing just destructive actions on the other agents induce bursts of cooperation. The appearance of jokers promotes a rock-paper-scissors dynamics, where jokers outbeat defectors and cooperators outperform jokers, which are subsequently invaded by defectors. Thus, paradoxically, the existence of destructive agents acting indiscriminately promotes cooperation.

-----------------------

Experiment on the Demand for Encompassment

Daniel Klein et al.
George Mason University Working Paper, March 2011

Abstract: The idea of political community is appealing on a gut level. Hayek suggested that certain genes and instincts still dispose us toward the ethos and mentality of the hunter-gatherer band, and that modern forms of political collectivism have, in part, been atavistic reassertions of such tendencies. Picking up on Hayek, Klein (2005) has suggested a combination of yearnings: 1) a yearning for coordinated sentiment (like Smithian sympathy), and 2) a yearning that the sentiment encompass the whole group. This paper reports on an experiment designed to explore the demand for encompassment by having subjects sing together. In each trial, one person in the room was designated not to sing unless every one of the others in the room had made a payment sufficient so as to have that person sing. Subjects chose to sacrifice money to achieve encompassment 47.4 percent of the time, with 59.6 percent of the subjects doing so in at least one trial. An exit questionnaire showed that subjects‘ chief reason for making such a sacrifice was a belief that the singing would be more enjoyable if it encompassed the whole group, and reported enjoyment is significantly higher with encompassment. We discuss the experiment as a parable for a penchant toward political collectivism.

Family Ties

The Politics of Mate Choice

John Alford et al.
Journal of Politics, April 2011, Pages 1–19

Abstract: Recent research has found a surprising degree of homogeneity in the personal political communication network of individuals but this work has focused largely on the tendency to sort into likeminded social, workplace, and residential political contexts. We extend this line of research into one of the most fundamental and consequential of political interactions — that between sexual mates. Using data on thousands of spouse pairs in the United States, we investigate the degree of concordance among mates on a variety of traits. Our findings show that physical and personality traits display only weakly positive and frequently insignificant correlations across spouses. Conversely, political attitudes display interspousal correlations that are among the strongest of all social and biometric traits. Further, it appears the political similarity of spouses derives in part from initial mate choice rather than persuasion and accommodation over the life of the relationship.

----------------------

Sibling Ideological Influence: A Natural Experiment

R. Urbatsch
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming

Abstract: Siblings are a potentially important source of political socialization.
Influence is common, especially among younger siblings and those close in age, who tend to interact most frequently. This suggests that the positions of an individual's next-older sibling will hold particular sway. In policyquestions with a gender gap, then, those whose immediately older sibling is a sister will be more likely to absorb the typically female preference; those born after a brother, the male preference. Evidence from the United States shows that this pattern holds for general left–right orientation as well as for the preferred balance between public and private sectors. Just as American women are more likely to lean left and to see government intervention positively, so are Americans whose next-older sibling is female.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

I heart Benjamins!

Bennett McCallum says that we shouldn't raise inflation targets to avoid the zero bound problem because "Present institutional arrangements are not immutable. In particular, elimination of traditional currency is feasible (even arguably attractive) and would remove the ZLB constraint on policy."

Wow, thanks Ben (and all the others of your ilk).

Making currency illegal so the government can impose negative rates of return on all conceivable assets is such a dumb idea that only a highly trained economist could call it "arguably attractive".

There is little enough anonymity and privacy left in these United States of ours; let's not get rid of the last remaining shreds under the guise of "improving the performance of monetary policy".

Or, to put it another way, Big Brother is already plenty big enough!

Razing Arizona

Cute. The lefties in Arizona don't actually believe in "democracy" after all. As soon as they are in the minority, they become big "stop tyranny of the majority!" boosters. They even want to secede, and create their own little Atlantis in the Desert, presumably led by John Gulch.

For Pima County to actually become its own state:
• Pima residents would have to approve of the move in a referendum.
• The state legislature would have to approve of it, or it could pass in a state- wide referendum.
• The United States Congress would have to approve it.

The secession movement will almost certainly overcome zero of these three hurdles. But let's say that it did. This new "Baja Arizona" would be larger than Rhode Island, Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and it would have a greater population than Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, and the Dakotas. It would probably boast two Democratic senators (which is one of many reasons why this would never get through Congress). And the state motto would be, "Arizona: Now With 70 Percent Less Crazy!" or "Phew, Glad That's Over."

(Nod to Anonyman)

Kids Eat Coins, DJIA Passes

An actual article, sort of, on the relation between DJIA and kids eating coins.

“OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation between coins ingested by children and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. DESIGN: Observational study. Main outcome measures Total value of coins ingested and number of incidents of coins versus other objects swallowed, measured before and after the stock market crash of October 2008. RESULTS: Eighteen objects, including 11 coins, were ingested (NASDAQ (numismatic and sundry detritus acquired) composite of 18). The total value of the 11 coins swallowed was $1.03 (FTSE 100 (fraction of the US$ or 100 cents) index of 103). The pecuniary extraction ratio (PE ratio) was 0.57 (9/16). Comparing values for a period before and after October 2008, the mean monthly NASDAQ composite (0.41 (SD 0.67) v 0.5 (0.85), P=0.75), FTSE 100 index in cents (2.3 (6.8) v 3.1 (7.8), P=0.77), and PE ratio (0.54 (0.52) v 0.66 (0.29), P=0.50) did not change. The mean end-of-month closing value of the Dow Jones, however, decreased significantly (12 537 (841.4) v 8388 (699.8), P=0.001). CONCLUSION: There was no detectable difference in the total value of coins ingested, or ratio of coins to other objects swallowed, before or after a massive stock market crash.”

(Nod to @mscourt)

Political Science Blogging

Herr Fuchs sends this link, to an article by the estimable John Sides of the also estimable Monkey Cage.

In one part of the article, John asks, "Should Junior Faculty Blog?" I think his answer is a bit too optimistic. If your blog is invisible, why waste time on it? And if it is successful, and you become known for it, you are taking a pretty big chance when it comes time for promotion. Either way, I'd say, "no," at least until your fifth year or so in a TT job.

On the plus side of blogging, I blushingly refer to this article on "Truthiness" and political blogging, in a special issue of PC edited by blogging stalwarts Drezner and Farrell.

(Yes, it's gated. Send me an email and I'll send you a PDF, if you don't have access through a library).

UPDATE: On some comments. if you played Russian Roulette and won, that doesn't mean that it is a good idea to play Russian Roulette. So the fact that some people start a blog early, and still get tenure, is not proof it is a good idea.

Good of Dan D to write a comment also. Now, I don't think that the blog was the reason Dan did NOT get tenure. But I (and Dan) will always wonder a little bit whether it had some negative effect.

Dan wrote about it here... Seems like a long time ago now. Dan is fine, still cute and perky. But we'll never know.

The ultimate Giffen good?

Betsey S. says it may be kids!!

The whole article is excellent. Here's the nub:

Stating the problem this way makes it clear that Caplan’s argument actually requires parents to be making two mistakes. The first mistake is that the returns to the marginal hours with our children are lower than we think, and so we are over-investing in quality. If he’s right, we can all save ourselves a lot of time. But this doesn’t mean that we should necessarily have more kids. Here’s where the second assumption really matters: Caplan thinks that we should take the time we save and spend it on a greater quantity of children.

You can think of this another way. Caplan says that we parents are charging ourselves too much for children. And just as we buy more televisions when the price falls, we should have more children when the price falls. Maybe. But maybe not. When we reduce the price, there are both income and substitution effects. Caplan is entirely focused on the substitution effect: having kids becomes cheaper relative to buying TVs. So he says buy more kids, and fewer TVs. But what about the income effect? As people become richer, they tend to “buy” fewer children, not more. So there’s an offsetting income effect. Is it possible that the income effect overwhelms the substitution effect? Typically this only occurs among goods which take a big share of our budgets. Like children.

Video on Gas Price Hypocrisy

It is remarkable to watch how the ideological bias of the media condihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftions the response to higher gas prices. And the president's scorn for SUVs is impressive, especially since this is his ride.

We have talked before about how higher prices may have some useful effects. In particular, we are not going to "run out" of oil, even though the peak oil harpies shriek about it.

But you can't say the effects of X are bad if Republicans are in power, but good if Democrats are in power.

The Most Pompous Man on Earth

Okay, so P-Kroog is the most pompous, least self-aware, most earnestly immune from self-doubt person in journalism today. (Olbermann is a bigger a-hole, but he has some ironic self-awareness).

Still, I refuse to believe that this P-Kroog critique of how elites misled policy, and blamed voters, is anything but satire. Surely even P-Kroog had to recognize that he is really talking about himself.

Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

He's got to realize that's irony, right? He's GOT to.

(Nod to Angry Alex)

Sports and Road Rage

The Bad Thing about Good Games: The Relationship between Close Sporting Events and Game-Day Traffic Fatalities

Stacy Wood, Melayne Morgan McInnes & David Norton
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming

Abstract: For sports fans, great games are the close ones — those between evenly-matched opponents where the game remains undecided until the very end. However, the dark-side to sporting events is the incidence of traffic fatalities due to game- related drinking. Here, the authors ask whether the closeness of the game impacts the number of fatalities that occur. Two opposing predictions can be made. Games that are not close (“blow-outs”) may be less engaging, thus increasing drinking. Alternatively, close games may be more dangerous, increasing competition-associated testosterone that spills over into aggressive driving. An analysis of major sporting events (2001-2008) shows that closer games are significantly correlated with more fatalities. Importantly, increased fatalities are observed only in locations with winning fans (game-site and/or winners’ hometown) congruent with a testosterone- based account. Ultimately, this finding has material consequences for public welfare on game-days and suggests one silver-lining for losing fans may be a safer drive home.

(nod to Kevin Lewis)

Vacancy?

Hey Jeff Van Gundy, Mike Fratello, Mike Brown, or Phil Jackson. Would one of y'all please come coach the Thunder?

Quick!!!

If the Thunder had better offensive game planning and better situational adjustments, they could win it all this year.

But they don't, so they probably won't.

They just might beat Memphis though!

Not the Onion?

Which of these stories might be the Onion? Click the (LINK) at the end of each "story" to find out if it's real...

1. "Lots" of clergymen apparently pretend to be ex-Navy Seals, as an "ego-booster." Don Shipley, a retired SEAL who maintains a database of all former SEALs, got many to admit that they lied. "We deal with these guys all the time, especially the clergy," Shipley says. "It’s amazing how many of the clergy are involved in those lies to build that flock up." (LINK)

2. The federal government is going to require credit card companies to deny cards to women who stay home. "In explaining why this is O.K., the Fed said it believed 'married women who do not work outside the home' will still have access to credit because they can apply for joint accounts with their husbands, or become authorized users on their husband’s accounts. The board did concede that applying jointly might be 'inconvenient or impracticable' in some situations, like applying for on-the-spot credit at a retail store." Presumably if the ladies ask real nice, or else trade sex for use of the card, it will all work out. (LINK)

3. The President of the United States and a top general appear to have communicated with each other in a way that would be hard for terrorists to recognize or intercept, in the period just before the attack on Bin Laden's compound in Abbotabad. Bloggers the world over are shocked that the President did not use a public means of communication, perhaps a billboard or a Twitter account, to give orders about the dangerous mission. "If the President can communicate with top military officers in secret, how will I blog about it?" wrote one fat guy typing on a Macbook Pro in his pajamas* in the basement of his mom's house late Monday afternoon. (LINK)

(*How the Macbook Pro got into his pajamas we'll never know...)

(Nod to Anonyman and the Blonde)

Do Black Mayors Improve Outcomes for Black Citizens?

Do Black Mayors Improve Black Employment Outcomes? Evidence from Large U.S. Cities
John Nye, Thomas Stratmann, Ilia Rainer | May 09, 2011

I was worried about endogeneity, but since they only looked at instances where the race of the mayor changed, it may work. I would still worry that the effect is a short-run "Kroog": taking money from citizens who ALREADY work, and paying unemployed people for fake jobs working for government, is not really growth. Yes, that's all lefty shills like Krugman care about, but not clear the effect is anything but transitory.

ATSRTWT

To what extent do politicians reward voters who are members of their own ethnic or racial group? Using data from large cities in the United States, we study how black employment outcomes are affected by changes in the race of the cities’ mayors between 1971 and 2003. We find that black employment and labor force participation rise, and the black unemployment rate falls, during the tenure of black mayors both in absolute terms and relative to whites. Black employment gains in municipal government jobs are particularly large, which suggests that our results capture the causal effects of black mayors. We also find that the effect of black mayors on black employment outcomes is stronger in cities that have a large black community. This suggests that electoral incentives may be an important determinant of racial favoritism. Finally, we also find that, corresponding to increases in employment, black income is higher after black mayors take office. Again, this effect is pronounced in cities with a large black population.

Do They Work For Tips?

"I'm a big boy now!" said one young man at the "mass circumcision party."

Well, no, I'm afraid your boy is now somewhat smaller, though perhaps aesthetically pleasing, after it heals up.

Seriously: a mass circumcision party.

My question, as in the title: Do the doctors work for tips?

And WHY circumcision? The evidence, as Nick notes, is hardly clear. (Though I like Nick's envelope joke. Good to see that he is capable of KPC-style humor).

(Reminds me of the old claim, from a student paper, that "Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.")

Interesting: Declining Migration in U.S.

It is not Just the Economy: Declining Migration and the Rise of Secular Rootedness

Thomas Cooke, Population, Space and Place, May-June 2011, Pages 193-203

Abstract: Americans have always been viewed, both by themselves and by others, as a migrant society. However, migration rates have reached record lows: only 1.6% of Americans moved from one state to another in 2009, and only 3.7% moved from one county to another. This research conducts a decomposition of the change in migration rates between 1999 and 2009 using data from the Current Population Survey. The analysis concludes that about 63% of the decline in migration rates between 1999 and 2009 can be attributed to the direct effects of the economic crisis that began in 2007, and another 17% of the decline can be attributed to demographic changes (e.g. the aging of the population) but that the remaining 20% of the decrease in migration is due to a decline in migration behaviour, or increased rootedness, that applies
to all demographic categories. The discussion focuses on the implications of the universal, or secular, rise in rootedness for migration studies.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis, who moved to NC from CA)

Cheaper is an innovation

I have this on-going argument with my man K-Koopa.

My claim is that the Chinese are performing important innovations in solar power panels. Not big changes, but marginal ones that will make production cheaper and will make use of solar power possible.

(And, as Angus has noted, this is a GOOD thing...for us)

Anyway, Matt Ridley makes a more general form of that argument: marginal changes that reduce cost are the core innovations we can expect from active economies. The major innovations (steel, steam engines, transistors, silicon circuits) are pretty rare. The key innovations are finding ways to make other innovations affordable and mass produced.

Happy Mother's Day

This is a very sweet video.

The ending actually made me cry a little bit. But then our house is an "empty nest," or at least it will be as soon as the YYM packs up for Myrtle Beach. He just finished his freshman year at Duke. And the EYM lives in Chapel Hill. (That last bird in the nest has the EYM's hair style, exactly. The tufts: EYM all the way.)

Still, happy Mother's Day, to the LMM and to all the mothers out there!

Transmissions from the Vacamatic heart

My paternal grandparents, Lake George NY, 1951 (clic the pic for a more glorious image):

My Grandfather was (1) an immigrant from Scotland, (2) a greengrocer, (3) a Baptist minister, (4) an avid gardener, (5) a sugar addict, and (6) a car lover.

Rather than having his children with him in this photo, he posed with his car, a 1946 Chrysler New Yorker!

My father informs me that one of his many childhood chores was keeping the whitewalls on this baby clean and shining.

Win Win: Win

Win Win is a cute movie. The LMM and I liked it a lot. The kid is really fantastic, and grandpa Leo (Burt Young) is wonderful. Paul Giamatti is as good as he always is (though he will never match his performance in "Shoot em up," the best bad movie ever made.)

Choosing your fantasy economic development team

There be "fantasy development" leagues, where you draft countries and then compete based on some weighted scale of growth, infant mortality, FDI, life expectancy, and so on.

If there WERE such a thing, then AK Sen's article would be very helpful for players.

And I think it's pretty interesting anyway: Who do you want on your fantasy development team, China, or India?

Sen seems to say China, but then he goes and tries to draft Bangladesh.

If China is now the right answer, it wasn't always. 'Cause Rap Master Mao was batshit crazy. Read about the mangoes.

weekend links

1. Alexander Cockburn absolutely kills BHO over the OBL affair.

Here's a teaser: From this active volcano of lies, we can safely assume that Obama's re-election campaign has been well and truly launched.

2. Al-Zarkawi gets a new roomie.

This is the funniest thing I've read in quite a while (hat tip to the King of Arkansas).

3. Once again, Timmy Geithner proves himself to be a man of the people.

The culture that is Germany

People, did you know that the German word for "advisor" is "berater"?

That tells you a lot right there doesn't it?

Follow up: do you know how to say MVP in German? Answer is here.

Fun with Movie Titles

This picture shows a rather more suggestive title than was intended...

A friend claims to have seen this sign ten years ago:

THE FIRM
FREE WILLIE

(Nod to Angry Alex)

Florida: Home of Bestiality and Butt Cracks

Oh, golly. I was going to do this as "Not the Onion," but what's the point? The Florida legislature, facing a variety of problems with the budget, immigration, and education, have decided to solve the two most pressing problems. I am absolutely not making this up. These are both actual, frequently observerd problems in Florida. Check the story:

1. Also passed by the House and Senate Wednesday is the so-called "droopy drawers bill" (SB 228), will will force students to hike up their pants while at school.

Students caught showing their underwear or butt crack could face suspensions and other punishments.

and...

2. Bestiality: The bestiality bill (SB 344) bans sexual activity between humans and animals and has been championed for years by Sen. Nan Rich, from Sunrise.

Rich took up the anti-bestiality fight after a number of cases involving sexual activity with animals in recent years, including a Panhandle man who was suspected of accidentally asphyxiating a family goat during a sex act and the abuse of a horse in the Keys. The bill would make such acts a first-degree misdemeanor.

You might want to watch this again:


I don't have a bestiality video to show you. Sorry.

The 244,000

All in all a decent jobs report. 244,000 net new jobs in total, 268,000 net new private sector jobs. 29,000 new jobs in manufacturing and the median duration of a spell of unemployment fell below 21 weeks for the first time in over a year. However the overall unemployment rate did rise back up to 9%.

All The News That Fits Our Ideological Bias?

Being The New York Times: The Political Behaviour of a Newspaper

Riccardo Puglisi
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, April 2011

Abstract: I analyse a dataset of news from The New York Times, from 1946 to 1997.
Controlling for the activity of the incumbent president and the U.S. Congress across issues, I find that during a presidential campaign, The New York Times gives more emphasis to topics on which the Democratic party is perceived as more competent (civil rights, health care, labor and social welfare) when the incumbent president is a Republican. This is consistent with the hypothesis that The New York Times has a Democratic partisanship, with some "anti-incumbent" aspects, in that - during a presidential campaign - it gives more emphasis to issues over which the (Republican) incumbent is weak. To the extent that the interest of readers across issues is not systematically related with the political affiliation of the incumbent president and the election cycle, the observed changes in news coverage are consistent with The New York Times departing from demand-driven news coverage. In fact, I show that these findings are robust to controlling for Gallup data on the most important problem facing the country, which I use as a proxy for issue tastes of Times' readers.

-----------------------

Partisan bias in economic news: Evidence on the agenda-setting behavior of
U.S. newspapers

Valentino Larcinese, Riccardo Puglisi & James Snyder
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming

Abstract: We study the agenda-setting political behavior of a large sample of U.S.
newspapers during the 1996-2005 period. Our purpose is to examine the intensity of coverage of economic issues as a function of the underlying economic conditions and the political affiliation of the incumbent president, focusing on unemployment, inflation, the federal budget and the trade deficit. We investigate whether there is any significant correlation between the endorsement policy of newspapers, and the differential coverage of bad/good economic news as a function of the president's political affiliation. We find evidence that newspapers with pro-Democratic endorsement pattern systematically give more coverage to high unemployment when the incumbent president is a Republican than when the president is Democratic, compared to newspapers with pro-Republican endorsement pattern. This result is robust to controlling for the partisanship of readers. We find similar but less robust results for the trade deficit. We also find some evidence that newspapers cater to the partisan tastes of readers in the coverage of the budget deficit. We find no evidence of a partisan bias - or at least of a bias that is correlated with the endorsement or reader partisanship - for stories on inflation.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

Nick G and Russ R Discuss FotC

Nick (I can't call him "the Jacket," 'cause he gave it up) Gillespie interviews Russ Roberts.


Nod to Angry Alex

From Madison, NJ

Simon and Garfunkel? Pikers. Gilbert and Sullivan? Don't make me laugh.

From the set of FotC, at Drew University, a candid of the mighty Russ Roberts and Mungowitz podcast duo. (19 albums and still workin!) No, Russ is not standing in a hole.

(Thanks to Jeff Boyd for the pic. Jeff also sent this article about the shoot).

Jeff Miron on How to Balance the Budget

(with apologies to AJ):
Sounds simple.
That's what you're thinkin'.
But entitlements can walk through fire without blinkin'.
Doesn't take much, when you get enough,
Livin' on debt.

The uncensored econometrician

Yesterday in econometrics I, a student asked me "how do you know if you have an endogeneity problem?"

My reply:

"When you are reading the referee report on your paper and it says that some of your explanatory variables are 'clearly endogenous' and require instrumentation!"

Then another student asked, "how do you know you've solved your endogeneity problem?"

Me: "When you get the letter from the journal editor saying that your paper is accepted for publication".

Recession Sessions

What an interesting album.

Not for all fans, I suppose. The idea of "financial folk" is pretty odd.

Almost heaven

"A West Virginia man found wearing women's underwear and standing over a goat's carcass told police he was high on bath salts.

Mark L. Thompson of Alum Creek was arrested at his home Monday. A criminal complaint in Kanawha County Magistrate Court charges the 19-year-old with cruelty to animals.

Sheriff's Deputy J.S. Shackelford says witnesses reported Thompson standing near a neighbor's pygmy goat in a bedroom. He was wearing a bra and female underwear. The goat, a male named Bailey, had at least one stab wound."


1. Isn't a bra already "female underwear"?

2. bath salts? Party tonight at Bath & Bodyworks people!!!

3. do you snort, inject, drink, or just marinate in the bath salts to get high?

Full article (self recommending), including mug shot is here. I would have posted the mug shot, but didn't want Mungowitz to rip me for doing so!

Interesting If True

I had wondered how the famously indecisive BHO had so quickly given the go ahead for the OBL raid.

Maybe I have watched too much "West Wing," but this sounds plausible.

Of course, West Wing was FICTION. And this may be fiction also.

Still...

I was told – in these exact terms, “we overruled him.” (Obama) I have since followed up and received further details on exactly what that meant, as well as the specifics of how Leon Panetta worked around the president’s “persistent hesitation to act.” There appears NOT to have been an outright overruling of any specific position by President Obama, simply because there was no specific position from the president to do so. President Obama was, in this case, as in all others, working as an absentee president.

As always, ATSRTWT

(nod to the lovely Blonde)

Rob Kendall Wins!

KPC friend and long-time radio impresario Rob Kendall actually WON his primary election for City Council in Brownsburg, Indiana.

Who says that an honest guy who works hard can't win elections, even if he cares about liberty and the Constituion? (I don't want to kill him, so let me point out he is NOT a Libertarian, but is a Republican. Still, he does care about liberty).

Well done, Rob my man! Vote count: Rob Kendall: 712 -- Bill Guarnery: 383.
Landslide Rob!

I like this account of the debate:

Guarnery had the floor first and issued a statement through a spokesperson.

“I fully support our Town Manager Dale Cheatham and our town,” he said.

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps veteran has built his campaign around his solid attendance in council meetings, council experience, and 18 years as a resident and taxpayer of Brownsburg. Through his spokesperson, he disputed numbers regarding the town’s debt and budget put forth by Kendall saying, “Challengers in this race are liable to say anything.”

Anything? Like, maybe, the TRUTH! He is bragging about his attendance, and he didn't show up for the debate? Or is he mute? The spokesperson thing is odd.
(Ol' Bill looks a little like Gordon Tullock. I was the 760th visitor to his website; not a good sign.)

Well done Rob!

Fraud! Fraud most FOUL....

A fraud was perpetrated. A most foul fraud.

It was perpetrated by...ME! How embarrassing.

Convinced that "Curt" was just some troll, whining about being denied his prize, I checked, and....darn.

The following people appear to have qualified to win the prize, but got...nothing.

Scott E.
Susan S.
Christoph B.
Curt G.

So, send me an email to mcmunger at gmail dot com, with a physical address, and I'll immediately send you signed "rubber glove" photo, AND a vintage (long hair) MM4NCGOV bumper sticker, with my apologies.

And, Curt G., way to nurse that (fully justified) grudge for almost two years. Instead of sending a follow up email (Where's my damned shirt!?) you nailed me good. You are right, and I was wrong. Well played.

Hmmm? What? HEY!

Our Treasury Sec'y thought you were too busy celebrating state sponsored murder in an act of war on allied country to notice.

So he snuck this one in on you.

While you were busy reading up on that other thing, Tim Geithner decided to give himself an extension on the debt limit. The Treasury originally set the deadline date to stop borrowing for July 8. But now Geithner says that by taking "extraordinary measures," the agency can keep borrowing until August 2, after reaching its $14.29 trillion debt ceiling by May 16. In a letter to Congress today, Geithner said that "stronger-than-expected tax receipts" would allow more borrowing room if the limit isn't raised in the next two weeks.

(Nod to Anonyman)

and that's the name of that tune

Osama Enchanted Evening: The Assassination WILL be Live-Tweeted

Not really a Keith Olbermann fan.

But this is well done. And the live tweet bit is quite interesting, if it's real. (Not saying it's real, just passing on the link). (Though, there is this...)

There is also the "Obama Bin Laden" thing, which also appears to be real. But not sure why people are giving Fox News such a hard time. Check this: (Screen shot taken at 9:20 a.m. on May 3, 2011)

Now, sure, I understand that Time was saying that Obama struck bin Laden. But it says, plain as day, "Obama bin Laden." Yes, they changed it, on the web site, but how about some equal treatment?

These idiots, for example, are going after Fox for making a mistake. Well, where is the outrage about Time, then?

FOTC In the Southern Germany Times

Frequent (but usually totally wrong!) commenter Martin Kypta sends this note:

just wanted to tell you that the Sueddeutsche Zeitung had a nice article on Fight of the Century on the front page of the second economy section yesterday. However, they did not mention you. Instead, there is an article about Warren Buffett below. Sheesh!

And this time (perhaps for the first time) he was right! (Link for German readers)

Books a Million?

A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence’s The Making of a Fly – a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists – consult regularly. The book, published in 1992, is out of print. But Amazon listed 17 copies for sale: 15 used from $35.54, and 2 new from $1,730,045.91 (+$3.99 shipping).

At first I thought it was a joke – a graduate student with too much time on their hands. But there were TWO new copies for sale, each be offered for well over a million dollars. And the two sellers seemed not only legit, but fairly big time (over 8,000 and 125,000 ratings in the last year respectively). The prices looked random – suggesting they were set by a computer. But how did they get so out of whack?

Amazingly, when I reloaded the page the next day, both priced had gone UP! Each was now nearly $2.8 million. And whereas previously the prices were $400,000 apart, they were now within $5,000 of each other. Now I was intrigued, and I started to follow the page incessantly. By the end of the day the higher priced copy had gone up again. This time to $3,536,675.57. And now a pattern was emerging.

ATSRTWT

(Nod to Leonard S)

What Is Classical Liberalism?

Nigel Ashford answers. A seven minute video.

As you can see/hear, Dr. Ashford tends to think of classical liberals as minarchists, and not anarchists. I agree, but that opinion is by no means universally held.

OBL

l'affaire OBL: Nicely summarized by my friend Ed Cone. You gotta like the Al Jazera take on things.

Ross Douthat likewise is what I like: wise.

Opportunity Cost

Amazing. One of our problems is that "expense" is mostly effort and annual budget. Real cost, OPPORTUNITY cost, hardly enters the calculations of government officials at all.

As a result, "we" own a bunch of stupid, useless, wasted spaces in buildings all over the U.S. Because selling them would require that someone get off their ass. And because it would reduce the power of the agency that owns the space. Whereas the money just goes to reduce the burden on taxpayers. And nobody gives a *%&$ about that.

(Nod to Anonyman)

Obvious, But It Needed to be Said

A Test of Racial Bias in Capital Sentencing

Alberto Alesina & Eliana La Ferrara
NBER Working Paper, April 2011

Abstract: This paper proposes a test of racial bias in capital sentencing based upon patterns of judicial errors in lower courts. We model the behavior of the trial court as minimizing a weighted sum of the probability of sentencing an innocent and that of letting a guilty defendant free. We define racial bias as a situation where the relative weight on the two types of errors is a function of defendant and/or victim race. The key prediction of the model is that if the court is unbiased, ex post the error rate should be independent of the combination of defendant and victim race. We test this prediction using an original dataset that contains the race of the defendant and of the victim(s) for all capital appeals that became final between 1973 and 1995. We find robust evidence of bias against minority defendants who killed white victims: In Direct Appeal and Habeas Corpus the probability of error in these cases is 3 and 9 percentage points higher, respectively, than for minority defendants who killed minority victims.

My own view: Capital Punishment should be abolished immediately
1. It's barbaric (I won't insult you with a link. It's obvious that the state should not have the power to murder a helpless unarmed person entirely in its power. If you come to my house and break in, I will shoot you, multiple times, with a large caliber weapon. But that's self-defense. Capital punishment is obviously murder).
2. It's racially biased. We mostly kill black people. (See above, or just read the damned newspaper in Texas)
3. It's economically biased. If you can afford a real attorney, you'll get life in prison. And public defenders simply cannot possibly give a real defense.
4. It's more expensive. Cheaper to pay for lifetime incarceration than to pay for all the appeals after the fact. We provide little for actual trial expenses, but then pay millions for appeals after the trial has been botched.

(nod to Kevin Lewis)

Mugshot of the Day

Sheriff Joe Arpaio has a "mugshot of the day" website.

I would say that this violates the 8th Amendment. Not because the pix are humiliating, but because these people have NOT been convicted of any crime.

Having said that: I vote for either Mallory or Angelica. Mallory is pretty darned pissed, and Angelica is a bit too happy.
(Click on the photo for a more humiliating image)
I do think that "Richard Joe" deserves some love.

(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

IQ and Law Scoffing

Not sure about this study, by my good friend John Nye. Summary from WSJ:

George Mason University economists Garett Jones and J.V.C. Nye set out to solve a riddle: What makes someone likely to obey the law in situations where there’s no chance for punishment? Before 2003, diplomats enjoyed just this type of impunity when parking on city streets. Hundreds of United Nations representatives and foreign consulate officials in New York were free to ignore parking tickets issued by police without fear that their vehicles would be impounded.

A federal law took effect in 2003 giving local authorities the power to pull diplomatic plates from cars with too many unpaid tickets, introducing the first real consequence. Unpaid tickets plummeted as a result. But even in the freewheeling era of diplomatic immunity, not every nation’s diplomats ignored parking tickets just because they could. As the economists note:

Delegations differed widely in their scofflaw tendencies: The median diplomat averaged 8 unpaid tickets per year, the standard deviation was 33 tickets per year, and the maximum was 250 per year (from the Kuwaiti delegation).

The study itself...

Would have thought that "IQ" would be standing in for a national culture of rule of law, and voluntary cooperation. In other words, market systems.

So my hypothesis is that countries with highly developed market systems would be those that have fewer parking tickets. The "IQ" correlation is spurious.

Comments?

Is Monogamy an Equilibrium?

System justification and the defense of committed relationship ideology

Martin Day et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming

Abstract: A consequential ideology in Western society is the uncontested belief that a committed relationship is the most important adult relationship and that almost all people want to marry or seriously couple (DePaulo & Morris, 2005). In the present article, we investigated the extent to which the system justification motive may contribute to the adoption of this ideology. In Studies 1 and 2, we examined whether a heightened motive to maintain the status quo would increase defense of committed relationship values. In Study 3, we examined the reverse association, that is, whether a threat to committed relationship ideology would also affect sociopolitical system endorsement. As past research has found that the justification of political systems depends upon how much these systems are perceived as controlling, in Study 4 we tested whether the defense of the system of committed
relationships would also increase when framed as controlling. Results from Studies 1–4 were consistent with our hypotheses, but only for men. In Study 5, using cross-cultural data, we sought to replicate these findings correlationally and probe for a cause of the gender effect. Results from more than 33,000 respondents indicated a relationship (for men) between defense of the sociopolitical system and defense of marriage in countries where the traditional advantages of men over women were most threatened. In Studies 6 and 7, we investigated when this gender difference disappears. Results revealed that when we measured (Study 6) or manipulated (Study 7) personal relationship identity rather than relationship ideology, effects also emerge for women.

-----------------------

Power Increases Infidelity among Men and Women

Joris Lammers et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming

Abstract: Using a large survey among 1561 professionals, the current research examines the relationship between power and infidelity and the process underlying it. Results show that elevated power is associated with higher infidelity because of increased confidence in the ability to attract partners. This is found for both actual infidelity and intentions to engage in infidelity in the future. Importantly, gender does not moderate these results: the relationship between power and infidelity is the same for women as for men, and for the same reason. These findings suggests that the common assumption (and often found effect) that women are less likely to engage in infidelity than men is, at least partially, a reflection of traditionally gender-based differences in power that exist in society.

-----------------------

Social Inclusion Facilitates Risky Mating Behavior in Men

Donald Sacco et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming

Abstract: Although past research has reliably established unique effects of social exclusion on human cognition and behavior, the current research focuses on the unique effects of social inclusion. Recent evidence indicates that social inclusion leads to enhanced prioritization of reproductive interests. The current study extends these findings by showing that the pursuit of these inclusion-induced reproductive goals occurs in sex-specific ways. Across three experiments, social inclusion led men, but not women, to endorse riskier, more aggressive mating strategies compared to control and socially excluded participants. Specifically, included men were more likely to endorse sexual aggression (Experiment 1), high-risk mate poaching behaviors (Experiment 2), and high-risk mate retention tactics (Experiment 3). These results demonstrate that the experience of social inclusion can affect sex-differentiated preferences for risky mating strategies.


Nod to Kevin Lewis

Not the Onion

One of these is made up. Which?

Mayor Bloomberg: Sure, we have too many immigrants. The solution is to forcibly remove all of them....to Detroit! (Link)

Preemptive zombie arrest in London, to protect Royal Wedding party. They weren't even protesting, or doing anything (they were zombies, after all), but they were arrested because police thought they might do something. "We've been pre-emptively arrested under suspicion of planning a breach of the peace," (a zombie said)from the police van. "We went to Starbucks to get a coffee and the police followed us in." "We were just dressing up as zombies," said Amy, who was wearing a "marry me instead" T-shirt. "It is nice to dress up as zombies." (Link)

Man beaten up, police cordon off area, but call bystanders over to look. “All right, folks, something for you to see here, check this out,” said patrolman Brian Pearson, who arrived on the scene and instructed onlookers to “just push past that yellow tape there for a better look.” (Link)

Matt Yglesias comes out and admits it: he is frightened of the very idea of Oklahoma. "Oklahoma City crowd is kind of terrifying." (Link)

"A College of Your Own: All academics should blog." Says young untenured academic who blogs. (Link)

I Can Be Flexible...I Know Brad Is!

Brad DeLong raises some questions about the characterization of Keynes as an advocate of "central planning." (Brad DeLong's "Grasping His Winky with Both Hands" blog)

And then turns into a textual critic/ deconstructionist, examining Keynes's writings.

He may have a point, but it seems to me this is like comparing Marx and Marxists.

Marx was interesting, but Marxists are mostly thugs and totalitarians.

It is certainly true that Keynes himself was flexible (As Frankenfurter put it, "I know Brad is!") on both his economic beliefs and his bouncy-bouncy partners. And good for him. I admire Keynes.

But the people who advocate central planning in the U.S. call themselves Keynesians. And, in my opinion, they are Keynesians. Their views are derived from Keynes, in ways that are plausible and in the spirit of Keynes's own work.

So, Dr. DeLong...please. The distinction you are trying to make is foolishly pedantic, even for a foolish pedant like you.

UPDATE: Steven H gets it right. And said it better than I did. Because he is smarter and nicer. Well, smarter.

Office or Policy?

Are Politicians Office or Policy Motivated? The Case of U.S. Governors’
Environmental Policies

Per Fredriksson, Le Wang & Khawaja Mamun
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, forthcoming

Abstract: Are elected politicians primarily motivated by holding office, thus choosing environmental policies accordingly? Or are they motivated by the chance to implement their preferred environmental policies? Do governors have character, in the sense that they promise and implement environmental policies consistent with their own preferences? To answer these questions, we study the differences in environmental spending across both re-electable and lame duck governors from the two main political parties. In our empirical analysis, we make use of parametric and non-parametric regression-discontinuity approaches. While re-electable governors do not set significantly different policies, lame duck governors do. We argue that in
the area of environmental policy governors appear to be primarily office motivated and lack character.

I love the last sentence. In other news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, and water is wet.

(nod to Kevin Lewis)

When You Gots a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail

Some background. (Cannot vouch for accuracy of account, just passing it on for what it's worth)

Nod to Tony B

1,000,000 th KPC visitor: Mid June

Sometime in Mid-June, we'll have our 1 millionth visitor. And we need suggestions on how to celebrate. You may recall that our 500k th visitor was in September 2009. So, it took 5.5 years to get to 500k (mostly without Angus) and only a little less than two years to get from 500k to 1 million (with Angus). I think the Angus factor has a pretty important role here in the explanation of hits/month.

So, I think that lucky millionth visitor should get a FAAAABULOUS prize from Angus and from me. BUT that visitor will have to know s/he is the 1 millionth visitor, and will have to send us an email identifying her/himself. (And we can tell, from the IP address, where your physical location is, on Sitemeter, so fraud should not be easy).

I already know what I'll be sending out to that lucky winner. A signed, and tastefully framed, copy of this memorable moment:

But what should Angus do? A picture of Mr. 2T riding a whale?

Thank you Uncle Sam

The Feds have done me a big favor by shutting down internet poker. Now the internet player have come out of their mom's basements and descended on physical casinos!

And us second hand-smoke-victim-Native-American-casino players are welcoming them with open arms.

It's been the talk of the poker room the past two weekends; story after story about how some "internet player" donked off all their chips in a mad bluff or by calling pot sized bets to chase a thin draw that never came.

They pretty much all dress alike, so its easy to spot them even before the action starts: slanted, filthy ballcaps, Affliction t-shirts, and improbable facial hair.

I've been the beneficiary of this internet largesse, and it's pretty fun.

So I ask my dear Uncle to please keep enforcing the "no online poker" ban!

Grand Game: Solar Power Edition

So many choice passages here. I'll just let you folks have at it. What's your favorite fatuous statement, or silly fact?

The article

(Nod to Anonyman, who liked the "fact" one solar panel could produce enough electricity, in a year, to light four 60 watt bulbs for six weeks. WTF?)

On Angus' Pond

My wonderful Aunt Joyce is pre-disbursing her estate and gave us some frogskins this winter. We decided to use them to put a small stream and pond in the back yard.

Here are some wee foties of the semi-finished product (clic the pics for a more glorious image):

Not So Fast, II

So, a schmuck in the audience tries to make the Krugman point, and cites Krugman as an authority. Hilarity ensues.

P-Kroog is a punch line, a clown. And it is not because he is dumb; far from it. He is completely unconstrained by facts or logic. I think P-Kroog actually believes he has evolved into pure energy, and need no longer worry about petty things.

(Nod to Leonard S)

Not so fast

John Taylor called Obama a big spender and unleashed the progressive chorus. Krugman (among others) went after him twice (see here and here).

Here's Taylor's graph (clic the pic for a more glorious image):

It's clearly true that spending automatically rises in (after?) a recession and that has something to do with the bulge around 2009.

But Taylor's beef with Obama is that spending never falls back down in the out years, even though growth is projected to be pretty robust.

Krugman sez that's just due to mandated spending increases and would have happened no matter what. But people, look at the CBO budget projections from 2007 shown in the graph below (clic the pic for a more glorious image):

They show spending out to 2017 at around 19% of GDP, and the trend, if anything is down.

All the automatic spending increase stuff Krugman talks about was known about when these projections were made, so I am not sure how it can be that Obama (and Pelosi and Reid) have / are not proposing a significant expansion of Federal spending!

We are talking about permanently raising Federal spending by 2-3 percentage points of GDP in ways that were not foreseen in 2007.

Who is more clutch?

Kevin Durant, or Mungowitz?

Sure KD scored 41 points, 16 in the 4th quarter, and all of the Thunder's final 9 points to beat Denver 100-97 and move OKC to the second round of the NBA playoffs.

He was incredibly clutch.

But Mungo did this.

Only thing he coulda done better is to have gone Rooster Cogburn for us.

Angus Showed this in my class

The Daily Show - The Big Bank Theory
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Just admit it Bernanke: You are a guy with a beard who is allowed to print money.

Easter

I have my new Easter bonnet, too. Pretty? The LMM is that tiny little thing amidst all that manliness.

Flapdoodle: Birth Certificate of Obama

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

KPC as always is way out front.

We (well, Angus) declared in July 2009 that the birther "flapdoodle" was nonsense. As Angus put it, "Who would have thought that so many idiots (birthers) banded together could be wrong?"

Of course, Angus went on to ask why it matters in the first place.

Toilet Seat-o-metrics

Article on toilet seat economics.

Abstract: This paper develops an economic analysis of the toilet seat etiquette. I investigate whether there is any efficiency justification for the presumption that men should leave the toilet seat down after use. I find that the down rule is inefficient unless there is a large asymmetry in the inconvenience costs of shifting the position of the toilet seat across genders. I show that the selfish or the status quo rule that leaves the toilet seat in the position used dominates the down rule in a wide range of parameter spaces including the case where the inconvenience costs are the same.

Now, I wrote about this four years ago, so here is that info again. A different conclusion.

(Nod to RL and MA)

Bob Lee Says

Terrific column by my bud Bob Lee.

UNC Boss Holden Thorp is a friend of Bob's, so he's not taking cheap shots. He's just calling the corners.

Here is the hate crime report, on TV.


But it was a hoax. Just totally faked. HuffPo huffed and puffed about the "hate crime," but then when it turned out to be fake HuffPo actually had the gall to say "allegedly faked." You gotta like that: There WAS a hate crime, for sure, but then it was "allegedly faked." Why not "alleged hate crime" in the first place?

So, to review: this was TOTALLY made up, fabricated. And all the haters line up and say, "This fits the pattern. This proves my biases are correct. Only the government can solve this problem."

The truth is that the idea of a hate crime is idiotic. There are crimes. Prosecute them. But don't make stuff up. Or you give reasons to people who want to make stuff up just to get attention.

Assaults do happen. But stuff like this just makes it harder for the actual victims to get justice. And UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp should be ashamed.

20 Most Worthless Majors

Not sure this list is accurate. Since it does not include Political Science, I mean.

(Nod to the Blonde)

Can the Fed do more?

Bernanke unprecedentedly goes public today with a post FOMC meeting news conference!

The progressive pack wants to hold him accountable for not "doing more" to fight unemployment (here's David Leonhardt for example).

But, can Chairman Ben do more?

Well in one sense, yes, he could always announce another policy initiative. QE III anyone?

But the important question is can the Fed do anything right now to reduce unemployment faster?

I don't think so.

All the policies Leonhardt mentions require the Fed to make a credible current commitment to an unusual set of future actions (set interest rates at near zero for several more years, create higher than "normal" future inflation).

In other words, for these types of polices to work, the Fed has to change expectations about future Fed behavior.

People, there is a huge literature exactly about the fact that the Fed cannot credibly commit to some future optimal policy (the so called "time-inconsistency" literature).

Fed promises to do strange things in the future simply are not believable and are thus extremely unlikely to produce the desired private sector reaction.

To my knowledge, none of the proposals being floated for the Fed to do more avoids this basic issue, and thus, I do not believe the Fed can do anything at this point to make unemployment fall appreciably faster.

Why Are Liberals So Condescending? Part Deux

Nice article; thanks to a commenter.

Excerpt:

The denunciation of Palin took place 45 years after William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote: "I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University." From Richard Nixon's invoking the "silent majority" to Palin's campaigning as a devout, plain-spoken hockey mom, conservatives have claimed that they share the common sense of the common man. Liberals—from Adlai Stevenson to Barack Obama to innumerable writers, artists, and academics—have often been willing foils in this drama, unable to stop themselves from disparaging the very people whose votes are indispensable to the liberal cause. The elephant-in-the-room irony is that the liberal cause is supposed to be about improving the prospects and economic security of ordinary Americans, whose beliefs and intelligence liberals so often enjoy deriding.

LeBron on Compassion by the Pound

Interesting article on humane treatment of animals.

If it matters, Chez Mungowitz has gone over to cage-free eggs. Not expensive. Not sure they taste better, but for such a small price why not have more humane treatment. Angus is much closer to totally free range, because Chez Angus buys only free range chicken and beef. (Angus doesn't like seafood or pork) (Never mind; inside joke).

Of course, we also eat deer. Humanely killed deer, which means hunted by responsible expert marksmen. Happy, totally free range deer to dead deer in less than 10 seconds.

Four Terrific Podcasts

For my class this spring, the TW Smith Foundation was kind enough to provide generous support for some outside speakers.

With the permission of those speakers, I have created podcasts of their lectures to the class. Here they are. A note of warning: I did the recording and production. So the sound quality is something less than perfect, even though the speeches themselves were first rate.

John David Lewis: Podcast (Professor at Duke's PPE Program)
"The Role of Commerce in the Ancient World"

Timur Kuran: Podcast (Professor at Duke in Economics and Political Science)
"The Long Divergence: Economic Institutions in the Islamic World"

William Dougan: Podcast (Professor in the John E. Walker Department of Economics at Clemson University)
"The Economist and the State: The Chicago View"

Kevin Grier: Podcast (Professor in the Department of Economics at University of Oklahoma)
"U.S. Monetary Policy: Past, Present, and Future"

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(UPDATE: A reader was kind enough to point out that one might look here for 19 other useful podcasts on economics. And I have to (blush) agree.)