Shatners Frying Club

This has everything: explosions, turkeys, and William Shatner.

This just gets worse and worse

Abolish Inflation Tax

John T. Plecnik writes an interesting piece on the "Inflation Tax"

Abstract:
Inflation erodes the purchasing power of money and distorts some income tax liabilities upward, which in turn discourages savings and investment. When inflation is caused by the central bank “printing” money to fund deficit spending, it results in a transfer of real wealth from the holders of dollars or assets denominated in dollars to the government and, in normative terms, may be conceptualized as a tax. The effect of the so-called inflation tax is regressive, because low-income taxpayers often lack the sophistication or liquidity to invest in hedges against inflation.

Following the double-digit inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. Treasury Department and a host of legal scholars proposed sweeping reforms to comprehensively index the Internal Revenue Code for inflation. However, their proposals were never enacted into law. Instead, Congress chose to respond to inflation on a case-by-case basis. Many of those responses, such as the preferential rate for capital gains, afford relief to the wealthy, but do little to help the poor and middle class. To counter the pernicious effects of inflation and make the Code more equitable, this article proposes an inflation tax credit. Under the proposal, low-income taxpayers may elect between (i) substantiating the average balance of their bank deposits and treasury bills to receive a credit based on that balance, and (ii) taking a standard credit based on their gross income.

Daughter of Cuddles Wins Rhodes!

News article:   SC student studying at Stanford is Rhodes Scholar

The Associated Press  Posted: 11/20/2011 11:16:21 AM PST   Updated: 11/20/2011 11:16:22 AM PST

COLUMBIA, S.C.—A student from Columbia studying at Stanford University in California has been chosen as a Rhodes Scholar.   Katherine Niehaus is one of 32 American students who were awarded scholarships to study at Oxford University. Niehaus will have all her expenses paid to the prestigious university in England.   Niehaus' work focuses on biomechanics and she wants to apply her research to high technology entrepreneurship. She also is a mentor and tutor for students in low income families. Niehaus was star student and track athlete at Spring Valley High School, where she won 14 state championships. She was the captain of Stanford's track and cross country teams.

Congrats to Kate!  That is very cool.  I met Kate when dad Dr. Greg Niehaus and she came to visit Duke.  She "settled" for Stanford, I guess...

Anyway, Kate should know that Angus had an important role in her past.  Because Angus used to sing this song, loudly, when "House" was around.  I should note, we called Dr. Niehaus "Cuddles," because he was captain of the 1979 Kenyon football team in college.  (His teammates called him "House."  He's still tied for the Kenyon record for most interceptions in a single game:  3 against Grove City College in 1979) .  Just LOOK at the guy:  clearly he should be called "Cuddles."
The song:

Cuh-cuh-cuh-Cuddles!
Beautiful Cuddles!
He's the only math-uh-matt-ish-uhn we adore!
By the luh-light of
A silvery slide rule
He'll be differentiating on the floor!

I am 100% serious, by the way.  We really did sing this.  And Angus really did make it up.  Congrats to Greg and Liz, and of course to Kate.

Nod to Chateau

Food Stamps

Work incentives and the food stamp program, Hilary Williamson Hoynes & Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
Journal of Public Economics, February 2012, Pages 151-162

Abstract: Labor supply theory makes strong predictions about how the introduction or expansion of a social welfare program impacts work effort. Although there is a large literature on the work incentive effects of AFDC and the EITC, relatively little is known about the work incentive effects of the Food Stamp Program and none of the existing literature is based on quasi-experimental methods. We use the cross-county introduction of the program in the 1960s and 1970s to estimate the impact of the program on the extensive and intensive margins of labor supply, earnings, and family cash income. Consistent with theory, we find reductions in employment and hours worked when food stamps are introduced. The reductions are concentrated among families headed by single women.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

This IS What Democracy Looks Like!

Dan D'Amico: The "Occupy" movement is what democracy looks like. Interesting.

On the Road: Excerpt

How times have changed. Jack Kerouac's description of a hip NY party in the late 1940s in On the Road:

The party was enormous; there was something going on in every corner...There was even a Chinese girl.

Apparently some guy went upstairs with her. But then he was horny again in three hours.

(Nod to Raoul)

Adam Carolla--Uncensored

NSFW!!!!



(Nod to Douglas Coate)

Lefties: Ron Paul should be your man

Lefties should vote for Ron Paul.

I agree, but.... Al Jazeera gets this right, and the New York Times doesn't get it? We are through the looking glass here.

(Nod to Erik C)

The Thrill is GONE, Baby

Chris Matthews breathlessly comes to the conclusion most of us came to two years ago.

Still, let's be fair: Mr. Matthews gets it right. Our President has zero interest in policy, or change, or addressing any serious problem. He likes to play golf, and he likes to speak to cheering crowds. Obama makes Carter look like Lyndon Johnson, when it comes to effectiveness. As Mr. Matthews put it, and he put it well: "When was the last time a member of Congress heard from him? ...He does not enjoy their COMPANY."

It was not always thus. Mr. Matthews, at one point not so long ago, had a good feeling in his tingly parts, and all the way down his leg, at the mere THOUGHT of putting the words "President" and "Obama" in the same sentence.

There was NEVER any reason to expect BHO to be an effective, or even engaged President. I admit, given the choice between Obama and McCain, again, I'd pick Obama, still. But it would be nice to have some better choices.

(Nod to the Blonde; BHO never sent a thrill up HER leg, either)

Inequality, take II

So what I was saying yesterday is that graphs like this don't intrinsically bother me:

What is worrying to me is how we got to this graph, as described here:

CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:

275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,
65 percent for the next 19 percent,
Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and
18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.

If we had gotten to the graph via say 75% growth in the bottom quintile with correspondingly faster growth in the other groups, I'd see no no problem at all.

But we didn't.

Incomes in the lower part of the distribution are not really growing. 18% growth in 29 years stinks. 40% growth in 29 years is really not much better either.

To me, it's the lack of absolute improvement in incomes at the bottom of the distribution that we need to address, not the big growth at the top.

And I just don't see how hammering the 1 percent is going to sustainably raise income growth for the bottom 20-40 percent.

We need to fix public education, and the problem there is not really a lack of overall expenditures.

We need to not put so many young people in prison and the problem there is not a lack of expenditure.

We need stronger and more stable family lives for more children. I am not sure if greater expenditure would help here. Maybe.

Inequality

To me, whether inequality is a problem/evil/worthy target of policy depends on how we reached that inequality.

For example, if the real incomes of bottom 20% were growing at 4% per year while the real incomes of the top 20% were growing at 6% per year, we would eventually arrive at a very unequal society. However, to my mind, it would not be a problem or a legitimate target of policy because the bottom quintile would be doing pretty well in an absolute sense.

Another way to say this is that I don't think policy in our current situation should be addressed at reducing inequality, I think it should be addressed at increasing opportunities for the group of people that are not doing well.

Another way to say this is that I'm not troubled by the super-rich, I'm troubled by the persistently high unemployment rates for people with limited education levels.

I could probably sign on to celebrate income inequality; but at the same time, I am very worried about the absolutely poor income trends for the bottom quintile.

It's just not obvious to me that taxing millionaires will help the job and earnings prospect of low skilled workers.

Room Assignment Puzzle

Question: Should Duke allow side payments in room assignment process?

Answer: why not?

Real answer: Nope, they do not allow it. And they are threateing "referrals." I don't know what that means, but it frightens me.

Big Day Tomorrow!

People, tomorrow is World Toilet Day (for realz)!

From the WTO (world toilet organization) website we are encouraged to:

"Join in the celebrations! Click around and find out how you can be part of World Toilet Day celebrations!"

How will you celebrate WTD?

Here is my fondest memory from WTD 2010.

So enjoy tomorrow, but don't be a turd burglar!

Hard Balls Banned In Toronto

As Jackie Blue notes, "Finally, the kids are safe."

Toronto bans balls of almost all kinds (apparently really soft balls, like Nerf or Harry Reid's, are still okay).

This includes, remarkably, soccer balls. Yes it does.

State = Violence

I'm always surprised, and a little amazed, when my lefty bed-wetter friends say that there is no violence inherent in the state. People pay their taxes because they WANT to, don't you know. They keep quiet out of respect, not fear. In your mind, friends, that may be true.

In Portland, some cops just straight up pepper sprayed a girl in the face. (if this picture is real; can never know, of course).

(photo credit), click for a more burning image.

This video happened to be taken at about the same time. You can see some people trying to help the girl, on the right side of the view, as she screams and vomits.


The state IS violence. The state does not USE violence, it IS violence. Sure, maybe you think this girl had it coming. Or perhaps, to paraphrase Burke, you fall out with the abuses. The THING! The thing ITSELF is the abuses.

Thomas Hobbes had it right, and nothing has changed. It is not wisdom but authority that makes a political "law." Authority is power, backed by violence. And the reason the state exists is to be able to wield overwhelming, irresistible power, enough to "overawe" even the thought of resistance.

Now, mind you, I don't fault the police. This is dangerous work, the kids are breaking the law, and the kids are screaming vile things at the cops. The point is that all you lefties want a police state. How do you like it now?

Dems love welfare, Reps love corporations. Result?

Corporate welfare.

"The Occupy Wall Street protesters aren't good at articulating what they want, but one of their demands is 'end corporate welfare.' Well, welcome aboard... Republicans, for their part, favor handouts to the nuclear industry. Over the years the feds have provided billions of dollars in loan guarantees and cut-rate insurance to nuclear plants, though even nuclear-utility executives say new plants may not make economic sense in a world of cheap and abundant natural gas. Last month House Speaker John Boehner backed a $2 billion Energy Department loan guarantee sought by USEC Inc. for a uranium-enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio...Yet the parade of subsidies gets longer each year, perhaps, as the old joke goes, because in Washington Republicans love corporations and Democrats love welfare. As House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan puts it: 'How can we save billions of dollars from unjustified subsidy and entitlement programs, if we can't get corporate America off the dole?'" (gated link to whole WSJ article)

(nod to Kevin Lewis)

Your Euro Death Watch update

Spanish 10 year bond yields hit 6.975% today.

YIKES!

With no growth in sight for Greece Italy and Spain, high re-financing costs like this will make their debt ratios grow even if they manage to balance their budgets. Only large surpluses will stabilize those debt ratios if their cost of funds is 7% or above and economic growth is weak.

Good news, but will it last?

Jobless claims are down, industrial production is up, inflation is down, and consumer confidence is rising.

Nice.

Now let's see what happens when the supercommittee debacle is fully revealed or one of the PIGS makes a break for it, Argentina style.

Things my Provost wants me to know

Apropos of absolutely nothing, the Provost's office emailed me this today:

"Pregnancy is not a disability under ADA unless there are medical complications. For OU employees we have to treat pregnancies in the same manner as we do other temporary ailments, i.e., broken leg or such."

1. I'm pretty sure that i.e. is not the correct pretentious concept here. I believe this is an e.g. situation.

2. pregnancy = broken leg? WTF? Does OU put body casts on all pregnant employees?

3. I need to know this today of all days exactly why?

Markets in everything: Dali Lama doody edition

yes, that is a statue of the Lama pooping! Caganers are Catalan Christmas favors. More here.

Aaron King: FInal Note

I got several "Why are you so mean to Aaron King?" emails.

Some context:

1. Aaron is one of our very best grad students. Hard-working, smart, lots of different projects started. He is going to be famous.
2. Aaron is irrepressible, one of those people who has to make a comment, start a conversation, create a controversy. I would never pick on most grad students this way. But you have to realize that Aaron needs to be the center of attention. (No, not as much as I need to be the center of attention. But NO ONE is as needy as I am.)
3. Aaron graduated from MSU years ago. Yet every day (EVERY. DAY.) he wears an MSU shirt, hoodie, and baseball cap. MSU is all he talks about (when he is not talking about work, which is what he mostly talks about).
4. Aaron does (as we say in the south) "favor" me. Except that he is better looking and more athletic, by a lot. So I think everyone understands that me comparing our looks is ridiculous. But Aaron's style of basketball play is quite similar to mine: neither of us really go around people, but rather we go through them.
5. Aaron's "rants" are famous, and about as sensitive as mine. An example. The Duke Parking office is a disgrace to pencil pushers everywhere. They are incompetent and a waste of a paycheck (that is larger than mine). I want to go to Subway for lunch, just so I can see some better service. Doesn't that sound like me?

My bottom line point is that, if you knew him, you would smack him, too.

Animal Cruelty

Angus sends this picture, outrageous on several grounds. Check it out:

First outrage: the animal cruelty. The poor dog has no idea of the humiliation it is suffering. Someone should shoot the poor dog.

And then shoot the person who did this: Aaron King. Years after leaving his undergraduate institution (MSU), he is still obsessed.

Okay, now the second outrage....Compare to THIS pic, of Angus and I watching the Cards get beat at Rangers park in Arlington.

Angus alleges that there are certain physical resemblances between Aaron and...well, me. The same stubby, thick legs, the same apologetic smile, the same bulbous head. This is outrageous because it is entirely correct.

Aaron and I have played basketball a few times, with him being "skins" and me... just being sweaty. The slapping and thwopping of wet skin, it sounded like a hippo wedding night. Oy.

To test the "look alike" thesis, Angus posed this question to Ms. Angus, showing her Aaron's picture: "Who is this?" Her answer, unequivocally: "That's Munger, when younger. But why would he humiliate that poor dog?"

Lagniappe: This all started when Aaron posted THIS on facebook: How long can I wander Duke's campus in an MSU shooting shirt without being heckled? Show some pride people! MSU would riot if a dookie was walking down Grand River....

To which I responded, in my measured, tempered way: For Aaron King: two things. No Duke student would think of making fun of an MSU fan. It's like making fun of Special Olympics kids, except that some Special Olympics kids can read. Second, good teams win. But a team need not be good to beat MSU. So, it's no offense to see an MSU logo, and no particular sense of accomplishment to beat MSU. The reverse? Where an MSU kid would be mad if he saw a Duke logo (assuming there was someone around to read it aloud to the MSU kid, so he would know what it said)? it's because Duke is something that's worth being upset about. Glad I could clear this up for you. It's the LACK of pride, and the presence of a justifiable inferiority complex, that would make it dangerous to wear Duke gear on Grand River.

lettuce spray

The only negotiations more screwed up than Hunter-Stern are those between the Dems and Reps on the (not so) Supercommittee on deficit reduction.

They are charged with producing $1.2 trillion in cuts and revenues over 10 years. That is $120 billion per year. Federal spending is running around $3.6 trillion PER YEAR. The deficit is over $1 trillion PER YEAR.

In other words, $1.2 trillion is peanuts.

We could take the full $1.2 trillion out of defense and never miss it. Defense spending is around $900 billion PER YEAR, so we'd be "crippling" the Pentagon by only giving it $780 billion PER YEAR.

The Canadians would probably pour over our border and conquer us at that point, eh? Well not really, because the cuts are not really cuts from today's levels but from a baseline of future increases. If sequester went into effect, the Pentagon budget would still grow over the next 10 years.

And yet we read this in today's WSJ:

With Congress's deficit-reduction supercommittee barreling toward a deadline for striking a big budget deal, both parties are reaching for accounting gimmicks to help reach their target of $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years.

Some tools are familiar to old Washington hands, such as massaging budget assumptions and painting rosy economic scenarios. Others include taking credit for "saving" money on wars that are ending and putting off until next year what lawmakers don't want to deal with now.

All told, none of these efforts make the fundamental policy changes needed for a long-term budget fix. "Suddenly everyone is talking not about deficit reduction but deficit-reduction gimmicks," said Stanley Collender, a budget expert and former congressional aide.

Give me that old time sequester, give me that old time sequester, give me that old time sequester, it's good enough for me. It was good enough for Gramm-Rudman, it was good enough for Gramm-Rudman, it was good enough for Gramm-Rudman and it's good enough for me.

Keynes

I am often impressed by Keynes.
"the political problem of mankind: how to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty" (Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren")

Much less often am I impressed by Keynesians.

(Nod to Neanderbill)

Something Wrong With Any Man Who Wants to Work with Children?

David K writes:

Over the last week, I have heard a number of talking heads and sports radio types call for parents to be wary of men who want to be around boys. They say that we should err on the side of caution and question men who come into contact with youth. One lunatic in particular said there is "Something Wrong" with any older man who desired to commit his time and energy to being around youth.

I immediately recalled your article on this, and wondered what your thoughts were...

It seems to me that this kind of behavior could drive more men away from daycare and elementary school jobs as well as volunteer and charity related positions where they are sorely needed as role models for all children.

David, I don't have much to add. You said it better than I could have.

What We Have Here....Is a Failure....to ComMUNicate.

Henry Olsen speaks a bitter truth.

I have been saying that BHO can't possibly lose in 2012, because he will be running against the idiot Republicans. Not the one chosen as Prez candidate, but the US House.

Repubs insist on making the same mistake over and over again. When the voters see what the Dems are actually like, the voters go "ewwwwww!" But that is NOT an endorsement of the bunch of whack jobs that the Repubs trot out, or the ideas they have for running our wars, our bedrooms, our borders, or our trade policies.

Anyway, I think O, Henry has this right.

The big question

Over at MR, Tyler pops it: "to what extent can a boost in nominal flow make up for a shortfall in wealth?"

The US economy suffered a severe real shock. Housing prices collapsed, equities fell. People discovered they were a lot poorer than they thought as 10s of trillions of wealth disappeared.

Individuals stopped spending and tried to start saving, cutting debt loads and re-building their balance sheets.

Meanwhile, our government has replaced the private debt binge with a public debt binge and "encouraged" saving by nailing interest rates to the floor.

These two moves are entirely incompatible with people's desires to rebuild their balance sheets.

Of course, the moves were undertaken to increase output and reduce unemployment. However, those results have been far short of overwhelming.

Many advocates of NGDP targeting argue that it works via an expectations channel. A rough version of the logic is, if real growth is low, the Fed will be creating inflation, which will erode the value of my money, so I better go spend it now!

I know I'm treading dangerously close to getting a Samuelsonian lecture on the paradox of thrift, but it's been three years now and the economy still stinks. I am not sure that this sad state of affairs is because we haven't punished savers enough.

Go Home! Beat It!

Skeptical that this is real.

But if Tommy the Brit sends it, can it be fake?

Penn State Football v. Duke Lacrosse

Okay, so I was gritting my teeth not to write this because ... well, because why make trouble, right?

But it has to be said.

In the late spring and summer of 2006, the New York Times and other media half-wits went looney tunes over the fact that the Duke administration did not do enough to punish, horsewhip, castrate, etc. the young men of the lacrosse team. Selena Roberts and Nancy Grace stand as having behaved in ways that were especially intemperate. (No really, just take a minute and watch the Nancy Grace thing. It's worth it).

But... our President said "whatever they did do, it was bad enough." Our coach was fired, and the season was ended. The team was humiliated, and subjected to a variety of threats and psychological harassment.

AND THEY HADN'T DONE ANYTHING! There is no evidence that they did anything at all, other than foster under-age drinking. (Hiring strippers is legal, no matter how much you might disapprove on hypocritical moral grounds.) (There may have been racial epithets, according to the woman who said she was raped but wasn't.)

No assault, even. More people died at Chappaquidick than at that house on Buchanan Ave. in Durham. More sexual assaults occurred in the Arkansas Gov's mansion in 1988 than at that house on Buchanan Ave. in Durham.

And now... well, now we are all hearing a little, pretty late, pretty little, outrage about Penn State. At Penn State there WAS a rape... of a child, by an adult. And the administrators did nothing. When finally Joe Pa was fired (unbelievably, his compromise was to finish out the season. nice.), the students actually rioted to protect him. No "castrate" signs.

So, if it's football, there is no race element, and the offender is a pedophile, we'll remain calm? Because it's okay to protect football coaches, because they are more important?

Okay, yes, I understand there has been no trial, no admission of guilt. But there appears to be an eyewitness, Mike McQueary. And he TOLD THE ADMINS, INCLUDING JOE PA, WHAT HE SAW! There was an obligation to go public immediately, and given what was known the coach had to be fired and turned over to the police. The defense "there has been no trial" is only true because Penn State systematically suppressed evidence and kept back information. We'd know by now, if the trial had gone forward, about guilt or innocence. I mean, even the devil was appalled.

Joe Pa, we hardly knew ye. How could you possibly have allowed this to go on? All you haters who were mad at Duke... are you proud, now? This is one hundred times worse on every dimension. Except on the guilt of the "bad guys" dimension, where it's infinitely worse, because there are actual bad guys.

Profits

We Get Letters! Euro-zone inflation...

Will C writes: I recently listened to a Russ Roberts podcast interview where you discussed inflation, among other things. I thought of your interview when I recently read that Italy was suffering from inflation. I wonder if you could answer a question - on your blog or whenever time permits - about Italy, the Euro, and inflation.

I figured that inflation would be about the same in all of the Euro countries since they have a common currency. If inflation is a monetary phenomenon how could Italy have inflation but Germany does not? Perhaps what I read is incorrect and Italy is not experiencing inflation.

The answer is not very interesting. Inflation rates do NOT differ much in the Eurozone. Maybe from a low in Germany of 1.4% to a high of 5% or 5.5% in Estonia. As for Italy? Not so much: Italian inflation is up to 3.5%, from 2.2%, but that's not really inflation.

(click for a more inflated image!)

The differences are changed in measured relative prices in the index calculated from a survey. The biggest components are housing, food, and clothing. These change at different rates (though not MUCH different) in different countries. Some of it depends on barriers to external trade, since there are no formal trade barriers within the EU.

Here is some info: In September 2011, the lowest annual rates were observed in Ireland (1.3%), Sweden (1.5%) and the Czech Republic (2.1%), and the highest in Estonia (5.4%) and Lithuania (4.7%). Compared with August 2011, annual inflation fell in seven Member States, remained stable in five and rose in fourteen.

So the "always and everwhere" bit is a matter of DEFINITION, not CAUSE. The claim is that inflation in the EU cannot be consistently greater than the rate of increase of the money supply (though as we see in the US, it can be less). But there can be changes in relative prices, which will affect measured inflation, sometimes quite sharply. Is that "real" inflation? As far as the people paying the higher prices, sure. But in terms of definition, I'd say no.

Malagasy Miracle?

In an article about South African led political negotiations in Madagascar, WSJ reporter Peter Wonacutt says a couple surprising things about Madagascar:

"Rich in vanilla, coffee, cocoa and minerals, Madagascar has long been an economic miracle waiting to materialize."

"the first since a military-led coup in 2009 upended one of Africa's most promising economies."

The article also shows a graph of the country's recent growth rates:



What the article doesn't show or discuss is Madagascar's demographics. Almost half of the population is below age 15. Population growth has averaged between 2.5 and 3 percent. Thus, per-capita GDP is not growing anything like what is shown in the graphic.

Mrs. Angus and I were in Madagascar for 3 weeks in 2008, before the coup. There was really only one good road in the entire country (from the Tana airport to the town to the Andasibe-Mantadia national park). Transportation infrastructure in the South and West was non-existent (We didn't visit the north).

Villages were filled with babies that had just had babies, and the country appeared not to have any old people at all. There was only one airline in the country and flights left whenever all the ticketholders arrived (this could be either substantially early or extremely late). One of the main occupations in rural areas was chopping down trees to make and sell charcoal.

Finally, exporting primary commodities has not proven to be a reliable path to achieving development.

Two caveats. First, I'm not a Madagascar specialist. But given my experiences in that country and knowledge of its demographics, I was stunned by the interpretation of its economy given in the article. Second, Mrs. Angus and I had a tremendous visit to the country. We thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend such a trip to any semi-adventurous travelers.

Tim Blair Rulz

You likely know this already. But Tim Blair rulz.

Satire? One hopes

Why would D. Kos give space to this.... writer? Check this out.

Money quote: "While Communists are certainly responsible for more deaths and misery than the Nazis could ever dream of, at least their intentions were good, so I'll give them a pass." Well. Well, well, well.

The Bishop Brings It!

A pleasure to hear the Bishop share so many truths.

He's not just another pretty face.... he's smart!

Economic Freedom Videos

These are well done. The first....
The second...

Markets in everything Sustaining the crunch edition

Behold:

Yes, this is a real product, called Obol, available from Amazon.

Hat tip to Mrs. Angus who wants one real bad.

Dan Klein: I am wrong, and so are You

Interesting piece in the Atlantic by uber-mensch Dan Klein.

(Nod to Herr Fuchs)

Dog Pianista

hard to know if it's "real," but it's pretty funny.

Premise is that owner put up camera when away. Maybe...

(Nod to Shirley and the LMM)

Boys Named Sue: Blown Call, Injunction Sought

Here's the story: high school football team denied chance to kick field goal, on what was clearly a terrible call.

The video:

They have a point. But suing? Really? It was 41 yard field goal attempt, in high school. That is not a gimme.

Meme: Koch vs. Soros

How come CG Koch is a bad guy, but G Soros is a good guy? When you look at it objectively, Mr. Koch has done a whole lot of really good things.

Right here in NC, a lot of people have been ugly to Art Pope for supporting right wing think tanks. Like this transparent, ill-informed hack job. (Okay, the picture made me laugh, I liked the picture. But the article is idiotic. Saying Dems have to run against Art Pope? Wow. Hard for Dems to believe the truth, which is most people in NC just don't share their lefty values.)

There are a lot left wing think tanks, you know, supported by public funds. They are called "universities." But again, somehow that's okay, just like Soros gets a pass.

Why do I think that this comparison is a new meme? Two words: Will Wilkinson. King of new memes. Of course, when I looked, I saw this, also. Heee! And then there is this...

Let's put the future behind us

Look, Greece is toast, Italy is toast. The problem is not temporary or caused by the global crisis. Neither austerity or bailouts will solve it.

The problem is that German monetary policy and Mediterranean governance are not a match made in heaven.

We have seen this situation over and over in Latin America. Countries peg to the dollar and things start out great, but their policies don't match US policies, their economy loses competitiveness, and they have a financial crisis. Argentina was just an extreme case.

It was exceedingly dumb to not put an orderly exit process into the rules of the game when the Euro was created. It was exceedingly dumb for France and Germany to not accept penalties on themselves when they breached the deficit limits set by the stability and growth pact a few years ago. It was exceedingly dumb of investors and bankers to believe that Greece had become a little Germany and loan it so freakin' much money at German interest rate levels.

But above all, it's exceedingly astonishingly dumb to keep kicking this can down the road and putting the PIGS deeper and deeper into a hole.

Default and devaluation will be very ugly. As Tyler has pointed out, Argentina has not become an economic paradise. Yet it is the best chance for the PIGS to recover and start growing again given where we now stand. Even if they got a "good" bailout and some expansionary monetary policy from the ECB (LOL), the structural mismatch between monetary policy and governance would not go away.

Crappy governance requires crappy monetary policy. The theory is that adopting US or German monetary policy will force crappy governance to reform itself. However, we have seen time and time again that the reality is the opposite. Crappy governance will win out and crappy monetary policy will return.

Let's put the future behind us!

Time Lapse of BBall Court on Aircraft Carrier

UNC is playing some loser school, I forget which, from the Little Ten.

Cool time lapse of the building of the court where the Little Ten will be humiliated.

test your economics knowledge

The JoePa Faux Pas: Only the Globe

Okay, JoePa is not a good man, as it turns out. He only is out because he was fired. And he was only fired because he got caught. His legacy is forever tarnished.

But....suspend the team? What did those young men do wrong? Fire all the admins, and hate on JoePa, fine. But the young men who are on that team don't deserve the hate they are getting.

The most idiotic, and unintentionally hilarious, suggestion I have heard so far is... I can barely say... well it's in this article.

The scandal should start a national conversation—perhaps including congressional hearings—on how the pursuit of athletic glory has created sports subcultures on campuses in which no one is accountable to anyone.

Did you catch that? CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS! Not even the Onion would have juevos that size. Only the Boston Globe could possibly propose that the collection of perverts and criminals in the US Congress* should investigate the wrong doing of college sports. Maybe the "members" could all stand up and post twitter pictures of their packages? Other members of Congress lined up to support Weiner boy for a long time before they finally gave up. I understand that forced sodomy of a 10 year old is worse then sending out pix of your winkie. But the coverup works the same, in sports and in Congress. Protect our own. Don't admit anything, and maybe it will blow over.

The problems of moral bankruptcy, coverups, and "the rules don't apply to me" are if anything worse in Congress than in NCAA sports.

*There are plenty of good people in the Congress, mind you. Just like JoePa was a good guy. Until he covered up for a friend. Even the good members of Congress do that, too.

UPDATE: I think this article has it exactly right.

Axelrod Tournament: KPC Style!

I run an Axelrod-type tournament among my students each year. (This software is not exactly the same as the tournament we will run, but it is useful for demonstration purposes). And some background on THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION.

This year resulted in a particularly strange outcome: one of the student entries thumped the bejeezus out of Tit-for-Tat, and also did well against other strategies. It wins consistently, in various trials and contexts.

Is this an important new discovery? Well, the new strategy is....

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE. A hallmark of science is replicability. So let's throw this open to the smartest folks in the world, the real 1%: THE READERS OF KPC! If the new strategy is really that good, then let's prove it against the first team!

My main man David Sparks and I will run a wide open tourney. You can submit your strategies here. But READ THIS FIRST... Okay, you went to the web site, and had no clue what to do, and now you are back. I TOLD you to read this first. Jeez.

Instructions: Here is a useful planning sheet for writing out your entries before you send them in. You have two options for determining your strategy: You may

(A) choose your first round strategies and responses for each of the 4 second-round and 16 later-round combinations of your and your opponent's two most recent histories, or

(B) choose a play for each of the 25 rounds against each opponent. Choose one (1) method, and plan accordingly. Each play must consist of a number between 0 and 1, inclusive. 0 indicates that you will always defect, 1 indicates that you will always cooperate, and some decimal p between 0 and 1 indicates that you will mix with probability p of selecting cooperate.

In other words, A-type strategies have a maximum memory of two periods. You load the lags in the first two entries, and then after that go forward by specifying your response to any possible combination of your play and opponent's play in the previous two rounds.

B-type strategies allow you to specify a non-contingent stratgey, simply saying here is your play (possibly mixing) for each of the 25 rounds.

Each entry will play a tournament (25 consecutive rounds) against the same opponent, for all opponents who enter, plus a replica of your own strategy, plus 50 doves (All Coop) and 50 hawks (All Def). In other words, the tournament is round-robin, where everyone plays against everyone, plus 100 automatons (50 Doves and 50 Hawks).

The top five winners will get a free "I fought Tit-for-Tat, and I WON!" t-shirts in your chosen size.

And, not least important by any means, you get to name your strategy. Here are the best five name entries from the recent Duke PPE student tourney:

1. "Megan Fox (Great tits, Bad tats)
2. "Remember, kids, ALWAYS use protection!"
3. "Suck on my Rawls"
4. "Munger's Favorite Little French Fry"
5. "Fielder's Tits, Pujols's Tat(ers)"

(And, yes, friends, two of those beauties were submitted by women, so don't get all snooty...)

My own entry: "Hey, Euvolunteer DEEZ!" It did not do very well.

Remember, the actual strategy has to be entered here. If you have questions, post them in comments here and we'll answer them as a kind of ad hoc FAQs section.

Deadline: All entries put into the web site in usable form by Monday November 28 will be eligible for the fabulous prize.

BTW: Check out some of D. Sparks' other good work, which has been featured in KPC before.

Two songs about my favorite Hindu God

People, you KNOW it's Hanuman.

First up Mexican guitar heros Rodrigo & Gabriela:

Now for something completely different, Krisha Das:



just beautiful.

Nice call

And unfortunately, the lack of serious economic reforms in Italy implies that there is a growing risk that Italy may end up like Argentina. This is not a foregone conclusion but, if Italy does not reform, an exit from EMU within 5 years is not totally unlikely. Indeed, like Argentina, Italy faces a growing competitiveness loss given an increasingly overvalued currency and the risk of falling exports and growing current account deficit. The growth slowdown will make the public deficit and debt worse and potentially unsustainable over time. And if a devaluation cannot be used to reduce real wages, the real exchange rate overvaluation will be undone via a slow and painful process of wage and price deflation. But such deflation will keep real rates high and exacerbate the growth and fiscal crisis. Without necessary reforms, eventually this vicious circle of stagdeflation would force Italy to exit EMU, return to the Lira and default on its Euro debts.

~Nouriel Roubini, January 2006

Turn out the lights

Yikes! 10 year Italian government bond yields are now well over 7%!! That was the level that sent Ireland, Greece, & Portugal down the rabbit hole of "bailouts".

The party is indeed over.

Your NBAPA / Eurozone deathwatch updates

1. Wow, players now say they'll take 50/50 revenue split (down from 57% in the last CBA) if the league will negotiate some "systems" issues. The owners are saying that unless they take the 50/50 deal currently offered by today, the new offer will be 47% for the players.

Ouch.

While I absolutely hate the way the owners are treating the players here (I was, after all, a member and minor official of the United Electrical Workers), the players are in a weak position. It is rumored that a sizable majority of them would vote yes on the current offer if union officials would allow a vote.

2. Italian bond yields hit 7.6% yesterday. People, Silvio's resignation is not going to make reform any easier or growth any faster. Probably all it will do is make Italy more compliant to the misguided policies of the German and French run EU "braintrust".

Phone call for Spain! Get ready for your closeup.

Libertarian Tim Rohr Wins Lenoir City Council Seat

Tim Rohr, one of my favorite people, won reelection on the town of Lenoir City Council. The results:

We have a much better chance at the local level.

This is really, really good

This is interesting, and useful.

Totally nails the problem with the "production v. distribution" mistake that JS Mill made and that so many have repeated since.

And, doesn't it matter that the poorest are much better off? That, unless you want to elevate the sin of envy to the status of virtue ("let's call it 'social justice!', and then it will sound like a good thing!"), should be the main concern.

Update on "Wanker v. Tosser"

A response from a native speaker of the Queen's English, R the Royal, on the earlier "Wanker v. Tosser" question:

This is the kind of question I like having a go at. My views:

Basically, your man Munger is spot on that 'wanker' is stronger. While almost everyone would agree that 'wanker' is full-on swearing, I think some people would place 'tosser' into that grey area (alongside words like 'nob' and 'dickhead' that seem somehow gentler and more like slang even if their sexual connotations are, shall we say, unambiguous). But, although 'tosser' may not be as strong, I think it's almost equally harsh. That is, while it may be more acceptable to use it in company (whatever that means), I'd be careful who I used it about. I'd be readier to use terms like 'twat' or 'cock' to rebuke a friend who was being, well, a twat or a cock. To hiss 'tosser' at him would really sound like I'd lost my rag. Which underlines the key point for me, viz. that it's not what you say but the way you say it, and I think there are few words into which you can inject as much cold contempt as you can into 'tosser'. As such, if anything the Lansley-Bieber example works the other way round for me. While I don't have much complaint about AL, people who do would feel more strongly about him and prefer 'wanker', whereas JB deserves only the disdainful dismissal for which 'tosser' is tailor-made. (Though even that's giving him too much credit. I would favour the description "f*cking non-event".)

And thanks to Tommie the Brit, for the assist.

For Those of Us Gearing Up for Deer Season

Don’t Mind Meat? The Denial of Mind to Animals Used for Human Consumption

Brock Bastian et al., Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming

Abstract: Many people like eating meat, but most are reluctant to harm things that have minds. The current three studies show that this dissonance motivates people to deny minds to animals. Study 1 demonstrates that animals considered appropriate for human consumption are ascribed diminished mental capacities. Study 2 shows that meat eaters are motivated to deny minds to food animals when they are reminded of the link between meat and animal suffering. Finally, Study 3 provides direct support for our dissonance hypothesis, showing that expectations regarding the immediate consumption of meat increase mind denial. Moreover, this mind denial in turn reduces negative affect associated with dissonance. The findings highlight the role of dissonance reduction in facilitating the practice of meat eating and protecting cultural commitments.

They should probably have controlled for people who were hunters. We don't really think deer are stupid, or have diminished mental capacity. They are, however, delicious. That's why we shoot them, cut them up, cook them, and eat them.

The lead author is Brock Bastian, who has also discovered that violent video games cause violent behavior. (Though, as this article notes, the specifics of the study framework were not "revealed," presumably because they were too disturbing for peer review). I'm not sure we should attribute "mind" Brock Bastian.

Best Abstract Ever

Raoul sends "the best abstract ever..."

How not to write!

Dutch Boy sends a link, and a viewpoint.

The link....

The viewpoint: This 'piece' should be plastered on every school room wall with 'How not to write' written above it. Amazing. She's a PhD candidate at, not surprisingly, Harvard. I thought it might be a satirical piece,

But it's not I'm afraid. Pretty bloated and pretentious stuff, from top to bottom. See if you can read it all the way through. Go ahead, try.

Well, Dutch Boy: I did try. And I sort of did read it, all the way through. But I have no idea what it was trying to say. The impressive thing is that this is likely the third or fourth draft, at least. So it has been cleaned up and clarified considerably.

Fat People are Impatient and Time-Inconsistent

Impatience, Incentives, and Obesity

Charles Courtemanche, Garth Heutel & Patrick McAlvanah, NBER Working Paper, October 2011

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives, and body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 2006 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we first show that greater impatience increases BMI and the likelihood of obesity even after controlling for demographic, human capital, occupational, and financial characteristics as well as risk preference. Next, we provide evidence of an interaction effect between time preference and food prices, with cheaper food leading to the largest weight gains among those exhibiting the most impatience. The interaction of changing economic incentives with heterogeneous discounting may help explain why increases in BMI have been concentrated amongst the right tail of the distribution, where the health consequences are especially severe. Lastly, we model time-inconsistent preferences by computing individuals' quasi-hyperbolic discounting parameters (beta and delta). Both long-run patience (delta) and present-bias (beta) predict BMI, suggesting obesity is partly attributable to rational intertemporal tradeoffs but also partly to time inconsistency.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

It was 1979

Dutch Boy sends this video. It was 1979. Pretty impressive.

Tosser v. Wanker

Okay, so the above sounds like a legal case, perhaps where a sociologist is suing an English prof.

But it is a serious question of "dicktion." (Apologies; couldn't help meself)

Both names are insults, clearly, and both refer to Onanism. (I assume that women are never called tossers / wankers, yes?* I mean, they can technically do the analogous thing, but it's just not the same. Brits, or Tommy the Brit, feel free to join in here...)

My impression is that calling someone a wanker implies total dismissal, not just an insult but saying the person wanking is beneath contempt.

Tosser is in relative terms more jovial, less insulting. The tosser is perhaps a pompous and useless idiot, but a wanker is not serious, someone who is just fooling around. In short, then, Andrew Lansley is arguably a tosser, but Justin Bieber is clearly a wanker.

Of course, I probably have this wrong. Since I am going to London soon to visit Tommy the Brit, I need advice.

Wanker, or Tosser, for the well informed visitor looking for just that right holiday insult? Some other possibilities...

*I found some references that would claim that a female tosser is a "strummer." But that misses the point. The goal is not to find a word for a woman pleasing herself (as the '80s Franklin-Lennox anthem said, "Sisters are doing it for themselves!"). Rather, the question is what is the analogous INSULT. I also found "bean flicker." I wish I hadn't found that, but I did.

D-Boo Deals

I think D-Boo pretty much p'wns this guy. But to be fair the other guy appears to be an idiot.

Still, give credit where credit is due: Donald Boudreaux, we salute you! Grow on, you crazy China! I would like for all of us to be rich, NOT for the US to be dominant.

Main Dog Faces Difficult Choice

As many of you know, our main dog is Hobo (aka "The Wonder Dog.")  He'll also answer to Ho-dizzle, of course, if it's done respectfully.  (Tanzie, our safety back-up dog, is kept around in case the main dog goes down, as often happens.)

Yesterday Hobo faced the kind of difficult choice that only a Wonder Dog could hope to solve successfully.  It was quite cold, so I built a nice fire.  But the sun coming in the picture window has reached the angle where it is very warm also.  Well, you see the problem.

Not even a Wonder Dog can be in two places at once.  So Hobo divided his forces. He scooted his butt as close as he could get it to the fire, and then kept his front half in the sun.  This optimization problem was so tiring that he needed a nap.

Women Drivers: A Political Test

Women drivers make me nuts.  They are (as a central tendency, obviously with variance) timid and unwilling to drive effectively.  I have spent far too much of my life waiting behind a woman waiting to turn left.  As long as there is a car VISIBLE coming the other way, the lady waits.  If I blow my horn, nothing happens except she totally freezes up.  She may flip me off.  But she won't ever pull out.  (This is safer, in a sense, but it causes accidents all around this island of timid female tranquility)

The LMM agrees that all driving, from taxis to bus driving to personal driving, should be done by men.  We'd all be safer, and less frustrated.

PROVIDED that in exchange we agree that all political offices above, say, state Senate are held by only women.  And in particular those offices where decisions about going to war would be held by women.  Again, we'd all be safer.  The same impulse that makes men better drivers makes them worse decision makers on the whole war thing.

And Condi Rice and Maggie Thatcher don't count.  Give them a driving test.  Unless they DRIVE like women, they don't get to make war decisions.  

(And, yes, of course we jest.  When one controls for other factors, especially for whether the aggressive act is "prosocial," as in the case of war, women are experimentally indistinguishable from men.  And they are better drivers.  Still it was fun.)

Adam Kokesh

There is in fact a danger in supporting the Iraq War, either as a Krugmaniac growth strategy or as good foreign policy.  Not only will you be wrong, you will also sound like a moron.



Full disclosure:  I know Adam Kokesh pretty well.  It's quite true that he's an extremist.  In the sense that he says stuff that is clearly correct that most people have no idea how to respond to.

Paul Krugman: meet a libertarian

One thing that amazed me in Mungo's Krugmanectomy below is Paul saying, "Spend money on some useful goal, like the promotion of new energy sources, and people start screaming, 'Solyndra! Waste!' Spend money on a weapons system we don’t need, and those voices are silent, because nobody expects F-22s to be a good business proposition."

Let's ignore the loaded phrases like "useful goal" and "we don't need" as those are purely statement of preferences (i.e. unproven and unprovable), and concentrate on the claim that people who object to the Solyndra Subsidy are silent on big Pentagon programs.

Paul, meet me and my ilk. We are libertarians.

We are against out of control military spending and bogus business subsidies. Not just to "green" firms like Solyndra but to big corporations and big agriculture. We rail against Solyndra, perpetual wars, ethanol subsidies, $700 billion dollar defense budgets and all manner of policies that distort incentives and cause people to act in sub-optimal ways.

walking through a doorway increases chances of forgetting

Walking through a doorway increases the chances of forgetting what you were doing, or why you went into the room.

Okay, I went to the kitchen and got some coffee. Wait... why was I writing this?

(Nod to the Blonde)

P-Kroog's new prescription for growth: Whimsy-Cal!

Military spending does create jobs when the economy is depressed. Indeed, much of the evidence that Keynesian economics works comes from tracking the effects of past military buildups. Some liberals dislike this conclusion, but economics isn’t a morality play: spending on things you don’t like is still spending, and more spending would create more jobs. But why would anyone prefer spending on destruction to spending on construction, prefer building weapons to building bridges? John Maynard Keynes himself offered a partial answer 75 years ago, when he noted a curious 'preference for wholly ‘wasteful’ forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict ‘business’ principles.' Indeed. Spend money on some useful goal, like the promotion of new energy sources, and people start screaming, 'Solyndra! Waste!' Spend money on a weapons system we don’t need, and those voices are silent, because nobody expects F-22s to be a good business proposition. To deal with this preference, Keynes whimsically suggested burying bottles full of cash in disused mines and letting the private sector dig them back up. In the same vein, I recently suggested that a fake threat of alien invasion, requiring vast anti-alien spending, might be just the thing to get the economy moving again. NYTimes

So, all you lefty bedwetters who wanted to defend Krugman as being "not serious" about the alien invasion thing...what now? I guess you have a new answer: Krugman was NOT serious, but he had overdosed on that new Keynesian diet supplement: "Whimsy-Cal!"

The alternative is that we need GW Bush back in office. Right? Elective wars are good for the U.S. and good for the digestive system. Or was that madcap P-Kroog just being "Whimsy-Cal" again?

UPDATE: Some pretty good reasons why this "Whimsy-Cal" thing is pretty dangerous.

Stephen Fry on Speech and Being Offended

Since I am all excited about V for Vendetta, let me share some thoughts from Stephen Fry, who played the doomed talk show host.

Do be sure and click for a much more gloriously offensive image.

End of Abundance

KPC friend and water economics uber-mensch David Zetland has a newversion of his book out. Very cool and refreshing, if you can get it. Like clean water, actually.

ODC Food Tent

Anonyman sends this photo with the caption "food tent" from the Self-Obsessed DC protest.

Several of you have asked, "Who is Anonyman?" I can only answer by quoting from V for Vendetta: "I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is..." But, okay, here is a picture of Anonyman, hanging with his peeps in the street at Occupy DC.

The entire V speech, if you want it. And you KNOW you want it.

Hot Chicks of OWS

Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street from Steven Greenstreet on Vimeo.

Thanks to the Bishop, whose interests are of course entirely anthropological.

First they came for the puppeteers.....

Man oh man oh man. Liberals are so funny. Check out this article from The Nation.

Here's the awesome beginning:

"A few years ago, Joe Therrien, a graduate of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, was working as a full-time drama teacher at a public elementary school in New York City. Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy, he set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school. The intervening years had been brutal to the city’s school budgets—down about 14 percent on average since 2007. A virtual hiring freeze has been in place since 2009 in most subject areas, arts included, and spending on art supplies in elementary schools crashed by 73 percent between 2006 and 2009. So even though Joe’s old principal was excited to have him back, she just couldn’t afford to hire a new full-time teacher. Instead, he’s working at his old school as a full-time “substitute”; he writes his own curriculum, holds regular classes and does everything a normal teacher does. “But sub pay is about 50 percent of a full-time salaried position,” he says, “so I’m working for half as much as I did four years ago, before grad school, and I don’t have health insurance…. It’s the best-paying job I could find.”Like a lot of the young protesters who have flocked to Occupy Wall Street, Joe had thought that hard work and education would bring, if not class mobility, at least a measure of security (indeed, a master’s degree can boost a New York City teacher’s salary by $10,000 or more). But the past decade of stagnant wages for the 99 percent and million-dollar bonuses for the 1 percent has awakened the kids of the middle class to a national nightmare: the dream that coaxed their parents to meet the demands of work, school, mortgage payments and tuition bills is shattered. Down is the new up."

Yikes! Where to begin. First of all, Joe started the story as "a full time drama teacher" in an NYC elementary school. How can that be a job that taxpayers are paying for? Jeebus help us all. Then Joe, or as I like to call him, the luckiest man in the world, turned into Joe the stupidest man in the world by SPENDING 3 YEARS AND BORROWING $35,0000 TO GET A MASTERS DEGREE IN $%#$$ PUPPETRY!!!!

Now he seems stunned to find out that he has a much much worse job than before.

And the magazine is using his case as it's opening wedge to indict the American economic system.

People, I say the system was failing when this guy was an elementary school drama teacher. Right now the system is working exactly as it should. You take 3 years out of your career path to get an MFA in puppets, you become basically unemployable.

Obviously there are real people with real problems unemployed and struggling due to no fault or error of their own. A 9% unemployment rate with our current social safety net is just not acceptable.

But I have no sympathy for the folks who borrowed a lot of money to go and earn a dumb-ass graduate degree and now find they can't make big money.

If you decide to "pursue your passion" in an un-economic area, don't be surprised when the economic system doesn't value you highly, and don't think that the problem is the system; the problem is you.

A little knowledge is....the BBC!

This is one of the best stats teachable moments I think I have seen in a long time.

An article was published, listing cancer rates of an admittedly dangerous disease.

The BooBC weighs in, noting that the variation is three times as large for some parts of this nationwide sample.

Dr. Goldacre, perhaps a trifle gleefully, points out that these are SEPARATE local samples, and they have associated variance that comes from the sample size. He writes a nice piece, with a fine funnel graph, and notes that the internet is a groovy, groovy thing, because it enables people like this to check things stated as fact by experts like the BooBC.

The BBC "stands by its story." They failed, utterly, to understand the very basic mistake they had made in looking at the information. (Of course, in journalism indoctrination school, they never had to learn any of those nasty stats stuff!)

As Dr. Goldacre put it in a tweet: "Dear sir, I have completely failed to understand a simple criticism of our work, please tell everyone, yours, BBCnews"

My own favorite bit is that in the BBC rebuttal, there are two parts:
1. We did not make a mistake.
2. Why are you picking on us? Lots of people made the same mistake!

Fantastic stuff. A Lagniappe: they are holding a "Bowel Cancer Comedy Night." No way even the Onion could get away with that.

Best Political Ads in Bizarro Terms

Which one would Angus prefer? Close call, but the content of the bald son of Nippon would win, I think....

Most humble thanks to Erik V at Monkey Cage

Grand Game: Madison Wisconsin ID Edition

I actually can't believe this is true. Which calls out for the Grand Game.

Bars are not allowed to demand valid ID in deciding whether you are of drinking age in Madision, WI.

This is not like voting rights. Even there, I'm not sure that asking for ID is wrong. But at least that is some kind of fundamental right.

There is NOT a fundamental right to drink in a private bar. And the idea that bars would try to discriminate to keep paying customers out, in WISCONSIN, is pretty nuts.

Nod to the Blonde, who at this point is desperately hoping someone will card her...

Election--Calc U Later!

Interesting little calculator. You make assumptions, it predicts results.

It may not predict results very well, but these models are surprisingly accurate.

Nod to Anonyman, who is enjoying this circus way too much.

More on the NBA lockout

After Tyler linked to our inaugural Grantland piece, many of the commenters at Tyler's site were complaining that the situation regarding losses is symmetric for each side, and thus the owners have just as much to lose as the players.

But people, it is NOT symmetric.

First, the owners are losing net revenues, the players their gross revenues. Do we really think operating profits are >= labor costs?

Second and more important, owners are sacrificing short run net revenues for long run benefits. If they can shift the cost curve, then the present value of the long run savings should get capitalized into their franchise values. The current owners can capture the long run benefits from "winning".

By contrast, the current players have no capture-able long run economic gains to motivate short run pain. They only gain what ever revenue increases they get over their playing days. They don't have a long run claim on the revenue stream they are sacrificing to try and protect.

It doesn't get much more asymmetric than that.

You're Gonna Have to Face It, You're Addicted to Coke

Coca Cola, that is.

This boy named "Sue" is suing to claim that the evil capitalist conspirators intentionally caused him to become addicted to a sugary drink.

Hey, I Know You!

Somebody versus nobody: An exploration of the role of celebrity status in an election

Lara Zwarun & Angela Torrey, Social Science Journal, forthcoming

Abstract: This study examines the role celebrity status may play in potential voters’ evaluation of a political candidate presented in a newspaper article. Participants indicated greater intention to vote for a candidate who was a recognizable Hollywood actor than an unknown candidate in a political race, regardless of how substantive the political information provided about the candidate was. This suggests that familiarity with a celebrity can act as a heuristic in peripheral processing. Younger people were more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than older voters, but how liberal or conservative participants are was not a significant factor in the decision to vote for the celebrity. Nor did participants’ need for cognition or level of political involvement predict intention to vote for the celebrity, suggesting that celebrity status is meaningful to motivated and thoughtful voters as well as those who are less motivated and informed. The possibility is raised that this could be an indication of celebrity status being used as a component of deliberate political decision-making, and future research in this direction is suggested.

Two Words: MORAL. HAZARD.

RL in Toronto sends this article, and notes that someone should explain moral hazard to the researchers.

As KPC hero Gordon Tullock suggested, if you wanted to increase auto safety, you might do this:  

In other words, if players were safer, they would play more aggressively, and the net effect (that's a hockey goal joke!) would be close to zero. People choose their own level of risk. Safer equipment, more risk = no change injuries.

(pic credit to EconoBonus, even though he attributes the idea to Peltzman. EconoBonus's "Fact 2" is not a fact at all, I should say: deaths and injuries per mile have fallen, not risen. It's just an example, though. It's true Peltzman did good research on the subject...)



To be fair, both death rates and injury rates have actually fallen sharply for cars. The effect on pedestrians is ambiguous. I think the most you can say about the Peltzman effect is that the improvements in health that result from improvements in safety may be less than you expect. They do NOT appear to wash out completely. Safer cars and safer roads really do appear to have reduced injuries, by quite a bit.

Your Eurozone deathwatch update

1. The Greek government has replaced all the heads of their military branches with officers considered more friendly to the regime.

Wow! Given Greece's history, that is a stunner. The left fears a coup? This might get even uglier that I had imagined.

2. Italian bond yields are up to 6.4% and Berlusconi is coming to the G-20 Summit empty handed.

Italy's public debt is on the cusp of explosive dynamics, where the higher interest rate on new debt combined with a low economic growth rate causes the debt to GDP ratio to continually rise even if the Italian budget is in primary balance (spending net of interest payments = revenues).

People, the Euro as we know it is over. I say it's a coin flip to last until Christmas and maybe 15% to last until spring break.

Germany and France are asking Greece, "do you want to stay in or not?" and Greece is saying "what, are you guys deaf?".

I am not sure what Germany and France are up to. If Greece goes, Italy definitely goes and that's game, set & match.

If they want to keep the Euro together they need to take on Greek debt as their own and settle in for a long hard slog dealing with Italy.

"They are hoping that China will want to buy Europe"

I'd do anything for love but I won't do that

KPC friend David Tufte reports that his university (Southern Utah) is looking for faculty members willing to let students stay at their house for the rest of the semester!

I am not making this up.

Are there no navigable bodies of water nearby where the kids could stay on cruise ships for the semester like they are doing at St. Mary's college in Maryland?

I am not making that one up either.

Academics out there: what's the weirdest thing your university has asked you to do?

Marriage Proposal

Note the size of the rock on the ring at the end.  The LMM's reaction:  "If you had given me a ring like that, you could jumped off the roof, too."

Cheap Sex as a Collective Action Failure

I had Laura Sessions Step, author of UNHOOKED, in at Duke to give a talk a few years ago.  Her question, simplifying a bit, is why do young women make themselves so available, unmarried, to young men in hopes of making themselves, the young women happy?  (This clearly makes the young men happy, but that's beside the point).

Pileus has a simpler and cleaner explanation.

Excerpt:
This downward spiral that women have been caught in—the dwindling supply of available men induces women to make themselves even more sexually available than the next women in order to compete, thereby further dampening the supply of potential mates—seems impossible to break out of. At the heart of the problem is a classic, Olsonian collective action failure. All women would benefit if, collectively, women were to require more of men they had sex with. But every woman knows that her behavior, by itself, will not cause market prices to change, so she cheats—and by “cheats” I mean she cheats the female collective. The problem with this free riding behavior is that everyone faces the same incentives and there is not an effective punishment for cheating. The result: men get more sex and women can’t find mates. Such are the fruits of feminism.
Maybe the old (some would say sexist) adage that “good girls don’t” had something going for it after all.

Los Repartimientos

The EYM writes an interesting piece on "los repartimientos" over at EE.  Check it out.

Did Media Frenzy Contribute to Stock Collapse of Fiancial Institutions?

The Role of Media in the Credit Crunch: The Case of the Banking Sector

Tomasz Piotr Wisniewski & Brendan Lambe, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming

Abstract: Using a Vector Autoregression framework, this paper investigates the dynamic relationship between the intensity of negative media speculation and the market performance of financial institutions. Evidence is provided that over the sub-prime crisis period pessimistic coverage Granger-caused the returns on banking indices, while causality in the opposite direction proved weaker. These findings may imply that journalists not only report on the state of economic reality, but also play an active role in creating it. Investors acting upon sentiment implicit in media reports would have been able to improve their investment performance, as measured by Sharpe ratios and Jensen's alphas.

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(Nod to Kevin Lewis)

The Golden Rule

Tyler and I wrote a piece for Grantland.com on the NBA labor situation. The link is here.

Bill Simmons approached Tyler and he magnanimously cut me in on the deal.

Simmons also asked us to write an introductory paragraph about ourselves and our connection to basketball. This is what we wrote:

Tyler and Kevin are academic economists who share a love of basketball. For years they held Washington Bullets season tickets, trekking from suburban Virginia to the Cap Centre. Their all-time favorite Bullet is Rex Chapman. Now cruelly separated by geography, Kevin is an OKC Thunder ticket-holder, while Tyler anxiously awaits the return of a professional basketball franchise to the DC area.

Sadly, what ended up appearing in the article was this:

Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier are both economists. They are also both basketball fans. Here's their take on the NBA lockout.


Sorry Rex!!!!

World Series Thoughts

A video I took before the game started, in Dallas. Back when Texas had a team in the world series. Before they lost to the Cardinals, I mean. My team. We won.

The trip back last Monday was a little tough. (I had to give, and grade, 180 midterms for two different classes. Just now getting caught up...) Fine to Atlanta. Upgraded to first class, on time. Had a scotch, finished reading BOOMERANG. Nice.

But Flight ATL to RDU delayed, after boarding, because of mechanical difficulties involving wing. No complaints, I want the wings to work. But we sat for 55 mins at gate. I was in middle seat in coach (let me say again: MIDDLE seat in COACH). Guy on my right weighed 450 pounds, at least. His giant ass was almost parted down the middle when he tried to sit down and the armrest was down. Of course he wanted to raise the armrest, which I resisted. If you give a giant fat guy Sudetenland, he always wants the rest of Czechoslovakia.

But the stewardess said we had to raise the armrest. They got him an extender for the seatbelt, a good 12 inches, but the seatbelt still wouldn't buckle. (Seriously, the man was big). They got him an 18 inch extender, and it buckled.

So did I: got to sit under this guy's left butt cheek for 55 mins at the gate, and then for an hour flight. Guy on my left let me scoot over onto his seat a little, but my own ass is none too small (though it does fit between the armrests, and inside a standard seatbelt, without any problem). Pretty miserable.