Had a Bad Day

This guy had a bad day.

Making me think of the song.

In turn, making me think of this set piece from the past.  Or this guy.

Still, I think the "falling naked out of the ceiling of the ladies' loo and then running naked and bleeding down the concourse, then being charged with attempted murder in an airport" may be worse.

"We theorize that..."

Apparently, "we theorize that...." means "I thought of this in the shower, and had the data, so I figured what the hell!"

Liberellas versus Konservatives: Social Status, Ideology, and Birth Names in the United States

Eric Oliver, Thomas Wood & Alexandra Bass 
University of Chicago Working Paper, April 2013 

Abstract: Despite much public speculation, there is little scholarly research on whether or how ideology shapes American consumer behavior. Borrowing from previous studies, we theorize that ideology is associated with different forms of taste and conspicuous consumption: liberals are more drawn to indicators of "cultural capital" and more feminine symbols while conservatives favor more explicit signs of "economic capital" and masculine cues. These ideas are tested using birth certificate, U.S. Census, and voting records from California in 2004. We find strong differences in birth naming practices related to race, economic status, and ideology. Although higher status mothers of all races favor more popular birth names, high status liberal mothers more often choose uncommon, culturally obscure birth names. Liberals also favor birth names with "softer, feminine" sounds while conservatives favor names with "harder, masculine" phonemes. These findings have significant implications for both studies of consumption and debates about ideology and political fragmentation in the United States.

Government is Force

One part of government action is non-partisan:  force.  All government officials believe that their efforts to control people, observe people, and force people to bend to their will is justified.

Consequently, the chief problem of government is to protect citizens from government.  But this protection cannot be left to the discretion of government, but must be imposed.

We have lost sight of this fact.  The "administrative subpoena" is replacing the warrant signed by a judge.  'Cause nobody in government thinks they should NEED no stinkin' warrant.  They are the good guys.  Just ask them.  That, in a nutshell, is why government is so terrifying they.  They are convinced they are the good guys, so anything they do, no matter how bad, is justified.

Nod to Angry Alex.

Don't Worky--Be Happy

The UN calls for a "happiness economy."

Reminds me of the old joke:  Guy making a speech about how, come the revolution, everyone will have mass transit and "planned urban communities" to live in, so they can walk to everything.

Guy in the back, timidly, says, "But what if I don't think those things will make me happy?"

Speaker roars, into the microphone:  "Oh, citizen, come the revolution, those things WILL make you happy!"

Not the report we were looking for.

69,000 net new non-farm jobs in May. The prediction was for a relatively weak 150,000 and we didn't get to half of that!

April's number was revised down from 115,000 to 77,000 and March was revised down from 154,000 to 143,000.

To put all this in perspective, we should be seeing numbers around or over 250,000 per month in an "normal" recovery.

YIKES!

Job wars

Nothing takes worse of a beating in presidential elections than do facts and figures.  We know that (a) our employment levels have not recovered to their pre-recession levels and (b) job losses in this recession are far worse than in any post-war recession.

But yet someone manages to produce this (clic the pic for an even more misleading image):

So this "recovery" is "normal", even though we know it isn't.

The trick is accomplished in three steps. The first is by using the total number of jobs and not taking into account that the labor force is much larger now than it was in 1990 or 2001. The second is to date the chart from the bottom of the recession. The third is to ignore all the other post-war recessions.


The invaluable Calculated Risk blog provides a more accurate view about the strength of our current recovery (clic the pic for an even more enlightening image):

Yes people, that is actually where we are and what we are still up against. The first graph is roughly comparing the upward sloping part of the red line against the upward sloping part of the brown line (the 2001 recession and recovery) on a total number of job basis instead on of a percentage of jobs basis, and trying to get you to think that we are better off in this recovery than we were in the 2001 recovery, which of course is utter nonsense.

On a more positive note, I am fairly certain that Bin Laden is actually dead.

The employment situation

The March jobs report is out from BLS and it's not good.  After job growth averaged over 225,000 per month the last three months, the current number is 120,000. "Expectations" were for 205,000.

We are not out of the woods yet, people.

Dance band on the Titanic

Oh my. Yet another story about economists behaving badly. This time it's Bruno and the Frey-ettes. Multiple self-plagiarism plus possible more traditional plagiarism or at the least incredibly sloppy literature checking.

Olaf has the full story here.

The cliff notes version is that Frey et. al basically published the same paper 4 times in different journals without any of the 4 referencing or making note of the existence of the others.

Further, there are multiple previous papers that use the same data, similar techniques and draw similar conclusions. None of them are cited in any of the Frey et. al papers.

The econ job rumors site has a huge thread on the Frey affair as well.

Standing on shaky ground

Well, I have picked up one ally in the "don't take the deal" battle. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you....uh, Karl Rove???

"Thus, in backroom negotiations recently, the administration offered roughly $1 trillion in phony savings—mostly money that would never have been spent in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next 10 years anyway, along with $500 billion in interest savings on the trillion. It has also offered another supposed trillion in domestic and entitlement savings, but with cuts starting in 2014 and unlikely ever to be realized.

If the administration's spending cuts are mostly fake, its desire for tax increases is not. While the proposals are constantly shifting, you can be sure the president is looking to grab big chunks of cash from lots of people (and small businesses) who make less than a million a year."

Right on, brother Karl!

I'll say it again people. Phony cuts and deferred cuts in exchange for immediate real tax increases is not a deal worth having.

Score one for the wombats, eh Tyler?

Duke Lacrosse Redux?

Wow!

According to the NY Times, the criminal case against DSK may be falling apart over "major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May"

"Prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself."

"Mr. Strauss-Kahn could be released on his own recognizance, and freed from house arrest, reflecting the likelihood that the serious charges against him will not be sustained."

If this is true, it's really horrible. Though at least prosecuters in NY are not trying to pull a Nifong.

Prisoners' Dilemma

The problem, as I often tell my students, is that the fact that the PD has a dominant strategy is more determinative than they think.

The reason is that it does NOT depend on guilt or innocence. Think about it: knowing that I go free if I rat you out, but that I get the death penalty if you rat me out, has NOTHING to do with who did what, if in fact either of us did anything. Barring a joint defense, it's tough to resist.

The problem is that prosecutors don't care. A conviction means they win, and can get reelected. And then, to get parole, the guy has to admit guilt yet again, even if he is innocent.

Downside? Our prisons have a lot of innocent people in them, particularly the ones who can't afford real representation. A new book....

(Nod to Angry Alex)

Snow advisory

With another storm supposedly heading our way, I want to remind everyone that shoveling snow is way more dangerous than you think.

Take this case from Tulsa where a guy helps someone dig their car out of the snow and ends up shot, buried in the snow, and dead for his troubles.

People, there's no place to go anyway, just stay inside and wait for the melt-off!

Hat tip to Mungo's nemesis.

'lection day

Hello people. Election days always make me melancholy. People get so worked up and excited about who is going to "take power" and "govern us". People get so worked up about ballot initiatives telling other people what they can and cannot do.

I just hang out, keep a low profile, and hope for some anarchy.

So please consider (a) voting Libertarian, or Green or some other alternative, (b) going the creative write-in route, (c) spoiling your ballot (I absolutely LOVE that term), or (d) not voting at all.

Peruvian Political Potboilers

As Tyler has reported Vargas-Llosa has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Whatever you may think of this award (I am not a big fan), his country, Peru, is both wonderful and deeply weird.

Considering the fact that their current President, Alan Garcia, pretty much turned the country into a basket case during his first term as President in the 1980s, electing him again was a supremely reckless act. However, the Peruvian economy has performed very well during his regime. Now it turns out that there are plans afoot to put him on trial for human rights crimes after his term ends.

Of course, this has already happened to Alberto Fujimori, who during his term as President, rescued the economy and put a massive hurting on the Shining Path, albeit with some unsavory methods and allies.

Just to make this soup even weirder, the current "front-runner" to be the next president is Alberto's daughter, Keiko Fujimori!

People, I am not making any of this up.