Homocon

Wow. Hard to know if this is serious.

Well, it's obviously not SERIOUS. But is it seriously not serious?

We report. You deride. If you want to sign up....

Jonathan Higbee is NOT amused.

(nod to "Mr. Fabulous" Anonyman)

Just when you think it's safe to come out of the closet

Holy Crap, people.

More hail, more tornadoes, the Norman tornado sirens are blowing and the Angii are back in the bedroom closet, hunkered down and tuned in to the national weather service.

you know we belong to the land, and the land we belong to is....grand?

#2 with a WTF

Here is yet another list of the top 10 most profitable college majors.

Economics is #2 (so appropriate,no?). But oh my Lord, the description!

"A pretty ubiquitous myth is that economics is all statistics and math. The fact is, while economics majors do a lot of statistics and math, they also study a wide range of topics, including social science, psychology, political science and history. Alan Metzer, even said: "economics is a social science." There are plenty of humanitarian efforts you can make in this line of work, as economists are needed to create public policy -- domestically and internationally.

Average first year salary: $50,200. Average mid-career salary: $101,000."

I am pretty sure it was NOT Alan Metzer they are trying to quote, more likely it's Alan Meltzer. However I am also pretty sure neither one of those gentlemen were the first to label economics as a social science.

But the best is the equation of "creating public policy" with "humanitarian efforts". Sweet Fancy Moses, people.

Look, econ is a good major and the pay is not bad. But we are not known for our "humanitarian efforts", and, as a rule, we don't study much history or political science.

Econo-sophistry

In today's NYT, Bob Frank argues that since private markets compress pay differences relative to productivity differences, libertarians should accept government redistribution of wealth/income.

I am not sure there is one single sentence in this editorial that makes sense. Certainly not its imputing of actions and beliefs to "libertarians" or its ritualistic but content free invoking of "economic theory" or its claim of a stylized fact without any supporting evidence beyond one ridiculous example, or its bizarre equation of private pay practices with coercive government actions.

Here, I'll just concentrate on the bad economics.

Frank's example of where pay doesn't follow productivity is carpenters in a framing crew. He says:

The most productive carpenter in a framing crew, for example, might produce twice as much as his least productive colleague, but is rarely paid even 30 percent more.

This is pretty nuts in a number of dimensions.

First, where do these numbers come from? The weasel words "might" and "rarely" are there to cover his ass, but this is just made up out of whole cloth.

Second, a framing crew produces a framed house. It is team production. Marginal products are notoriously difficult to measure in this context and there is a lot of "economic theory" about this issue. It would be almost impossible to verify that one framer produced "twice as much" as another inside of a single crew.

Third, just widen the issue from carpenters on a framing crew to carpenters in general and his point totally fails. The least skilled work on framing crews. Higher skilled are the finish carpenters who do make a lot more money (easily more than twice as much). The highest skilled are artisans turning out custom furniture pieces and they in turn make a lot more money than do finish carpenters (again, easily more than twice as much).

I am not going to put quantitative numbers on these classes (with weasel words to give me an escape valve), but I am confident that, over the trade of carpentry in general, variations in earnings are extremely tied to variations in skill and these variations are quite large.

Frank then claims that the two highest paid workers in an enterprise rarely earn more than the three lowest paid.

Man, I guess CEO pay is really not an issue in this country after all.

Also in Frank's own industry, higher education, this is certainly not the case.

In econ departments and b-schools at least, the two highest paid full professors easily earn more than the three lowest paid assistants.

And of course, if you take the unit of observation to be the university, the gap between highest and lowest "employee" is very very large. OU's president makes over $250K and some staff make less than $25K.

There are a number of fields where pay is close to linearly related to productivity. Piecework jobs in factories and sales jobs on commission are two obvious examples.

Finally, there is a whole literature about the exact opposite case than the one Frank claims to be telling, where there is increasing returns to talent.

Writing, acting, making music, professional sports, and several other fields of endeavor all exhibit this trait.

And these are our allies?

"The lawyer of a Lebanese TV psychic who was convicted in Saudi Arabia for witchcraft said Thursday her client could be beheaded this week and urged Lebanese and Saudi leaders to help spare his life.

Attorney May al-Khansa said she learned from a judicial source that Ali Sibat is to be beheaded on Friday. She added that she does not have any official confirmation of this. Saudi judicial officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

A Lebanese official said Beirut has received no word from its embassy in Riyadh about Sibat's possible execution. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The Saudi justice system, which is based on Islamic law, does not clearly define the charge of witchcraft.

Sibat is one of scores of people reported arrested every year in the kingdom for practicing sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and fortunetelling. These practices are considered polytheism by the government in Saudi Arabia, a deeply religious Muslim country.

Al-Khansa said she has called upon Saudi King Abdullah to pardon Sibat, a 49-year-old father of five. She also says she is in contact with Lebanese officials about the case.

She added that Sibat did not make predictions in Saudi Arabia and was neither a Saudi citizen nor a resident in Saudi and therefore should have been deported rather than tried there.

Sibat made predictions on an Arab satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut. He was arrested by the Saudi religious police during his pilgrimage to the holy city of Medina in May 2008 and sentenced to death last November."

The full story is here.

I guess I just can't stomach the "realist" school of international relations because our propping up of heinous regimes like this disgust me.

Houston, we have an idiot!

When did Nigerian scammers take over the Home Depot?

So, Mrs. Angus and me eat lunch in our offices on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This usually requires using a microwave, and in our department, nothing is a better illustration of the tragedy of the commons than the department microwave. Sticky, filthy, smelly, AND a line of grad students waiting to use it!

So we decided to get one for the office. Mrs. Angus wanted powerful but not too big, picked out a model and ordered it from Home Depot online. It arrives and we take it to the office and open up the box.

The door of the thing won't open. Busted. Arrived busted.  

Mrs. Angus sends email to Home Depot asking if we can return it at a local store or if we have to mail it back.  Next day, we get a response from their "customer care" department:

Thank you for your email to The Home Depot Online Customer Support.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Unfortunately, we do not have arrangement with the vendor to exchange the entire product.

For assistance regarding the item 100489210 - 1.0 Cu. Ft. Countertop
Microwave Oven from your order number W100474273, please refer owner's manual and contact the manufacturer.

A representative would be happy to assist you.

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Supriya
Your friends at The Home Depot.

Now there are a lot of funny things here."Inconvenience"?  "further assistance"?  cannot exchange "the entire product"?

But the best part is that the owners manual is INSIDE THE MICROWAVE and thus inaccessible because, you know, THE DOOR WON'T OPEN!

I guess I will take a hammer to the thing and see what parts of the product can be exchanged.

 

post-regional politics

Y'know, when I read the erudite and witty posts of my esteemed co-blogger Mungowitz, I sometimes even forget, for a minute or two, that he's from Florida!

Robert Frank pummels a straw man

In todays NY Times "Economic View" Frank opines:

"At the heart of attempts to curb carbon dioxide emissions are two related proposals: taxation of those emissions and a system of tradable emission permits, also known as cap and trade. Both have been attacked as unacceptable restrictions on individual liberty. The attacks have come from both sides of the political aisle, but have been pressed with particular insistence by conservatives and libertarians."

Yet, throughout the entire article Frank goes on to name exactly zero libertarians who oppose a carbon tax and only one conservative, some guy named Henry Lamb.

Let me go him two better in my debunking here:

Greg Mankiw is a well known conservative (and NY Times columnist) and is famously in favor of a carbon tax. I am small (invisible?) potatoes compared to Mankiw, but I am a quasi-libertarian and I am in favor of a carbon tax as long as it is overall revenue neutral (meaning that the increase in revenues from this tax are offset by decreased revenues from other taxes).

Even though, in principle, a cap and trade program can be designed to have the same anti-pollution effect as a given tax, I think Mankiw and myself both dislike the current cap and trade bill because of how the permits are not going to be auctioned off and generally how stinky something becomes once it emerges from our grand sausage factory.

It's nice to see the shout-out to R. H. Coase in the article, but Frank is attacking a straw man throughout.

All taxes and regulations are obviously infringements on personal liberty in some sense, and there may well be libertarians who think our current levels of taxation represent "unacceptable restrictions", but I am not aware of libertarians who specifically object to a carbon tax.

ps. the article also contains the following sentence:

Climate scientists agree that the cheapest way to combat global warming is to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

Is that true? Is curbing CO2 is the "cheapest" way to combat global warming?

New York 23

Interesting post from my wife's paisan, Roy Cordato.

He writes about the strangeness of the NY 23 ballot. Very cool, very interesting. Excerpt:

Here is what the voter saw when he or she went in to the voting booth.

Democrat--Owens
Republican--Scozzafava
Independence--Scozzafava
Conservative--Hoffman
Working Families--Owens
My guess is that this peculiarity alone could account for the fact that Scozzafava received over 5 percent of the vote, more than the margin of difference between Owens and Hoffman.

Remember, Scozzafava had DROPPED OUT of the race, but her name is listed twice on the ballot, because of New York's "fusion" laws.

Just another brick in the wall?

People: any ideas about WTF is going on here?

New Promotion at Duke!

sweet concept, no?

A match made in heaven

Diego Maradona and the psycho-analysts of Buenos Aires!  Argentina just slipped into the world cup, finishing 4th in the South America group with a 1-0 victory over Uruguay. Their volatile coach and uber-cheater, Diego Maradona reacted as one might expect:

To those who did not believe in us - and ladies forgive me - they can suck my ---- and keep on sucking it," he said. "I am black or white; I'll never be grey in my life.
"You lot take it up the a---, if the ladies will pardon the expression. This is for all Argentineans except for the journalists. I would like to thank the team for giving me the privilege to lead Argentina to the World Cup. Thank you to the Argentinean people who had faith.

"This is for those who did not believe in the team and treated me like dirt - but we still qualified with honour. They will now have to accept this.

In Spanish it was, "que la chupen, y sigan chupando"

If Diego gets the American treatment of having to go to counseling, he won't have a shortage of choices. Argentina leads the world in psychoanalysts per capita by a wide margin! Perhaps he could visit with celebrity shrink Gabriel Rolon. Here is a bit of his wit and wisdom:

In Mr. Rolón's diagnosis, Argentina suffers symptoms of bipolar disorder, evidenced in the gap between rich and poor. He also says the country has endured an abusive relationship with the U.S., which he says rigs the global economy in its own favor. Being No.1 in psychoanalysis, Mr. Rolón says, is "one of the few senses in which Argentina is privileged."


God I love South America!

Breaking Balloon News

Three news bulletins from CNN:

--A 6-year-old climbed into a balloon-like experimental aircraft built by his parents and floated into the Colorado sky. (3 pm)

-- A balloon-like experimental aircraft thought be carrying a 6-year-old Colorado boy has landed. (3:40 pm)

-- KMGH: Police say no one was found inside a balloon that was thought to be carrying a 6-year-old Colorado boy. (3:50 pm)

UPDATE: 3:54 pm--VIDEOIt looks just like a giant hot water bottle. Did the kid fall out/jump out? How awful.

UPDATE: 6:02 pm--Two extremes of possibilities
The good--kid is just scared (no question he untied the balloon and allowed it to escape), and hiding in the neighborhood. Doesn't want dad to be mad at him for letting the balloon get away. Ojala que es verdad!
The bad--the box that WAS on the balloon is not there. It fell off. The kid was in the box. They will find the box sometime soon. They will find the kid's body in the box.

Let's hope for the good.

UPDATE: 6:23 pm--THE GOOD WINS! Boy found alive. He was hiding in a box, in the attic, presumably trying to avoid the butt-whupping he thought he had coming to him.

What a feeling to have children. Wanting to hug them, spank them, kiss them, and yell at them, all at once. Poor little guy. Poor parents.

UPDATE: 7:14 pm--Video

He liked it so much he expropriated the company!

Remember the old ad for electric razors, where the geezer exclaims, "I liked it so much I bought the company"?

Well something similar just happened in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez attended the Africa- South America conference on Margarita Island (where Mrs. Angus and I honeymooned) and apparently had a great time at the conference hotel, because he has decided to have his government expropriate it!!

I am not making this up. Here is coverage in Spanish from Argentina and here from the Associated Press.

Here is a tidbit from the AP story:

"Chavez issued a decree last week ordering the "forced acquisition" of the Margarita Hilton & Suites and its marina. The president's order was reported by Venezuelan media Tuesday, after being published in the Official Gazette on Friday.

The decree clears the way for Chavez's government to expropriate the hotel. It's unclear how much Venezuela will pay or how soon.

Chavez last month hosted a summit at the hotel with leaders including Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, and suggested the hotel could become the headquarters of a new bloc of African and South American nations."

God I love South America. Anything can happen there.

I do not think it means what you think it means

Word for the day: mentor

As in this quote from the AP:

Hickson, whom (Lebron) James has mentored during the offseason, had 15 points and six rebounds and was the only Cleveland starter playing in the final minutes as the Cavaliers held off several Bobcats runs.

Hickson followed James around all summer, working out whenever they could find the time and hanging out with James’ family.

Nice, eh? Way to go Lebron? Well, not really. Check out King James' version of mentoring:

“I see the potential in him. If he just had a good work ethic, that could help him,” James said. “He learned more about being a man also, growing up, being around me and my family and things like that—I think it helped him.”

Well if JJ Hickson has learned anything about being a "man", he pretty much has to go up and punch LBJ right between the eyes, doesn't he?

"My name is JJ Hickson.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die!"

And then he'll get traded to the J-E-T-S JETS!

"Dr. No" wants to say no to Political "Science"

Yes, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn wants to ban the NSF from funding political science projects. And yes he put quotes around the word Science in his argument which can be found here.

Tom is not amused by the studies NSF has been funding and he names names:

 $188,206 to ask the question, “Why do political candidates make vague
statements, and what are the consequences?” “In addition to advancing
our understanding of politics, the project will have several broader impacts,” according to NSF, including “practical lessons for candidates, advisors, and citizens who are involved in political campaigns;”

 $152,253 to examine ―Political Discussion in the Workplace‖ to
examine “practical insights into how the workplace might be utilized better as a context for promoting the goals of both broader and deeper public discourse;”

 $11,825 to study “Prime Time Politics: Television News and the Visual
Framing of War;

 $91,601 to conduct a survey to determine why people are for or against
American military conflicts;

 $130,525 to conduct a survey on the impact of Medicare reform on
senior citizens’ political views and participation. This research
examines whether or not changes to the program enacted by the Medicare
Modernization Act of 2003 is influencing seniors‟ “orientations toward
government, vote choice, and regard for the two political parties.”
According to NSF, “this project not only presents a significant advance for
the scholarly literature on policy feedback effects, but it will also contribute to future debates on one of the largest public programs in the United States. By examining how senior citizens have fared under this highly consequential reform of Medicare, this study will help lawmakers and other policy actors as they continue to reform the program and address the needs of this vulnerable population.”

 $143,254 to evaluate whip counts by party leaders in the United States Congress to determine the impact of party leaders in the legislative process and how successful party leaders are at mobilizing support for party programs;

 $50,000 to hold a conference on the effect of youtube.com on the 2008
election;

 $8,992 to study campaign finance reform, with the stated intent of
providing “a basis for assessing future proposed changes to campaign
finance regulations;

 $70,731 to examine the ―costs of voting, such as the time associated
with locating the voting place, waiting in line to vote, traveling to and from a polling place and “learning enough about the ballot choices to make one's vote minimally informed;”

He then lists some results of the NSF funding "real" science:

 NSF researchers developed new, promising solutions to use
robotics to help individuals with severe disabilities;

 NSF-supported engineers created a bone that blends into
tendons, which mimics the ability of natural bone, and provides
better integration with the body and can handle weight more
successfully;

 NSF-supported researchers used synthetic biology technology to
engineer the next generation of biofuels;

 NSF-supported researchers developed a powerful new microchip-
sized fan for use as a silent, ultra-thin, low-power and low-
maintenance cooling system for laptop computers and other
electronic devices;

 NSF-supported researchers at the University of Michigan designed a
new type of fiber-reinforced concrete that bends without
cracking—300-500 times more resistant to cracking and 40
percent lighter in weight.

Given that the NSF Economics program is much larger than the NSF Polysci program, and given that us economists haven't been making microchips or artificial bones, it is amazing to me that Tom gives us a pass and only goes after polysci.

The unholy trinity of health care reform

I actually think we are going to get a reform that is both worse than the status quo and worse than a pure single payer system. 

Kudos to our Congress!

As I understand it, insurance companies will not be able to refuse to cover some one, nor will they be able to charge high risk people a premium that reflects their risk. The price won't be uniform, but the maximum variation will be well below what it would take to correctly price the variation in risks.

As I noted before, this will make premiums for healthy people extra high. And as the WSJ pointed out yesterday, at least on the margin, it will make healthy people want to hold off from getting any insurance until they are actually sick. 

Problem solved, you say?

Ahh, but now it appears that the third leg of the trinity will be rule that it will be illegal to not have insurance!

So young healthy people will be forced to buy way overpriced (relative to their risk) insurance. Plus if said young healthy people make good money, they can look forward to paying more taxes to subsidize the purchase of said insurance by others.

Guaranteed Issue, Community Rating, Individual Mandate.  They sound so reasonable and innocuous, but they are freakin' lethal.

A dedicated follower of fashion

Or, every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Or in this case, a weirdly dressed billionaire.

People, Warren Buffet is endorsing men's clothing. Successfully. Yikes!!

Take a gander, as they say in Iowa, of this picture of Warren with a homeless man:

Hard to believe that an endorsement by him would cause a Chinese clothing firm's stock to go up by 70%, it less than a month, but it did according to this story.

Everyone thinks Warren is such a great guy, but there he goes sabotaging America by increasing our trade deficit.

42 seconds of He-double matchsticks