17.9.03
CURIOUS ANALOGY. A student columnist for the Northern Star objects to the University's distribution of condoms, which he contends promotes promiscuity. A Health Services staffer wrote a rebuttal letter, which makes this analogy: "While this is quite an idealistic stance to take, the truth is that providing access to condoms promotes safer sex to those who already engage in the behavior. Using his line of reasoning, providing access to purchase guns for self-preservation promotes murder. We all know that you can own a gun and choose not to murder, however, you feel safer for having purchased it." I've never seen this analogy drawn before and certainly not with the presumption that "we all know" this about guns.
That almost makes some of the usual public-health talking points, e.g. "I could recite more numbers, but the picture should be clear. Sex is happening. As a public health professional, the key is working toward the reduction of harm and injury, regardless of lifestyle choice, moral belief or virtuous intention," palatable. To repeat: it matters whether or not the village has all the redeeming features of a hippie commune and a trailer park.
That almost makes some of the usual public-health talking points, e.g. "I could recite more numbers, but the picture should be clear. Sex is happening. As a public health professional, the key is working toward the reduction of harm and injury, regardless of lifestyle choice, moral belief or virtuous intention," palatable. To repeat: it matters whether or not the village has all the redeeming features of a hippie commune and a trailer park.
FOURTH TURNING ALERT. Jay Nordlinger notes the return of political virility. Jacob Levy (via Daniel Drezner) looks at the emergence of a "shared sacrifice" meme on the Right, in this case the shared sacrifice of paying taxes.
ENCOURAGING SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT? Boots and Sabers is unimpressed with a new California mandate on businesses with 200 or more workers to either subsidize health insurance or pay into a state insurance fund. Such mandates provide two kinds of incentives. One, emergent businesses might strive to employ fewer workers than the threshold at which the mandate kicks in. Two, businesses might be less willing to hire additional workers and incur the large startup costs implicit in their benefit packages. Thus, as business expands, employers rely on overtime rather than on hiring additional workers. (David Smyth and I found some evidence for this phenomenon in automobile manufacturing, it's in the February 1991 Review of Economics and Statistics if you're curious.)
Things that make you go hmmm.... "jobless recovery," outsourcing and reliance on consultants, rising productivity with only slow increase in hiring, is there any evidence of lengthening working hours?
UPDATE: Do you hear an echo? Note Econ Log's September 18 discussion question.
Things that make you go hmmm.... "jobless recovery," outsourcing and reliance on consultants, rising productivity with only slow increase in hiring, is there any evidence of lengthening working hours?
UPDATE: Do you hear an echo? Note Econ Log's September 18 discussion question.
ABOVE AND BEYOND. Carnival of the Vanities returns to its original home, Siflay Hraka, who did a yeoman job (that's a tease for Where Worlds Collide, who has a suitably international railway reference to Number 52, and lots of good numbers to work with in the near future, including 59 and 66, the first serious diesels to land on British metals) setting up links and excerpting key points from each of the submissions. Nicely done.
If you've landed here looking for the aviation posts, either start here or open the September 2003 archives and scroll down to September 7. The first post is in the August archives, near the bottom of the August 5 submissions. (There's a post on railroad movies that's calling for further updating ...)
If you've landed here looking for the aviation posts, either start here or open the September 2003 archives and scroll down to September 7. The first post is in the August archives, near the bottom of the August 5 submissions. (There's a post on railroad movies that's calling for further updating ...)
16.9.03
EXPECT LIGHT POSTING. I have a stack of homework problems to grade, there are two external speakers passing through in the near future, the spikers are getting their stuff together, the weather is great for outdoor derivative taking, and some big train events are coming up. There are some interesting posts out there that I'd like to get to, but I don't see us going the way of Argentina in the next week. Feel free to tell me "told you so" if I'm wrong.
LEADING INDICATOR? Corporate participation at the Northern Illinois University job fair is up substantially over last year, with an encouraging proportion of the employers indicating an interest in "all majors."
15.9.03
A DRIVING LICENSE IS NOT PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP. I'm not sure how voter registration at driving-license renewal time works, but I do know that a driving license will not get you into Canada, if H.M. Customs (douane et accise, pour les primates capitulards) are working to rule. A number of Detroiters found that out the hard way during one such slowdown. I always carried a draft card and a voter registration card, just in case anyone asked.
Both John Leo and Rich Lowry have weighed in on the California drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants law. Lowry notes that Florida does not automatically issue driving licenses to holders of driving licenses from all other states (I'll let the constitutional lawyers parse "full faith and credit" here), and Leo offers a more general indictment of immigration policy, "While the United States is spending millions to control illegal immigration, many states and localities are working, in effect, to undermine immigration law and to make illegal immigration more attractive and therefore more common. It makes no sense." Well, actually, it might make sense, but there are two principles in tension with each other. At the federal level, the principle is to exclude terrorists, even if that means excluding potential sources of current cheap labor and future taxes. At the state level, the principle might be to take advantage of that cheap labor and those taxes. That latter is an old mercantilist argument. Our university administrators continue to point to the high proportion of graduates who remain in state and pay Illinois taxes, as a reason to get their hands on a bigger chunk of those tax revenues. In like manner, states might want to keep the illegal migrants around in order to put their businesses on their tax rolls once those illegals get an amnesty.
Both John Leo and Rich Lowry have weighed in on the California drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants law. Lowry notes that Florida does not automatically issue driving licenses to holders of driving licenses from all other states (I'll let the constitutional lawyers parse "full faith and credit" here), and Leo offers a more general indictment of immigration policy, "While the United States is spending millions to control illegal immigration, many states and localities are working, in effect, to undermine immigration law and to make illegal immigration more attractive and therefore more common. It makes no sense." Well, actually, it might make sense, but there are two principles in tension with each other. At the federal level, the principle is to exclude terrorists, even if that means excluding potential sources of current cheap labor and future taxes. At the state level, the principle might be to take advantage of that cheap labor and those taxes. That latter is an old mercantilist argument. Our university administrators continue to point to the high proportion of graduates who remain in state and pay Illinois taxes, as a reason to get their hands on a bigger chunk of those tax revenues. In like manner, states might want to keep the illegal migrants around in order to put their businesses on their tax rolls once those illegals get an amnesty.
HEE HEE HEE. Dave Barry's flood the telemarketer zone (preferably when they'd like to go to dinner) is succeeding beyond all expectations. Best of the Web (scroll to the bottom) has a followup with other telephone numbers.
A few years ago, my telephone answering machine greeting included the line, "Because this gadget is useful at screening pollsters, telemarketers, and other low-lifes ..." I knew it was working when one of the incoming messages went something like "I just want to inform you, sir, that not all telemarketers are low-lifes," that it was working.
Research into the effectiveness of the do-not-call list on changing the nature of cold-call selling will have to account for the effectiveness of answering machines and Caller ID in order to tease out the marginal benefits of the list.
A few years ago, my telephone answering machine greeting included the line, "Because this gadget is useful at screening pollsters, telemarketers, and other low-lifes ..." I knew it was working when one of the incoming messages went something like "I just want to inform you, sir, that not all telemarketers are low-lifes," that it was working.
Research into the effectiveness of the do-not-call list on changing the nature of cold-call selling will have to account for the effectiveness of answering machines and Caller ID in order to tease out the marginal benefits of the list.
SO FAR, NO NAME CALLING. Atlantic Blog and Insults Unpunished (via Outside the Beltway) have responded to Paul Krugman on taxes, with no evidence of the hype and spin Crooked Timber anticipated.
There is at least one dimension of the tax debate that goes beyond positive economics. Specifically, a person might advocate the position Professor Krugman classifies as "starve the beast" as consistent with the political philosophy summarized as "that government governs best which governs least."
There is at least one dimension of the tax debate that goes beyond positive economics. Specifically, a person might advocate the position Professor Krugman classifies as "starve the beast" as consistent with the political philosophy summarized as "that government governs best which governs least."
AMEN. "Raise admission standards to balance enrollment with budget." That's the headline on the lead editorial in today's Northern Star. Why would the students be advocating such a thing? Look at this conclusion: "NIU is a good state university. It should not be thought of as a safety school or a school that anyone can get into." Put another way: some of us are working our butts off and our prospects suffer if others perceive our University as College of the Last Resort. Or read between the lines in this "For one, it already is hard enough to get into classes. When the time to sign up for classes comes around, students usually can be seen with their fingers by a computer keyboard or ready to dial the phone as soon as the clock changes to registration time. Even so, classes still can be a headache to get into." Perhaps the editorial writers have noticed that there are a lot of empty seats, particularly on Thursdays and Fridays, and a lot of remediation going on, to the exclusion of substantive learning.
The writers miss one suggestion: why not return some administrators to the classroom? At one time, the Economics faculty included some individuals who had never published anything of substance, yet served well as administrators. Had they forgotten everything about teaching? Alternatively, why not ask the administrators to do some of the paperwork they've fobbed off on the departments? I'm getting a little fed up with the six-page "independent contractor"questionnaire that somebody wants filled out for each external speaker.
The editorial is likely to attract some ripostes. Look for a selection at the Shops as they emerge.
The writers miss one suggestion: why not return some administrators to the classroom? At one time, the Economics faculty included some individuals who had never published anything of substance, yet served well as administrators. Had they forgotten everything about teaching? Alternatively, why not ask the administrators to do some of the paperwork they've fobbed off on the departments? I'm getting a little fed up with the six-page "independent contractor"questionnaire that somebody wants filled out for each external speaker.
The editorial is likely to attract some ripostes. Look for a selection at the Shops as they emerge.
14.9.03
DADDY PARTY, MOMMY PARTY. It's ye olde meme for respectively the Pachs and the Donks (hie thee here or here) but George Lakoff reframes it slightly as "a strict father family and a nurturant parent family." Lakoff's stated objective is to change the nature of political conversation, such that the term "tax relief" loses its force. (I seem to remember President Clinton, early in his term, attempting to substitute "investment" for spending and "contributions" for taxes, but I digress.)
Lakoff makes some other points that contain more substance (I suppose to a linguist, everything looks like a frame. To an economist, everything looks like an opportunity cost. If you want to see the opportunity cost argument posed in a drastic way, hie thee hence and register thyself.)
Methinks Professor Lakoff is being a bit disingenuous to complain about "conservatives and progressives" talking past each other. (I could grouse about the framing bias inherent in equating expansions of the role of the national government with progress, but that's a digression. Today's sermon is about the role of government.) Consider the following:
"Conservatives have worked for decades and spent billions on their think tanks to establish their frames, create the right language, and get the language and the frames they evoke accepted. It has taken them awhile to establish the metaphors of taxation as a burden, an affliction and an unfair punishment -- all of which require 'relief.' They have also, over decades, built up the frame in which the wealthy create jobs, and giving them more wealth creates more jobs.
"Taxes look very different when framed from a progressive point of view. As Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, taxes are the price of civilization. They are what you pay to live in America -- your dues -- to have democracy, opportunity and access to all the infrastructure that previous taxpayers have built up and made available to you: highways, the Internet, weather reports, parks, the stock market, scientific research, Social Security, rural electrification, communications satellites, and on and on. If you belong to America, you pay a membership fee and you get all that infrastructure plus government services: flood control, air-traffic control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and so on.
Interestingly, the wealthy benefit disproportionately from the American infrastructure. The Securities and Exchange Commission creates honest stock markets. Most of the judicial system is used for corporate law. Drugs developed with National Institutes of Health funding can be patented for private profit. Chemical companies hire scientists trained under National Science Foundation grants. Airlines hire pilots trained by the Air Force. The beef industry grazes its cattle cheaply on public lands. The more wealth you accumulate using what the dues payers have provided, the greater the debt you owe to those who have made your wealth possible. That is the logic of progressive taxation.."
Professor Lakoff takes it for granted that roads, communication hookups, weather forecasts, parks, orderly markets (certainly he is aware that the stock exchanges are not government enterprises,) pensions, and research are properly the function of government. Many of those things are provided by government, but there is nothing in the Welfare Economics Paradigm that requires they be, and there is certainly room for debate on whether the roads, communication networks, parks, pensions, and research ought to be privatized. And Lakoff has bundled the cultural conservatives, whose positions on abortion, public assistance, firearm ownership, and the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq often reflect goals other than economic goals, with the libertarian conservatives (that in itself might be a mixed metaphor, but bear with me) who see some of the services named immediately above as services that could be more efficiently provided by private actors, and who might look at some of the services Professor Lakoff mentions in the third paragraph I quote as corporate welfare. From that perspective, co-mingling all tax funds to provide services that funnel benefits to a few make little sense. (Professor Lakoff's parable of the club with differing levels of benefit to different members reflects a tension within the it-takes-a-village point of view. An old (and cheap) book titled The Screwing of the Average Man (details or see how cheap) devotes some pages to a phenomenon called "transfer screwing" in which politicos will threaten to take away some small benefit to many in order to protect a large benefit to a few. Although the thrust of the book is left-populist, there is much in there to intrigue a libertarian. (Nested parentheses, what is this, a proof? No, the proof is in my portfolio.))
Professor Lakoff is incomplete in his pairing of the complaints of "tax relief" adherents with the accomplishments of the state. He neglects the potential for corruption of the regulators (naw, wouldn't happen, we've all read our Herbert Croly (reissue) and we serve the people.) He also neglects controversial and potentially productivity-sapping regulation of the kind that keeps Walter Olson busy. It is likely that advocates of the various roles for government will continue to talk past each other if one side keeps saying "Corporate Welfare. OSHA. Amtrak." while the other keeps saying "Legal Infrastructure. Accessible Schools. Safe Prescription Drugs."
The conversation over the scope and nature of government matters. Crooked Timber finds an Andrew Tobias column that lays it out:
"Seven programs make up 75 percent of all federal spending: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military pensions, civil service pensions, defense and interest on the debt."
Mr Tobias's point: the Bush Administration expects to spend $1.8 trillion per year on these things, and expects to take in $1.35 trillion per year in taxes -- whether or not these are static or dynamic score forecasts he does not tell us -- which implies that interest payments will increase. The first five items are items where some kind of privatization might work (personal retirement accounts, medical savings accounts) or some tough love might be in order (Medicaid and civil service pensions) and they are also items that are subject to all manner of fiddles (taxing Social Security benefits, changing the retirement age, second-guessing doctors.)
I still have not made up my mind whether the greatest looming saecular crisis is international (Islam versus Christianity) or domestic (the nature of Western culture and the role of the state within it) but these promise to be interesting times ahead.
Lakoff makes some other points that contain more substance (I suppose to a linguist, everything looks like a frame. To an economist, everything looks like an opportunity cost. If you want to see the opportunity cost argument posed in a drastic way, hie thee hence and register thyself.)
Methinks Professor Lakoff is being a bit disingenuous to complain about "conservatives and progressives" talking past each other. (I could grouse about the framing bias inherent in equating expansions of the role of the national government with progress, but that's a digression. Today's sermon is about the role of government.) Consider the following:
"Conservatives have worked for decades and spent billions on their think tanks to establish their frames, create the right language, and get the language and the frames they evoke accepted. It has taken them awhile to establish the metaphors of taxation as a burden, an affliction and an unfair punishment -- all of which require 'relief.' They have also, over decades, built up the frame in which the wealthy create jobs, and giving them more wealth creates more jobs.
"Taxes look very different when framed from a progressive point of view. As Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, taxes are the price of civilization. They are what you pay to live in America -- your dues -- to have democracy, opportunity and access to all the infrastructure that previous taxpayers have built up and made available to you: highways, the Internet, weather reports, parks, the stock market, scientific research, Social Security, rural electrification, communications satellites, and on and on. If you belong to America, you pay a membership fee and you get all that infrastructure plus government services: flood control, air-traffic control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and so on.
Interestingly, the wealthy benefit disproportionately from the American infrastructure. The Securities and Exchange Commission creates honest stock markets. Most of the judicial system is used for corporate law. Drugs developed with National Institutes of Health funding can be patented for private profit. Chemical companies hire scientists trained under National Science Foundation grants. Airlines hire pilots trained by the Air Force. The beef industry grazes its cattle cheaply on public lands. The more wealth you accumulate using what the dues payers have provided, the greater the debt you owe to those who have made your wealth possible. That is the logic of progressive taxation.."
Professor Lakoff takes it for granted that roads, communication hookups, weather forecasts, parks, orderly markets (certainly he is aware that the stock exchanges are not government enterprises,) pensions, and research are properly the function of government. Many of those things are provided by government, but there is nothing in the Welfare Economics Paradigm that requires they be, and there is certainly room for debate on whether the roads, communication networks, parks, pensions, and research ought to be privatized. And Lakoff has bundled the cultural conservatives, whose positions on abortion, public assistance, firearm ownership, and the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq often reflect goals other than economic goals, with the libertarian conservatives (that in itself might be a mixed metaphor, but bear with me) who see some of the services named immediately above as services that could be more efficiently provided by private actors, and who might look at some of the services Professor Lakoff mentions in the third paragraph I quote as corporate welfare. From that perspective, co-mingling all tax funds to provide services that funnel benefits to a few make little sense. (Professor Lakoff's parable of the club with differing levels of benefit to different members reflects a tension within the it-takes-a-village point of view. An old (and cheap) book titled The Screwing of the Average Man (details or see how cheap) devotes some pages to a phenomenon called "transfer screwing" in which politicos will threaten to take away some small benefit to many in order to protect a large benefit to a few. Although the thrust of the book is left-populist, there is much in there to intrigue a libertarian. (Nested parentheses, what is this, a proof? No, the proof is in my portfolio.))
Professor Lakoff is incomplete in his pairing of the complaints of "tax relief" adherents with the accomplishments of the state. He neglects the potential for corruption of the regulators (naw, wouldn't happen, we've all read our Herbert Croly (reissue) and we serve the people.) He also neglects controversial and potentially productivity-sapping regulation of the kind that keeps Walter Olson busy. It is likely that advocates of the various roles for government will continue to talk past each other if one side keeps saying "Corporate Welfare. OSHA. Amtrak." while the other keeps saying "Legal Infrastructure. Accessible Schools. Safe Prescription Drugs."
The conversation over the scope and nature of government matters. Crooked Timber finds an Andrew Tobias column that lays it out:
"Seven programs make up 75 percent of all federal spending: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, military pensions, civil service pensions, defense and interest on the debt."
Mr Tobias's point: the Bush Administration expects to spend $1.8 trillion per year on these things, and expects to take in $1.35 trillion per year in taxes -- whether or not these are static or dynamic score forecasts he does not tell us -- which implies that interest payments will increase. The first five items are items where some kind of privatization might work (personal retirement accounts, medical savings accounts) or some tough love might be in order (Medicaid and civil service pensions) and they are also items that are subject to all manner of fiddles (taxing Social Security benefits, changing the retirement age, second-guessing doctors.)
I still have not made up my mind whether the greatest looming saecular crisis is international (Islam versus Christianity) or domestic (the nature of Western culture and the role of the state within it) but these promise to be interesting times ahead.
DEFENDING THAT HOME FIELD. Packers 31, Detroit Lions 6 (two field goals.) The defense held the Pontiac Pussycats to 52 rushing yards and the final touchdown came on a long interception return by Al Harris.
THIS SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT. "Few foreign nations have any interest in taking bullets in the interest of American hegemony, and thus their proposals try to get America out of Iraq as quickly as possible, a tactic that is patently unacceptable to American negotiators and which could only result in the total collapse of Iraqi civil authority." More at Doxagora.
THEY'RE LUCKY TO BE 2-1. What did I tell you? Michael Hunt also gets it. Meanwhile, the start time of the next game remains a secret. (Perhaps Baghdad Bob will disclose it?)
MUGGED BY REALITY. Mark Steyn's tribute to Charles Bronson reflects on the rediscovery of civilization in New York City in the past thirty years. His vehicle is the 1974 Death Wish. Bronson as Danny ("I dig") in The Great Escape comes closer to the actor's real life. South Fork, Pennsylvania, is this place you roll past on the Pennsylvania Railroad, uphill from Johnstown to Gallitzin. It's a mining community, and the first settlement of size to be wiped out when the dam at the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club failed in 1889.
TOO MUCH LIKE WORK. Marginal Revolution links to some recent work by Grandmaster Kenneth Rogoff of Princeton and the International Monetary Fund. Marginal Revolution also found some early work by Professor Rogoff, some thoughts of a teenage Grandmaster on the Fischer v. Spassky match and the road to success in chess. He's got some thoughts about keeping current that are worth looking at. Serious chess is a lot like serious research. You have to spend a lot of time at your desk keeping current with the latest theoretical developments and the latest tests of those theories.
(As an aside, I'm using the term Grandmaster to refer to Professor Rogoff for the same reason I would use the term Admiral to refer to a retired naval officer.)
(As an aside, I'm using the term Grandmaster to refer to Professor Rogoff for the same reason I would use the term Admiral to refer to a retired naval officer.)
12.9.03
GOING DOWN. The news radio reports the Chicago-area mean price of gasoline is under $1.70 a gallon. Find out how cheap that is with the sources cited here.
DISTURB MY DINNER NO MORE. Dave Barry has some fun with telemarketers. He gets results. (Hat tip: Best of the Web.)
POST HOC, NEC ERGO PROPTER HOC. George Monbiot looks at the benefits of trade protection in developing countries: "In theory, the rules the WTO enforces are supposed to prevent protectionism by the rich nations while permitting a degree of protectionism by the poor ones. The principles behind this are sound. Most of the countries that are rich today developed with the help of "infant industry protection": defending new industries from foreign competition until they are big enough to compete on equal terms. The policy makes sense. Established industries have capital, experience and economies of scale on their side; infant industries in poor nations do not. Developing in direct competition with big business overseas is like learning to swim in a torrent: you will be swept away and drowned long before you acquire the necessary expertise. Rich countries, by contrast, have no need for protectionism, but by defending their markets against imports from poor nations, they prevent the transfer of wealth." Where to begin? Should we start with the Principle of Comparative Advantage? Wouldn't it make sense for a developing country to develop by doing something that current big business doesn't do, or that is currently less profitable? And to propose as a syllogism, that industrial expansion happened in countries that had tariffs, therefore tariffs encourage industrial expansion, is to engage in modus moronis. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has also weighed in, with some sensible observations about agricultural subsidies and a poser, arbitrage-proof ability-to-pay pricing of medicines.
A note to any economics students who have dropped by: if you understand incentives, opportunity costs, and arbitrage, almost everything else in economics will come easily.
A note to any economics students who have dropped by: if you understand incentives, opportunity costs, and arbitrage, almost everything else in economics will come easily.
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