Grasping Reality by Brad DeLong

DP: "But your right to post to someone else’s site rests with that someone else... anyone who doesn’t get it must simply have an axe to grind. It’s like assuming you have the right to go inside any house you can see from the street, and pee on the carpet.... I’ve seen incredible communities form in the confines of comment forms. I’ve seen funny, helpful, informative, intimate, amazing conversations. I’ve seen groups of people come together using the crudest of tools to form intense personal bonds. I’ve seen it literally change lives for the better. Of course, I’ve also seen comments on YouTube... people, when given crappy tools, with almost no oversight, no incentive to behave, and no semblance of real identity, often behave stupidly. The choice is not really to have comments on or off. The choice is: What is the level of community interaction you want to foster on your site? What’s the purpose of the site, and is community interaction part of that purpose?"

DW: "Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.)... would have scrapped the individual mandate passed as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It failed, 230-187 --a considerably larger margin than the one by which the original act passed. And Republicans lost the vote of Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.), who represents a heavily Democratic district and only voted against the final bill back in March after becoming convinced that it would, in some fashion, fund abortions. You start to wonder about these margins. If Democrats lose 30-odd seats and hold the House, will there be a rump of conservatives in their party who join with the GOP to support a repeal bill? The answer to that question will largely depend on which Democrats lose, won't it? Side note: Rep. Artur Davis (D-Al.), who alienated Democrats in his state when he voted against the original bill in order to bolster his general election chances for governor, was one of the Democrats voting against Camp's measure this time."

RA: "You can see America's precarious position. This is a significant problem. The conventional wisdom is that America's fiscal adjustments should be easier than those in places like Europe and Japan, thanks to more favourable demographics associated with a younger population. But while other indebted nations have older populations, they also have done much more to slow the growth of health spending. This is why the mark of someone serious about debt issues is an obsession with health cost control. Pundits fretting about the debt impact of stimulus are poseurs."