L'Esprit de l'Escalier: March 29, 2013
L'Esprit de l'Escalier: March 29, 2013
Re: "'Islamic' is too broad an adjective here. The Ottoman timar system of land tenure in return for military service, while not the same as European feudalism, was certainly not 'mamlukism'." OK, how about "classical Islamic". Both Ottomans and Mughals (and, I would argue, Safavids) are different beasts that to a considerable degree escape the destructive Ibn Khaldun dynamic that hits the classical Islamic heartland after about 1000... http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/03/noted-for-march-24-2013.html#tpe-action-resize-238
You do know that this isn't an efficient market event study? That the direct and indirect effects of things like "47%" or debate #1 diffuse gradually through the voter population, and are not shown immediately in the next days polls? Proprietary materials I have seen do show that as many people think they voted for Obama over Romney because of 47% as think they voted for Romney over Obama because of debate #1. But you seem to know better... http://ipeatunc.blogspot.com/2013/03/brad-delong-versus-political-science.html
Look: people are good at analysis, good at listening, good at coordinating. Most people are good at one. Most of my friends are really good at analysis but lousy at listening and coordinating. Someone like Sheryl Sandberg is superb at coordinating, excellent at listening, and very good at analyzing. But Mitt Romney is not Sheryl: he is superb at coordinating, so-so at listening, and not so smart at analyzing--a "Chet", in Belle Waring's parlance. That means that someone like Mitt will be vulnerable to this "47% moochers--nation of takers" stuff... http://www.democracyjournal.org/28/shrugging-off-atlas.php
"Note first, the lead article in today's [3/22] Torygraf, then the peculiar spin put on it by Jeremy Warner, the newspaper's #3 editor and political columnist , who first says that Osborne has bungled badly, it's all a disaster, and then, oh, but if Cameron/Osborne just had five more years the Confidence Fairy would make all good. (Tory Talk for we f@#$ed-up, but we just can't quite admit to the underlying stupid assumptions.)" http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100023644/george-orwell-and-the-uk-budget/
From Nixon in China: "We are awake,/We know these matters,/How the poor debtors/Still sell their daughters,/How in the drought/Men still grow fat/On the profit/Won grain by grain/From other men/Caught in the famine/Who trade their oxen/For a day's ration…"
It really looks as though we have a global savings glut going on as the super Rich of emerging markets decide they want to invest in the United States. To first approximation, therefore, we should look for lower interest rates than normal in the United States over the next two generations, and should take advantage of this opportunity. What if interest rates normalized? Then the obvious solution is simply to tax interest income one way or another, via financial repression or otherwise, and there is then no unsustainability problem...
Re: "Models predicting Romney's loss well before the video emerged -- those based on economic fundamentals -- performed very well. The 47% video had almost nothing to do with the electoral outcome." FALSE. The residual in political scientists' regressions matter. That all of the components of the residual wind up summing to near zero doesn't mean that each of the components of the residual is zero. The 47% was a big deal for elite opinion and grass-roots cadre mobilization.nAs the Obama nowcast probability in the Silver model swung from 62% to 80% to 62% to 99.5% to 55% to 93% on election day, I remain unconvinced by your claim that each of the components of the residual was zero--and you should not be convinced either: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/4d606f8f-39ef-4d7c-86fe-903e98df4fc5/f8128bba6d08aeb6ad81ed742ca29e28
