Grasping Reality with Both Hands

Should-Reads:

• Brad DeLong (2007): Tom Grubisich Is One Unhappy Camper: "Tom Grubisich... a former Washington Post reporter and editor [says]... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/tom_grubisich_i.html
• Kavya Vaghul: Conservation easements and tax policies in the United States: "Deductions for conservation easement donations are taken by taxpayers in states that have small shares of conserved land... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/conservation-easements-and-tax-policies-in-the-united-states/
• Bridget Ansel: A research roundup on unpredictable schedules in the United States: "For Americans with a 9-to-5 job, it can be hard to imagine the life of a worker with an unpredictable, constantly shifting schedule... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/a-research-roundup-on-unpredictable-schedules-in-the-united-states/
• David Cutler and Emily Gee: Coverage Losses Under the ACA Repeal Bill for Congressional Districts in All States: "Within a decade, on average, an additional 55,000 more individuals in each congressional district, or nearly 8 percent... would lack coverage... https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2017/03/21/428914/coverage-losses-aca-repeal-bill-congressional-districts-states/
• Dodge Cahan and Niklas Potrafke: The Democratic-Republican Presidential Growth Gap and the Partisan Balance of the State Governments: "Higher economic growth was generated during Democratic presidencies compared to Republican presidencies... http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/cesceswps/_5f6517.htm
• Laura Tyson: Labor Markets in the Age of Automation: "Skill-biased and labor-displacing intelligent machines and automation drive income inequality in several other ways... https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/automation-labor-market-inequality-by-laura-tyson-2017-06
• Nick Bunker: Who loses disability insurance when it’s harder to apply?: "What actually happened when the closest Social Security field offices closed and the cost of applying increased?... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/who-loses-disability-insurance-when-its-harder-to-apply/
• William J. Collins and Marianne H. Wanamaker: Up from slavery? African American intergenerational economic mobility since 1880: "We document the intergenerational mobility of black and white American men from 1880 through 2000... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/african-american-intergenerational-mobility/
• Nick Bunker: Time for the Fed to look beyond 2 percent target inflation?: "The idea that a stable and credible inflation target must be 2 percent is an accident of history... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/time-for-the-fed-to-look-beyond-2-percent-target-inflation/

Links:

• Eugene Wigner: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html
• Tim O'Reilly: Do More! What Amazon Teaches Us About AI and the “Jobless Future”: "This is the master design pattern for applying technology: Do more. Do things that were previously unimaginable..." https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/do-more-what-amazon-teaches-us-about-ai-and-the-jobless-future-8051b19a66af
• Evan Horowitz: Unemployment is rising, and that’s good news. Really http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/06/15/unemployment-rising-and-that-good-news-really/nQVe3gkbyQm6L0Qp3c4n3O/story.html: "Sometimes, when the state’s unemployment rate goes up, it’s actually good news. It means jobs have become so plentiful that long-discouraged folks start thinking, 'Maybe I should look for work again'..."
• James Clapper: Address to the National Security College of ANU: "I have had a very hard time reconciling the threat the Russians pose to the United States—and, for that matter, western democracies in general—with the inexplicably solicitous stance the Trump administration (or at least, he himself as opposed to others in his administration) has taken with respect to Russia..." http://nsc.anu.edu.au/news-events/news-20170607.php
• Mary Amiti, Mi Dai, Robert C. Feenstra, and John Romalis: How Did China's WTO Entry Benefit U.S. Consumers?: "At least two-thirds of the China WTO effect on the U.S. price index of manufactured goods was through China lowering its own tariffs on intermediate inputs..." http://www.nber.org/papers/w23487
• Sabri Ben-Achour: Is 2 percent a good target rate for inflation? The Fed has never been sure https://www.marketplace.org/2017/06/09/economy/2-percent-good-target-rate-inflation-fed-has-never-been-sure
• Ady Barkan: The Fed should rethink how its conducts monetary policy: "My prediction is that within a year or two, you're going to see the Fed make this smart policy change..." http://www.businessinsider.com/the-fed-should-rethink-how-its-conducts-monetary-policy-2017-6
• Noah Smith: Is economics a science? http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.se/2017/06/is-economics-science.html
• Guillaume Calafat & Éric Monnet: The Return of Economic History? - Books & ideas: "The recent success of books on economic history–at a time when this specialism often seems disregarded in universities – coupled with parallel developments in both history and economics gives hope for new links between the two disciplines...." http://www.booksandideas.net/The-Return-of-Economic-History.html
• Cardiff Garcia: The Fed’s perception flaw: "The Fed had too pessimistic a view of the economy’s potential to reduce unemployment before running into structural obstacles.... The Fed became still more pessimistic about the potential for the labour market to heal through the early years of the recovery.... A decent case can be made that the Fed’s continued failure to produce an economy that sustainably keeps inflation near the target, and which includes healthier wage growth, is traceable to having committed this early error.... Another case could be made that the Fed is still committing it." https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/14/2190169/the-feds-perception-flaw/
• Martin Sandbu: Call for Fed reform misses its mark: "Higher inflation target does not address the real shortcomings..." https://www.ft.com/content/a1526e2e-4d43-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b?mhq5j=e1
• Matthew Panzarino: An iPad Pro 10.5" Not Review: "After playing with the new iPad Pro 10.5″ for a few days, I am convinced that it’s fairly impossible to do a detailed review of it in its current state. Not because there is some sort of flaw, but because it was clearly designed top to bottom as an empty vessel in which to pour iOS 11. Every feature, every hardware advancement, every piece of understated technical acrobatics is in the service of making Apple’s next-generation software shine..." https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/12/apple-pays-off-its-future-of-computing-promise-with-ipad-pro/
• Bob Friday: 4 key AI concepts you need to understand: "Every artificial intelligence solution is built on these four... foundational elements... categorization, classification, machine learning, and collaborative filtering..." http://www.infoworld.com/article/3200790/artificial-intelligence/4-key-ai-concepts-you-need-to-understand.html
• Narayana Kocherlakota: The Fed's Unspoken Mandate: "It wants to be “normal,” and that’s bad for most Americans..." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-13/the-fed-s-unspoken-mandate
• Barry Eichengreen: Can US States Right Trump’s Wrongs? https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/states-rights-trump-wrongs-by-barry-eichengreen-2017-06
• Nina Shapiro: The Hidden Cost of Privatization https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/the-business-of-government
• NAFTA and other trade deals have not gutted American manufacturing—period https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/24/14363148/trade-deals-nafta-wto-china-job-loss-trump
• Jessica Pressler: Gary Cohn's Trump Gamble: "“What’s it like working for that guy?” Cohn’s Wall Street buddy asked when he ran into him at their local diner. Cohn smiled, or maybe gritted his teeth. 'You can imagine', he said..." http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/gary-cohn-working-for-donald-trump.html
• Wikipedia: Optimal control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_control
• Lawrence Evans: : "This current version of the notes is not yet complete, but meets I think the usual high standards for material posted on the internet..." https://math.berkeley.edu/~evans/control.course.pdf

Highlighted on Grasping Reality Ten Years and Two Months Ago: April 2007:

• Hoisted from the Archives from 2001: Information Technology and the Future of Society: My CITRIS Kickoff Talk http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/hoisted_from_th.html: But now as we try to realize the technological promise of information technologies, the old forms of economic organization no longer have a natural fit with the requirements of technological development and economic growth. Once an "information good" has been produced, sharing it with another person doesn't reduce the rest of society's resources and opportunities. So there is no efficient-distribution reason to charge a price for it. But where then does the flow of signals to assess which production organizations are efficient come from? In an earlier age we would be more inclined to rely on government funding, but these days we have a keen awareness of the advantages in applied development at least of semi-Darwinian competitive mechanisms, where investigators are responsible to investors seeking profits and not to committees seeking whatever committees seek... 2007-04-01 (2001-09-01)

• The Secret Language of Central Bankers http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/brad_delong_the.html: The more central banks talk, and the clearer they try to make their language, the more it seems that markets may be reacting excessively and inappropriately to statements that are not really news at all. More information may be leading not to better knowledge, but to more confusion... 2007-04-02

• In Which I Fall Down on the Job... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/in_which_i_fall.html: "I don't have the heart to surf on over to Luskin's web site and point out stupid errors, and egregious tendentious deliberate misinterpretations.... I can, however, grab two truly unbelievable--but, alas! not atypical--examples... 2007-04-02

• Journamalism Watch: Michael Gordon, Max Frankel, Fred Hiatt http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/journamalism_wa.html: To put it bluntly: when a story by the New York Times's Michael Gordon appears, I can't tell whether it is accurate, whether Michael Gordon's sources are lying to him (and he is letting them do so by not blowing them when they do so), or whether Michael Gordon is lying to us. Gordon would deserve the benefit of the doubt if I were confident that he was trying his best to inform rather than misinform us. I am not. And Reihan shouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt either... 2007-04-08

• Michael Novak of AEI vs. Saint Ambrose of Milan Cage Match on the Meaning of Easter http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/michael_novak_o.html: "'The liturgy at St Mathew's was one of the most beautiful.... [But] it is not the human performance... that ought to hold our attention, but the real abandonment and cruel suffering of Christ on the Cross, in a demonstration of how much the Lord loves us, despite our faults and our miseries and our own emptiness...' Saint Ambrose certainly doesn't think that on Easter Sunday 'our attention' ought to be held by "the real abandonment and cruel suffering of Christ on the Cross...' Saint Ambrose's attention is elsewhere... 2007-04-08

• Ross Douthat Claims That the Press Didn't Pull Its Punches on George W. Bush http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/ross_douthat_cl.html: The second counterexample is Tom Ricks, also of the Post, to demonstrate that the press pulled its punches in the runup to the war. Tom Ricks now says that he believed in March 2003 that Iraq had no ongoing WMD program--"I thought that at most they would find some old mustard gas buried out in the '91 war that somebody had forgotten about"--yet there he was writing about how http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/01/why_oh_why_cant_1.html: "One major early mission of U.S. forces would be to locate and secure Iraq's suspected arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, [General Richard] Myers said. The U.S. government expects to learn far more about those weapons programs once its forces invade Iraq...." You cannot--I cannot, at least--place Tom Ricks's book Fiasco at my right hand and his earlier Post coverage of Iraq on my left without getting sick http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/08/thomas_e_ricks_.html... 2007-04-09

• Kai Bird Thinks That Alger Hiss Wasn't the "Ales" Mentioned in VENONA http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/kai_bird_thinks.html: It's the wrong headline. The evidence--if correctly interpreted--points to somebody else rather than Alger Hiss being "Ales".... My view: Would Richard Nixon and company have forged evidence against Alger Hiss if they had had the opportunity? Yes, at the drop of a hat. Did they have the opportunity? Probably not. Was Alger Hiss at some time a spy for the Soviet Union? Probably. Is there a reasonable doubt? I have doubts, and I am not sure that my doubts are unreasonable... 2007-04-09

• How Supply-Side Economics Trickled Down... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/how_supplyside_.html: I'm less sure that Bruce Bartlett was on the side of the angels on growth policy.... In practice... it seemed to me that Bruce's political masters like Jack Kemp were excesssively eager to throw the "budget in balance or surplus on average over the business cycle," and that the eager embrace of deficits and their crowding-out of investment did more harm than the focus on reducing marginal tax rates did good. We can argue about that, however... 2007-04-10

• The U.S. Equity Return Premium: Past, Present, and Future http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/the_us_equity_r.html: We have a new draft of J. Bradford DeLong and Konstantin Magin (forthcoming), "The U.S. Equity Return Premium: Past, Present, and Future," Journal of Economic Perspectives: http:// It's good. It's not great yet. But we hope to make it great... 2007-04-12

• Yet More Journamalism from the Economist: The History of Neoconservatism http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/yet_more_journa.html: "Perhaps my big problem with the Economist is that I got used to it as it was at the beginning of the 1980s--when it rarely, rarely said things that weren't true. And even when the things it said weren't true, they weren't stupid. So it is still a shock when an Economist writer like Lexington says something both false and stupid.... The intellectuals who provided the energy for the early Public Interest--Daniel Bell, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, et cetera--were what we now call "neoliberals": they wanted to do the Great Society and the Cold War right. In the 1960s they did not think of themselves as neoconservatives, and they were not neoconservatives--not even in retrospect... 2007-04-21

• "Reduction of the Wave Packet" and Other Mumbo-Jumbo http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/reduction_of_th.html: Effects-that-happen-before-causes department: "Scientific American: Quantum Erasing in the Home." I am not sure whether this is as disturbing or more disturbing than Bell's inequality... 2007-04-21

• Joe Klein, Journamalist: "I'm Fake But Accurate!" http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/joe_klein_journ.html: Joe Klein writes: "RE: Kos - Swampland - TIME: It was chronologically incorrent [incorrect or incoherent?] for me to make it seem that Kos was responding to the "shorter leash" comment, but substantively correct..." Translation: Joe Klen says: "I lied, but in a good cause..." 2007-04-23

• Anti-Speech Situations http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/04/antispeech_situ.html: "I think what I miss the most is the absence of reality-based conservatives. Real conservatives should recognize that they lose their honor by going all the way with the global-warming-isn't-real crowd, the Saddam-Hussein-and-Al-Qaeda-are-friends crowd, the we-are-making-rapid-progress-in-Iraq crowd, the Mussolini-and-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton-are-friends crowd, the Paul-Wolfowitz-is-THE-MAN-for-fighting-corruption crowd, and the George-W-Bush-is-our-fearless-leader crowd. And they should be smart enough to realize that they weaken their cause in the long run as well. But--with a few honorable exceptions, of whom Bruce Bartlett and (gulp) Andrew Sullivan come first to mind--the public voices of the reality-based conservatives are few and weak (although their private loathing for their corporate and political masters is in many cases loud and shrill). And I find nothing in my volumes of Juergen Habermas to tell me how to deal with this problem... 2007-04-25