Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: Brad Setser: G-3 Coordination Failures of the Past Eight Years?: "I want to look back... [at the] coordination failures over the past eight years... https://www.cfr.org/blog/g-3-coordination-failures-past-eight-years-riff-coure-and-brainard

Should-Read: Disruption comes to the high-end grocery industry...

Jason del Rey: Amazon will lower Whole Foods prices right away and Prime members will get special discounts: "Amazon is wasting no time putting its stamp on Whole Foods... https://www.recode.net/2017/8/24/16198716/amazon-whole-foods-lower-prices-prime-discounts-benefits

Comment of the Day: Charles Steindel: Weekend Reading: Stephen Vincent Benet: Army of Northern Virginia (From John Brown's Body): "It seems to me that John Brown's Body is a sadly neglected piece... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/08/weekend-reading-vachel-lindsay-army-of-northern-virginia-from-john-browns-body.html?cid=6a00e551f08003883401bb09b9a749970d#comment-6a00e551f08003883401bb09b9a749970d

Live from the EJMR Supporter Cesspool: And, yes, we are looking at you George Borjas. You could be saying: "Hey! Guys at EJMW! A lot of you are real dicks! Don't be!"

Instead, you say something very different.

Must-Read: W.E.B. DuBois: On Robert E. Lee: "It is the punishment of the South that its Robert Lees and Jefferson Davises will always be tall, handsome and well-born... http://cwmemory.com/2017/05/30/w-e-b-dubois-on-robert-e-lee/

Must-Read: W.E.B. DuBois: On Confederate Monuments: "In the South, particular, human ingenuity has been put to it to explain... http://cwmemory.com/2017/05/29/w-e-b-dubois-on-confederate-monuments/

Should-Read: Neil Cummins: Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800: 115,650 European nobles from 800 to 1800... https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/lifespans-of-the-european-elite-8001800/BE252C4B25C4AAC29ED62D591A1675AC

Live from Basic Recipes: Cardigan Industries: How to Cook Soup: "First, you need some water. Fuse two hydrogen with one oxygen and repeat until you have enough...

Should-Read: Neel Kashkari: Fed official: Businesses should raise wages before complaining of worker shortage: "Common refrain... we have jobs available, but simply can’t find qualified workers to fill them... http://www.businessinsider.com/fed-official-businesses-should-raise-wages-before-complaining-of-worker-shortage-2017-8

Should-Read: "Enhancing" or "replacing"? Machines enhancing human brain power has been a thing ever since the first human notched a stick every time there was a new moon. If "AI" is to have a meaning, it will need a less all-inclusive definition...

Jacques Bughin and Eric Hazan: The new spring of artificial intelligence: "The Industrial Revolution was about machines enhancing human muscle power. The AI revolution is about machines enhancing human brain power... http://voxeu.org/article/new-spring-artificial-intelligence-few-early-economics

Live from the EJMR Cesspool: No, George Borjas, I Do Not Find Your Views on EJMR "Refreshing": If I read you correctly, your view of the misogyny of EJMR last year was that it was:

refreshing... throwing off of the shackles of political correctness... [to discuss] mundane concerns... prestige, sex, money, landing a job, sex, professional misconduct, gossip, sex...

This year your view is it is:

[You] say 'hmm, what an interesting experiment' even though deep down inside you would know that it’s absolutely ridiculous and it’s downright pathetic.... EJMR... is indeed a refreshing difference from the self-censorship that we all use in public to discuss the thousands of 'Blah blah blah: Evidence from Blah blah blah' papers...

Retconning much, George?

Let me say what I think: I think you would be in a better position if you had either (a) agreed with Janet Currie that EJMR was a cesspool in 2016—and then gone on to say that it was a sometimes-useful cesspool—or (b) if you were to state now that you have rethought the issues, and that your views have changed.

Pick one. Or the other. Please.

See? I can say what I think. And I don't have to hide behind anonymity in a cesspool to do so.

Should-Read: Maurice Obstfeld, Jonathan D. Ostry, and Mahvash S. Qureshi: Trilemma redux: Evidence from emerging market economies: "The synchronous rise and fall of cross-border capital flows, domestic credit, and asset prices... http://voxeu.org/article/trilemma-redux-evidence-emerging-market-economies

Should-Read: Matthew Yglesias: Steve Bannon’s “economic nationalism” is total nonsense: "'Economic nationalism' has grave flaws as an ideology beyond Trump’s racism, lack of policy knowledge, and personal indiscipline... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/21/16165348/steve-bannon-economic-nationalism

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Tim Worstall: The Robots Stealing Human Jobs-Bring It On: "Spinning especially was a hugely labour intensive process which near all women did to some extent... https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/08/19/the-robots-stealing-human-jobs-bring-it-on/#524f81a421ff
• John Holbo: Thinking About Groups: "I’m going to say a few (thousand) words about... Jacob Levy’s good new book, Rationalism, Pluralism, Freedom... http://crookedtimber.org/2017/08/20/thinking-about-groups/
• Jacob T. Levy: Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom
• Claudia Sahm: On Twitter: "And yes, Marginal Revolution commenters have got EJMR'ers back... I used to comment on @MargRev and it would really piss me off... https://twitter.com/Claudia_Sahm/status/898620250287030272
• Justin Wolfers: Evidence of a Toxic Environment for Women in Economics: "Ms. Wu set up her computer to identify whether the subject of each post is a man or a woman... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/upshot/evidence-of-a-toxic-environment-for-women-in-economics.html
• Oliver Kamm: On Twitter: "This is extraordinary. Just yesterday I was asked for recommended reading on Srebrenica... https://twitter.com/OliverKamm/status/898151322712670212

Must-Reads:

• Jacob T. Levy: Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom
• Justin Wolfers: Evidence of a Toxic Environment for Women in Economics: "Ms. Wu set up her computer to identify whether the subject of each post is a man or a woman... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/upshot/evidence-of-a-toxic-environment-for-women-in-economics.html

On Twitter https://twitter.com/de1ong/status/899444987896770561: The hard-working and intelligent Jim Tankersley sends me to:

Reihan Salam https://twitter.com/reihan/status/899428435508043777: "The best 'Why I'm running' statement I've ever read from a GOP candidate": Randy Boyd: Why I'm Running https://randyboyd.com/why-im-running/.

But Boyd is a joke:

Should-Read: Tim Worstall: The Robots Stealing Human Jobs-Bring It On: "Spinning especially was a hugely labour intensive process which near all women did to some extent... https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/08/19/the-robots-stealing-human-jobs-bring-it-on/#524f81a421ff

Cosma Shalizi reminds me of the internet "data scientists are (good and empirically oriented) statisticians" discussion of 2011-12.

Let me say three things:

1. You should never use Excel to handle your data.

2. I don't know whether it is depressing or exhilarating to recognize that, for me as for Cosma, how often my reaction these days is: "I already wrote something incisive and very much worth reading about that—now to find it in my weblog archives..."

3. Increasingly, data management, analysis, and presentation are things that many more people need for their jobs than statistics departments can reasonably expect to funnel through their major programs. It's like in the middle ages: the number of people who needed to have a good, clear, legible-penmanship chancery hand vastly exceeded the number of professional calligraphers and illustrators. Data management, analysis, and presentation skills are, increasingly, the legible-penmanship chancery hand of the twenty-first century.

Should-Read: John Holbo: Thinking About Groups: "I’m going to say a few (thousand) words about... Jacob Levy’s good new book, Rationalism, Pluralism, Freedom... http://crookedtimber.org/2017/08/20/thinking-about-groups/

Comment of the Day: Phil: Groupishness TLDR, “Jubilation T. Cornpone” Edition: "The song 'The night they drove old Dixie down' is an interesting illustration... http://crookedtimber.org/2017/08/20/groupishness-tldr-jubilation-t-cornpone-edition/

Must-Watch: Jacob T. Levy: Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom:

Should-Read: Claudia Sahm: On Twitter: "And yes, Marginal Revolution commenters have got EJMR'ers back... I used to comment on @MargRev and it would really piss me off... https://twitter.com/Claudia_Sahm/status/898620250287030272

Should-Read: Kevin Williamson (May 3, 2016): Pre-planning my 'I Told You So': "Remember, You Asked for This... http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/434906/pre-planning-my-i-told-you-so

Must-Read: It should not be necessary to say that the "community" of EJMR is not Berkeley—or indeed, is not anywhere IRL. Also: cf.: Griefer.

Do not ignore or dismiss this.

Do note that I can recall only one economics professor of any ideology or university ever praising EJMR: George Borjas of Harvard, who called it "refreshing".

But, again, do not ignore of dismiss this:

Justin Wolfers: Evidence of a Toxic Environment for Women in Economics: "Ms. Wu set up her computer to identify whether the subject of each post is a man or a woman... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/upshot/evidence-of-a-toxic-environment-for-women-in-economics.html

Today's Economic History: Would I be out-of-turn to point out that these thesis statements by E.P. Thompson from his The Making of the English Working Class are, well, pretty much completely wrong? That there was no English working class in any Marxian sense of what a self-conscious class is that had been "made" by 1832? That there is almost no commonality between the working class of England as it stood in, say, 1926 and what there was in 1832?

E.P. Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class: "Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared)...

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: Kevin Drum: Give It Up, Folks: Confederate Statues Are All About Racism: "I got... pushback from folks offering non-racist explanations for why these bursts of monument building happened to coincide with periods of white terror campaigns against blacks... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/give-it-up-folks-confederate-statues-are-all-about-racism/

Should-Read: Oliver Kamm: On Twitter: "This is extraordinary. Just yesterday I was asked for recommended reading on Srebrenica... https://twitter.com/OliverKamm/status/898151322712670212

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: Josh Marshall: On Twitter: Bannon: "Journalists will sometimes, I think rightly, give someone the benefit of the doubt if they have no experience with the ground rules of... https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/898006344908910593

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Jesse Rothstein: Inequality of educational opportunity? Schools as mediators of the intergenerational transmission of income: "Chetty et al. (2014) show that children from low-income families achieve much better adult outcomes... in some places than in others... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/inequality-of-educational-opportunity-schools-as-mediators-of-the-intergenerational-transmission-of-income/
• Will Dobbie and Jae Song: Targeted debt relief and the origins of financial distress: Experimental evidence from distressed credit card borrowers: "We identify the separate effects of the payment reductions and debt write-downs using variation from both the experiment and cross-sectional differences... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/targeted-debt-relief-and-financial-distress/
• Drew Conway: The Data Science Venn Diagram http://www.dataists.com/2010/09/the-data-science-venn-diagram/: "The primary colors of data: hacking skills, math and stats knowledge, and substantive expertise...
• Fardels Bear: Was James Buchanan a Racist? Libertarians and Historical Research: "Today’s libertarians face a similar problem that Morley faced half a decade ago... https://altrightorigins.com/2017/07/13/was-james-buchanan-a-racist-libertarians-and-historical-research/
• Sarah Kliff: Top Democratic, Republican health experts agree on this plan to fix Obamacare: "'This package is no one’s conception of what is perfect health reform', says Ron Pollack... of... Families USA, an ardent defender of the ACA... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/9/16119244/bipartisan-plan-fix-obamacare
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “Jolting news this week!” edition: "Estimates of the potential growth rate of U.S. gross domestic product have declined... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-jolting-news-this-week-edition/
• Barry Eichengreen: Hyperglobalization Is Over, But Globalization Is Still with Us: "Hyperglobalization is over... international trade... growing faster than the world economy... has drawn to a close... https://neo.ubs.com/shared/d1JfrUS5WO79UD/9e9d7589-d888-4435-98fc-4792ff141323.pdf
• Chris Dillow: Stumbling and Mumbling: Reinventing the wheel: "In both the UK and US, wage inflation has stayed low despite apparently low unemployment–to the puzzlement of believers in the Philips curve... http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2017/07/reinventing-the-wheel.html
• Guillermo Gallacher: Manufacturing employment, trade and structural change: "Calls for a return of manufacturing jobs... how feasible is such a goal in light of structural changes in the U.S. economy?... http://equitablegrowth.org/person/guillermo-gallacher/
• Daniel Davies: From a logical point of view...: "I have now read that 'google manifesto'... out of a desire to forestall people saying 'but have you ACTUALLY READ IT?'... http://crookedtimber.org/2017/08/11/from-a-logical-point-of-view/
• Economist: Who will be the next chair of the Federal Reserve?: "The interest-rate opinions of the favourite to succeed her are less clear. Mr Cohn... https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21726081-gary-cohn-leading-candidate-replace-janet-yellen-who-will-be-next
• Fabio Ghironi: Macro Needs Micro: "An emerging consensus on the future of macroeconomics views the incorporation of a role for financial intermediation, labor market frictions, and household heterogeneity in the presence of uninsurable unemployment risk as key needed extensions to the benchmark macro framework... http://faculty.washington.edu/ghiro/GhiroFuture.pdf
• Nancy MacLean: Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America http://amzn.to/2voi3qD: "As 1956 drew to a close, Colgate Whitehead Darden Jr., the president of the University of Virginia, feared...

Should-Read: Will Dobbie and Jae Song: Targeted debt relief and the origins of financial distress: Experimental evidence from distressed credit card borrowers: "We identify the separate effects of the payment reductions and debt write-downs using variation from both the experiment and cross-sectional differences... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/targeted-debt-relief-and-financial-distress/

Should-Read: Jesse Rothstein: Inequality of educational opportunity? Schools as mediators of the intergenerational transmission of income: "Chetty et al. (2014) show that children from low-income families achieve much better adult outcomes... in some places than in others... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/inequality-of-educational-opportunity-schools-as-mediators-of-the-intergenerational-transmission-of-income/

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: White House Staff Sing Along:

Live from Post-Civil War: In some ways, the "good" Robert E. Lee https://twitter.com/de1ong/status/897899627252285440 was a con game the post-Civil War North ran on the South: unlike the evil terrorist Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee surrendered when he lost, accepted the verdict of history, and turned to work building up the nation as head of Washington College.

Comment of the Day: Charles Steindel: Weekend Reading: Stephen Vincent Benet: From John Brown's Body http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/08/weekend-reading-vachel-lindsay-army-of-northern-virginia-from-john-browns-body.html?cid=6a00e551f08003883401bb09b9a749970d#comment-6a00e551f08003883401bb09b9a749970d: "At this juncture, one might turn to Benet's best known work, The Devil and Daniel Webster:

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: Silver Lining Department https://twitter.com/delong/status/897853379782746112: One piece of good news from the past week: we now know that the president and his camarilla are not secret Nazis.

Live from America's Better Self: Orientation Day https://twitter.com/delong/status/897880320250322944: Yesterday we had 750 groups of about 20 people each following standards around the campus: The Berkeley freshmen are here. Young, smart very idealistic, many very upwardly mobile, somewhat scared, very excited—at the prospect of being no longer children but themselves, and grown-ups.

You look at them, and you have to think America is very great indeed.

Should-Read: Drew Conway: The Data Science Venn Diagram http://www.dataists.com/2010/09/the-data-science-venn-diagram/: "The primary colors of data: hacking skills, math and stats knowledge, and substantive expertise...

Note to Self: "Data Science" as an Ephemeral Term:There was a time—perhaps a century, maybe a bit more, certainly not much less—ago, when the high-tech bleeding edge electricity sector was an important but discrete part of the "economy".

Note to Self: I am told that what we are doing here is something called "data science"...

Note to Self: Data Science Reading List:

• John Tukey: The Future of Data Analysis: "Large parts of data analysis are inferential... but only parts.... Large parts... are incisive.... Some parts... are allocative... dude its in the distribution of effort..." http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.aoms/1177704711

Note to Self: View jupyter notebook from dropbox (or other) links:

• Dropbox: change: "https://www.dropbox.com/" to: "http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/urls/dl.dropbox.com/"; then load the url...
• Else: change: "https://" to "http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/"; then load the url...

Should-Read: Sarah Kliff: Top Democratic, Republican health experts agree on this plan to fix Obamacare: "'This package is no one’s conception of what is perfect health reform', says Ron Pollack... of... Families USA, an ardent defender of the ACA... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/9/16119244/bipartisan-plan-fix-obamacare

Note to Self: Project Jupyter: Jupyter Notebook Viewer: "A simple way to share Jupyter Notebooks..." http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/ note: change: "https://www.dropbox.com/" to "http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/urls/dl.dropbox.com/"...

Should-Read: Fardels Bear: Was James Buchanan a Racist? Libertarians and Historical Research: "Today’s libertarians face a similar problem that Morley faced half a decade ago... https://altrightorigins.com/2017/07/13/was-james-buchanan-a-racist-libertarians-and-historical-research/

Hoisted from 2001: Information Technology and the Future of Society (My Bekeley CITRIS Kickoff Talk) http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/TotW/citris_kickoff.html: For perhaps 9000 years after the beginnings of agriculture the overwhelming proportion of human work lives were spent making things: growing crops, shearing sheep, spinning yarn, weaving cloth, throwing pots, cutting down trees, copying books, and so on, and so forth.

Live from Cyberspace: The elective affinity between fantasy and computer programming:

Paul Dourish: The Original Hacker's Dictionary: "WIZARD n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or hardware works... http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html

Live from the End of the Slavery Rebellion: U.S. Grant: At Appomattox http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/04/confederate-history-month-grant-at-apomattox.html:

My own feelings... were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse...

Must-Reads:

• Peter Conti-Brown: Health Care, the Congressional Budget Office, and “Audit the Fed”: "One of the most intriguing institutional players... was the Congressional Budget Office... http://yalejreg.com/nc/health-care-the-congressional-budget-office-and-audit-the-fed/
• Martin Sandbu: Ten years on: Anatomy of the global financial meltdown: "August 9 2007 was the day when BNP Paribas, the French bank, froze three investment funds... https://www.ft.com/content/a7547254-7c37-11e7-9108-edda0bcbc928
• Paul Romer (2016): The Trouble With Macroeconomics: "For more than three decades, macroeconomics has gone backwards... https://paulromer.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/WP-Trouble.pdf
• Jared Bernstein: ‘Why Did Nobody Notice It?’: "Paul Romer... gave a lecture... 'The Trouble with Macroeconomics'... tore contemporary macro a new one... http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/45/why-did-nobody-notice-it/
• Narayana Kocherlakota: The Neglected Lessons of a Lost Decade: "In some ways... 2007 to 2009 did more economic damage than the Great Depression of the 1930s... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/the-neglected-lessons-of-a-lost-decade
• Ogged: Google Anti-Diversity Memo: "I tried to read the Google anti-diversity memo, I really did. I even powered through the part where he said that deprecating products too quickly is an example of a leftist failing, but I just couldn't do it. If you'd like to discuss how you, too, couldn't make it through the whole thing, this is the thread for you..." http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2017_08_06.html#016132
• Jonathan Portes: The New York Times, Brexit, and the balance of bulls---: "Two articles published recently by the New York Times... on Brexit... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/brexit-opinions-remain-brexiteer-bull-bs-leave-eu-new-york-times-jenni-russell-daniel-hannan-a7880401.html
• C. Fred Bergsten and Monica de Bolle, eds.: A Path Forward for NAFTA: "The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ranks at the top of anyone’s list of the most controversial trade deals of all time... https://piie.com/system/files/documents/piieb17-2.pdf

Weekend Reading: Vachel Lindsay Stephen Vincent Benet: Army of Northern Virginia (From John Brown's Body) http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700461.txt:

The cold. The mud. The bleak wonder.
The weakening sickness--the weevils tainting the bread--
We were beaten again in spite of all we could do.
We don't know what went wrong but something went wrong.
When will we find a man who can really lead us?
When will we not be wasted without success?

Weekend Reading: Vachel Lindsay Stephen Vincent Benet: From John Brown's Body http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700461.txt:

The horses, burning-hooved, drove on toward the sea,
But, where they had passed, the air was troubled and sick
Like earth that the shoulder of earthquake heavily stirs.
There was a whisper moving that air all night,
A whisper that cried and whimpered about the house
Where John Brown prayed to his God, by his narrow bed.