Fairly Recently: Must- and Should-Reads, and Writings... (January 6, 2019)
Dinner in California—Sparing a Thought for the Victims of Boris Johnson and Company...: The consensus of the eaters is that the parsnips are only edible if the ratio of parsnip-to-butter is less than 2-to-1...
Comment of the Day: I had always thought that the "male variability" hypothesis was really a "male skewed lower tail" hypothesis, and has nothing to say about the upper tail of males. It's the small Y-chromosome—the missing genes that make males overwhelmingly susceptible to color-blindness, hemophilia, the autism spectrum, may play a role in reduced life expectancy, and other things. But that male variability is greater because males are genetically weak says little or nothing about a possible genetic upper tail: Paul Reber: Patriarchy & Gender
Comment of the Day: Pinkybum:: What Is Going on This Morning Over at "National Review"? Is It Worth Reading? No.: "He even has to attribute and invent reprehensible behavior towards them to make them unsympathetic (pushing fat kids in the way of the bullets) this is why the joke is a stretch...
Debating Societies, Talking Points, and Choosing Our Governors: With Bill Clinton, or Bill Bradley, or Al Gore, or Barack Obama, or Lloyd Bentsen, or Hillary Rodham Clinton—you listen to them, or you talk to them, and you know there is a mind back there deeply knowledgeable about and wrestling with substantive issues of societal welfare and technocratic policy...
We May Well Not Be at Full Employment Yet...: Taking 2007 as a benchmark for the prime-age labor-force participation rate suggests that there is an extra 1.3% of workers ought there who could be relatively easily pulled back into the labor force—if the labor share of income were high enough...
For the Weekend: "Rocky" Training Montage
Rand Paul: Protecting Property Holders’ Rights to Discriminate on the Basis of Race: "Is the Hard Part About Believing in Freedom...": Dismantling the New Deal and rolling back the social insurance state were not ideas that had much potential political-economy juice.... But if... one of the key liberties that libertarians were fighting to defend was the liberty to discriminate against and oppress the Negroes—than all of a sudden you could have a political movement that might get somewhere...
What more would it take to get Pence to Invoke #Amendment25?: Daniel Dale: These Are Headlines About One Trump Cabinet Meeting #orangehairedbaboons
Nick Rowe: Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: "Are We at Full Employment Yet?": "Set aside the other benefits of switching from an inflation target to an NGDP level path target. If switching targets meant we wouldn't need to ask "Are we at full employment yet?" in order to figure out whether monetary policy is too tight or too loose, that would be a major advantage. Because it's a question we can't answer until it's too late. Instead we would simply hope that we are not at full employment yet: we would hope that target NGDP growth would in future be composed more of real GDP growth and less of inflation. And we would be forced to concentrate instead on microeconomic policies that might improve that composition... #monetarypolicy
Yes, the "LEAVE!" faction of the British Conservative and Unionist Party is bats--- insane. Any questions?: Arj Singh: 'Increasing Number' Of Tory MPs Are Considering No-Deal Brexit As A 'Viable' Plan B: "A Leave-backing former cabinet minister said... 'People aren’t going round and saying "No Deal" is going to be a cakewalk. But... people are... asking "how much will this actually impact people’s lives?" We won’t be able to get certain foods like bananas or tomatoes but it’s not like we won’t be able to eat. And we’ll be leaving at a time when British produce is beginning to come into season, so it’s the best possible time to leave with no deal'... #globalization #orangehairedbaboons
M.G. Siegler: Apple’s Precarious and Pivotal 2019: The battery replacement issue suggests that many people are no longer upgrading iPhones because they’re now 'good enough' and everyone is more than happy to just pay a bit more for a better battery.... The part about 'US dollar strength-related price increases'—yes, this is Apple... acknowledging there may be a price ceiling for the iPhone.... The '$1,500 iPhone' (the most expensive variety of the iPhone XS Max) [was] to test such upper boundaries, like velociraptors testing electric fences. Consider it tested! And they’ll remember!... #economicgrowth
Barry Eichengreen: [The Euro at 20: An Enduring Success but a Fundamental Failure(https://theconversation.com/the-euro-at-20-an-enduring-success-but-a-fundamental-failure-108149): "The belief of... Francois Mitterrand and... Helmut Kohl that a single European currency would apply irresistible pressure for political integration. It would lead eventually to their ultimate goal.... To function smoothly, monetary union requires banking union... an integrated fiscal system.... Banking union and fiscal union will only be regarded as legitimate if those responsible for their operation can be held accountable for their decisions by citizens.... Monetary integration creates a logic and therefore irresistible pressure for political integration. Or so the euro’s architects believed... #globalization #politicaleconomy
Ray [REDACTED]: Gather Round, Kids, While I Tell You About What I Call.. "The Greatest S---show in Crypto": "Many of you will be surprised to learn that there is a thriving industry of paid advice on buying and selling cryptos assets, including newsletters, telegram groups, and subscriber-only emails. Until very recently, one of the most popular paid services was something called Standpoint research, seen here on CNBC with Mr. Wonderful from SharkTank. In February of 2018, Standpoint Research recommended that its subscribers buy an unknown asset known as $DIG, because the owner of Standpoint thought there was insider trading going on. You read that right. He suspected fraud, so he issued a 'buy' recommendation. The coin then subsequently grew from a fraction of a penny to 16 cents per token, as buyers rushed in to acquire this asset. For the craziest reasons you can imagine. The coin itself claims to be backed by $15 billion (not a typo) in Gold Bullion. Their website, if you are curious, is http://arbitrade.io ... #finance #behavioral
This is the word on how the government ought to analyze proposed tax regulations: Greg Leiserson and Adam Looney: A Framework for Economic Analysis of Tax Regulations: "Treasury and the IRS should conduct a formal economic analysis of regulations in two cases. First, for regulations that implement recent tax legislation, the agencies should conduct an analysis if they have substantial discretion in designing the regulation and if different ways of doing so would vary substantially in their economic effects. Second, for regulations unrelated to recent legislation, the agencies should conduct an analysis if the regulation would have large economic effects relative to current practice... #fiscalpolicy
Cora Wandel: Daniel Webster In The Webster-Hayne Debate
Wikipedia: aDaniel Webster Memorial: "1603 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, beside Scott Circle at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Rhode Island Avenue...
Laboratories of democracy! It seems pretty clear that Brownback was in on the grift, but expected—hoped?—that his tax cuts would pull enough activity and people from Kansas City, MO to Kansas City, KS that that plus a normal rapid recovery would allow him to claim a "Kansas boom". But his henchmen still control the Kansas Republican Party: Heather Boushey: Failed Tax-Cut Experiment in Kansas Should Guide National Leaders: "Sam Brownback’s failed “red state experiment” has truly come to an end.... In 2012 and 2013, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed into law the largest tax cuts in Kansas history. The top state income tax rate fell by nearly one-third and passthrough taxes that affected mainly relatively wealthy individuals were eliminated. With the decline in revenues came significant spending cuts... #fiscalpolicy #orangehairedbaboons
Karam Sethi: Gymkhana's Dorset Brown Crab with Butter, Garlic and Black Pepper: "A seafood special from Gymkhana, the Anglo-Indian restaurant recently voted the best in Britain, this recipe was a Trishna original.... 6 tbsp melted butter, 1 tsp vegetable oil, 2 tbsp garlic paste (crush with a little water to a paste), 1 tbsp brown crab meat, 200g white crab meat, 1 tbsp coarse black pepper, 3 tbsp finely sliced wild garlic, plus extra to serve...
Lisa Cook: On invention gaps, hate-related violence, discrimination, and more: "One of the first things I do is to buy a Bic pen.... Each one was 10 dollars! Ten dollars! This completely stunned me. I knew how poor most people were. I knew students had to have these pens to write in their blue books. It just started this whole train of thought...
Where did David Brooks learn to use the term "cultural Marxism"? From Alexander Zubatov and his attempt to rehabilitate it from its anti-Semitic not just connotation but denotation. How does Zubatov do this? By taking Russell Blackford out of context: Zubatov claims that Blackford's bottom line is "in other words, [cultural Marxism] has perfectly respectable uses outside the dark, dank silos of the far right". Blackford's actual bottom line is that the modern "conception of cultural Marxism is too blunt an intellectual instrument to be useful for analysing current trends. At its worst, it mixes wild conspiracy theorizing with self-righteous moralism.... Right-wing culture warriors will go on employing the expression 'cultural Marxism'... attaching it to dubious, sometimes paranoid, theories of cultural history.... Outside of historical scholarship, and discussions of the history and current state of Western Marxism, we need to be careful.... Those of us who do not accept the narrative of a grand, semi-conspiratorial movement aimed at producing moral degeneracy should probably avoid using the term 'cultural Marxism'..." Why does Zubatov misuse Blackford? In the hope that he will pick up readers like Brooks, who will take his representations of what Blackford says to be accurate. Why does Brooks take Zubatov's representations of what Blackford says as accurate? Because Brooks is too lazy to do his homework: Ben Alpers: A Far-Right Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory Becomes a Mainstream Irritable Gesture: "At the heart of this largely rote piece of Brooksian pablum is a claim that deserves a closer look. 'The younger militants', writes Brooks, 'tend to have been influenced by the cultural Marxism that is now the lingua franca in the elite academy'. This is interesting both for what Brooks appears to be trying to say and, more immediately, how he has decided to say it.... Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik... murdered sixty-nine people... William Lind... associated with both the Free Congress Foundation and Lyndon LaRouche... Lind’s conception of Cultural Marxism was explicitly anti-Semitic.... Over the course of these years, the idea of Cultural Marxism spread across the American far right... [with] a big boost from Andrew Breitbart.... Why would a columnist like David Brooks, who is himself Jewish in background (if, perhaps, no longer in faith) and who has tried to build his brand identity by peddling in respectability and civility, adopt the term?... #publicsphere #orangehairedbaboons
The Death of Stalin (2017): Quotes: Vasily Stalin: "I know the drill: Smile, shake hands and try not to call them c---s...
Brian Barrett: The Silver Lining in Apple’s Very Bad iPhone News: "As recently as 2015, smartphone users on average upgraded their phone roughly every 24 months.... As of the fourth quarter of last year, that had jumped to at least 35 months.... The shift from buying phones on a two-year contract—heavily subsidized by the carriers—to installment plans in which the customer pays full freight... a sharp drop-off in carrier incentives. They turn out not to be worth it.... 'It actually costs them to get you into a new phone, to do those promotions, to run the transaction and put it on their books and finance it'. Bottom line: If your service is reliable and your iPhone still works fine, why go through the hassle?...
Natasha Geiling: The Science Behind Honey’s Eternal Shelf Life: "A slew of factors—its acidity, its lack of water and the presence of hydrogen peroxide—work in perfect harmony, allowing the sticky treat to last forever...
As I have said: It is a long time since NEC Chair Larry Kudlow was an economist—now he is just a guy who plays an economist on TV: Fred Imbert: White House Advisor Kudlow Says Apple Technology May Have Been 'Picked Off' by China: "'Apple technology may have been picked off by China and now China is becoming very competitive with Apple',” says Kudlow. 'There are some indications from China that they’re looking at that, but we don’t know that yet. There’s no enforcement; there’s nothing concrete', Kudlow adds... John Gruber: "What he’s saying here is that the Chinese stole Apple technology, copied it, and are now flooding the Chinese market with phones based on that stolen tech. I’m 99.8 percent certain that hasn’t happened—if there were Chinese phones built with stolen Apple technology we’d know it because we’d see it. I was going to say 'You can’t just make shit like this up', but as with most of the Trump Kakistocracy, things that you think are can’t’s are really just shouldn’t’s... #orangehairedbaboons #publicsphere
Kieran Healy: Conversational Disciplines: "Being able to broadly agree on how to evaluate contributions is what allows disciplines to tolerate (and enjoy) substantial, persistent disagreement about this or that 'big question' or 'core problem'. Thus, you are unlikely to convince your fellow Psychologists of something important (something that’s important to them, I mean) without some
fake datagood experimental evidence. Similarly, Economists may not pay attention to you if you do not proceed according to some (to them) widely-shared rules ofritualized mathematicsmodel-building supplemented by somenonsense about incentivesempirical evidence. Professional Historians will be less likely to take you seriously if your claims are not built onan elegant prose stylea demonstrated mastery of a relevant archive. Sociologists may remain unconvinced of your claims if you do notblame neoliberalismblame neoliberalism...The most remarkable thing about this piece from 2011 is that Robert Barro does not seem to feel under any pressure at all to provide an account of why it was that real GDP per capita was 52,049 dollars in the fourth quarter of 2007 and yet only 49,318 dollars in the second quarter of 2009—and did not surpass its 2007Q4 level again until 2013Q3. Other adherents than Barro to what Barro calls "normal economics" have put forward three theories: that there was a huge sudden change in American workers' utility functions that made them much less eager to work, that there was a huge sudden forgetting of a great deal of knowledge about how to manipulate nature and organize production, and that there was a great and well-founded fear that Obama was about to impose taxes to turn America into a Venezuela or that Bernanke was about to follow a monetary policy that would turn the U.S. into a Zimbabwe. They were laughed at. So Barro prefers to have no explanationa at all for why production per capita was lower than it had been in 2007Q4, and yet maintain unshaken confidence that he has a deep and correct understanding of what determines the level of production. You can't do that—hold that you have the correct theory, and yet not explain how it applies to the world in which you live: Robert Barro (2011): Keynesian Economics vs. Regular Economics - WSJ: "The overall prediction from regular economics is that an expansion of transfers, such as food stamps, decreases employment and, hence, gross domestic product (GDP). In regular economics, the central ideas involve incentives as the drivers of economic activity. Additional transfers to people with earnings below designated levels motivate less work effort by reducing the reward from working. In addition, the financing of a transfer program requires more taxes—today or in the future in the case of deficit financing. These added levies likely further reduce work effort—in this instance by taxpayers expected to finance the transfer—and also lower investment because the return after taxes is diminished... #economicsgonewrong #publicsphere #moralresponsibility
Cosma Shalizi (2007): ...In Different Voices: "Q: How would you react to the idea that a psychological trait, one intimately linked to the higher mental functions, is highly heritable? A: With suspicion and unease, naturally. Q: It's strongly correlated with educational achievement, class and race. A: Worse and worse. Q: Basically nothing that happens after early adolescence makes an impact on it; before that it's also correlated with diet. A: Do you work at the Heritage Foundation? Such things cannot be. Q: What if I told you the trait was accent? A: I'm sorry? Q (in a transparently fake California accent): When you, like, say words differently than other people? who speak, like, the same language? because that's how you, you know, learned to say them from people around you?... #reasoning
Josh Bivens: The Bad Economics of PAYGO Swamp Any Strategic Gain from Adopting It: "A PAYGO rule means that any tax cut or spending increase passed into law needs to be offset in the same spending cycle with tax increases or spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.... Many Washington insiders assert forcefully that committing to PAYGO rules in the House for the next Congress is good politics.... The strength of evidence supporting this political claim is debatable. What’s less debatable is that PAYGO really has hindered progressive policymaking in the not-so-recent past. For example, it was commitments to adhere to PAYGO that led to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) having underpowered subsidies for purchasing insurance and, even more importantly, having a long lag in implementation...
Matthew Yglesias: "It really feels like Pelosi should cut out the middle-man and open direct negotiations with the cast of Fox & Friends to find out what kind of face-saving 'border security' fudge they’d go for...
Sara Benincasa: Chrissy Teigen’s Headbands Helped Me Get Sober: "And other notes from an unexpected year...
David Roberts: "70% income taxes on high-earners are both familiar (we had them not that long ago) and supported by the bulk of expert research. It is the DC establishment that's dumb on this, not AOC...
Ezra Klein: "Anyway, I wouldn't predict too much off one op-ed. But I wouldn't dismiss it either. Romney knew he'd be opening himself to a lot of backlash by writing this. That suggests commitment from a prominent senator who, unlike Flake or Corker, hasn't wrecked his leverage by retiring...
