Fairly Recently: Must- and Should-Reads, and Writings... (April 3, 2019)
Greenspan and Wooldridge Argue the American Love and Embrace of Capitalism Is the Key...: In America, successful entrepreneurs, innovators, organizers, and promoters have become not just well-off, but heroes. They are who we want to be. As John Steinbeck once remarked, here in America "we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist..." They have become our heroes so even though, as Greenspan and Wooldridge say, "entrepreneurs are seldom the easiest of heroes"...
Economics, Identity, and the Democratic Recession: Talking Points: The Polanyiist Party Line: That people believe they ought to have rights to stable communities that support them (land), to the income they expected (labor), and to continuity of employment (finance); but the only rights the market respects are property rights; and the only property rights that are worth anything are those that help you make things for which rich people have a serious and unsatiated jone...
So Far, Only Three Professional Republicans Are Willing to Say that Stephen Moore Is Not Qualified to Be a Fed Governor: They are: Greg Mankiw, Ross Douthat, Steve Moore...
Note to Self: Kevin Hassett has given up his internal opposition to Stephen Moore: Squawk Box...
Comment of the Day: John Howard Brown: "It always seemed to me, that there are two probable causes for little current evidence of life elsewhere...
Comment of the Day: Ronald Brakels: "I don't have much confidence that machines won't outclass humans in, eventually, everything...
Comment of the Day: I thought it was 20 pounds of berries for one pound of wax? But I could be wrong...: Nils: The Lighting Budget of Thomas Jefferson: "Those 'myrtle' candles Jefferson was asking for would be bayberry...
Glory M. Liu: Research
Wikipedia: Cara cara Navel Orange
Glory M. Liu: Rethinking the “Chicago Smith” Problem: Adam Smith and the Chicago School, 1929–1980
Paul Krugman (2013): The Neo-Paleo-Keynesian Counter-Counter-Counterrevolution
Andrew M. Childs et al. (2002): Exponential Algorithmic Speedup by Quantum Walk: "We construct an oracular (i.e., black box) problem that can be solved exponentially faster on a quantum computer than on a classical computer.... We show how to implement the quantum walk efficiently in our oracular setting...
Barry Ritholtz: Math, Money, and Making a Difference: "MIT alumnus James Simons is a mathematician and founder of the highly quantitative investment firm Renaissance Technologies where he served as CEO for over 30 years before becoming board chair...
Lucas Kwan Peterson: For Cramped New York, an Expanding Dining Scene: "In the city that never sleeps, as they say, the marquees of Times Square nearly make one forget the concrete dystopia of what is seemingly an unlivable urban wasteland. Surrounded by rats, black trash bags and graffiti-tagged storefronts on Broadway Street, New York’s primary thoroughfare, I wondered aloud if I would be able to find a decent meal in what was surely a culinary heart of darkness. In Los Angeles, we’re spoiled by the breadth and quality of our dining options...
Mike Idsin: The Educational Admissions Scandal Widens Dramatically: "Wealthy parents would approach a person affiliated with a national organization, technically incorporated as a nonprofit, known by the initials NAR.... The individual would then provide a list of other people in the communities in question who, for a payment often topping 1 million, would permit the family to modify their mailing address in such a way that guaranteed entry into the exclusive schools. The details of the mailing-address system are complex and relate to systems often criticized by advocates, where complex laws dictate a precise and convoluted geographic zone where this address-modification scheme is permissible. The family would in most cases have to physically live in the location 'sold' by the counterparty, who would use the money to flee the jurisdiction.... A significant commission, often 5-6% of the payment, would go to the NAR agent(s)...
Facebook defines "some passwords" = 600000000 passwords: Pedro Canahuati: Keeping Passwords Secure: "As part of a routine security review in January, we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format within our internal data storage systems...
Noah Smith: Trump's Industrial Rebirth Is a Dead End: "There's no future in the U.S. for old-line manufacturers that dominated the mid-20th century economy...
2016: Monday Smackdown: Debating Societies, Talking Points, and Choosing Our Governors
2013 Monday Smackdown: No, Amity Shlaes Has No Idea What She Is Talking About. Why Do You Ask?: WTF!?!?!?!? Weblogging: Galbraith's claim that Coolidge did not know—i.e., did not know enough to feel he could challenge Mellon's talking points—and did not care—i.e., thought the US headed for disaster but did not bother to learn enough to think he had an informed enough view to challenge Mellon--seems to me to hit the nail on the head. Certainly Herbert Hoover thought so...
2006: Avadim Hayinu l'Pharaoh b'Mitzrayim: For a 'normal' California teenager like George Allen was once to sign up with the Confederacy is weird and creepy. For a half-Jewish California teenager to sign up with the Confederacy...
2009: Paul Krugman Urges Greg Mankiw to Pay More Attention to Quality Control: To me, the thing to note about the economists-the Mankiws, the Lucases, the Beckers, the Barros, and all the rest-who have pledged allegiance to the Republican Party this year is how much they have stopped thinking like economists.... I still remember being convinced by Rick Ericson when I had just turned 18 that thinking like an economist required that one always pay attention to three key principles: market equilibrium, individuals responding to incentives, cost-benefit tradeoffs.... I thought that Chicago-School economists believed in these principles too...
2005: Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Idiots? (Social Security Edition): It is a clown show,... The administration's Social Security gurus shove Bush out there with talking points saying that passing the Bush plan is essential because if we don't the Social Security trust fund balance will hit zero in 2041, and big benefit cuts will then be necessary—and then they roll out a plan in which the Social Security trust fund balance hits zero in 2030...
2008: Every Time I Try to Crawl Out, They Pull Me Back in!: Called on forty minutes' notice, I trot over to the J-School studio to be a talking head on BBC/Newsnight about Fannie and Freddie. I have my talking points ready: The chance that American taxpayers will actually lose any money if Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson decide that Fannie and Freddie need government support is very low.... Nevertheless, there is now a risk that Fannie and Freddie will need some form of government support in the next month.... And what do I find also on BBC/Newsnight when I get there? I FIND THAT I AM ON WITH GROVER-FRACKING-NORQUIST!! I FIND THAT I AM ON WITH GROVER-FRACKING-NORQUIST!!! WHO HAS THREE POINTS HE WANTS TO MAKE: Barack Obama wants to take your money by raising your taxes and pay it to the Communist Chinese. Oil prices are high today and the economy is in a near recession because of Nancy Pelosi.... Economic growth is stalling because congress has not extended the Bush tax cuts.... I am not paid enough to deal with this lying bullshit...
Wikipedia: Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick
Olivia Nuzzi: Trump Aides Fear He Is Overselling His ‘Exoneration’: "'There will be plenty of unfavorable things about the president in the full report, which we think will eventually come out, so let’s not go overboard saying there’s no wrongdoing. Let’s move on', one senior White House official told me...
Mark Bergen: YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Let Toxic Videos Run Rampant: "Proposals to change recommendations and curb conspiracies were sacrificed for engagement, staff say...
Aaron Rupar: On Twitter: "TRUMP during NRCC speech: 'If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, okay? Rerrrr rerrrr!'...
This strikes me as a very good thing: Sophia S. Armenakas and Molly C. McCafferty: Laibson and Furman to Take Over Ec10, Increase Number of Lectures: "Kennedy School Professor and former Obama economic advisor Jason Furman ’92 and Economics Professor David I. Laibson ’88 will take over teaching Economics 10: 'Principles of Economics' next fall. The two professors will replace Economics Professor N. Gregory Mankiw as course heads of Ec10, the department’s year-long flagship introductory course and one of Harvard’s largest undergraduate courses. Mankiw announced in early March that he will step down from teaching the course at the end of the semester to pursue 'new pedagogical challenges'. The two said they plan to change the course structure from its current format to make lectures 'far more frequent'. Instead of attending three sections per week with approximately 20 of those sections replaced by a lecture, students will attend two lectures and one section per week...
Anna Stansbury: "The Black Death in England in the mid-1300s was an enormous human tragedy-and a fascinating labor supply shock. (Who said economists are heartless?) A thread FRED has a new record holder: The longest data series now belongs to a new addition, Population in England, which dates back to 1086. Check it out here: http://ow.ly/Dzkb50kfrvA. The Black Death first hit England in 1348. The population fell by more than a third in just a few years: from over 6 million to less than 4 million. As the graph from @stlouisfed and @bankofengland shows, it would take another 250 years for the population to recover...
British Whigs in the mid-nineteenth century were not democrats—and not that anti-slavery: John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1866): "In a great speech... Mr. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, spoke these words: 'The corner stone of our new government rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. Our new government is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth'...
Kevin Drum: Five Things Donald Trump Said on Tuesday: "Today President Trump: 1. Tried three times to say the word 'origins' but instead said 'oranges'. 2. Said that his father was born in Germany, not New York City. 3. Complained, in a speech being televised on CSPAN, that he had to be careful because someone was probably going to leak what he said to the media. 4. In the same speech, warned Republicans to be 'more paranoid' because he 'doesn’t like the way the votes are being tallied.' 5.Said about wind farms, 'They say the noise causes cancer'. But don’t worry. His mental state is just fine. Nothing to see here...
#noted #weblogs
