Dan Mallinger

20 TIMES More Nothing!

2011-02-22T19:06:00.002-05:00

FactCheck.org notes that Palin is giving incorrect talking points again:

Sarah Palin claimed in a bogus Twitter message that Obama’s cuts are only 0.1 percent of the deficit, when the true figure is 20 times higher.

FactCheck is right to call her on it. But 20x 0.1% ain't exactly what I call a "cut."

File this one under "WSF," for We're So F----d

Singing Out of Tune

2011-02-22T14:54:00.002-05:00

Here's a quote from Bob Herbert that seems to capture the current zeitgeist of class warfare:

It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.
So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them

No. The politicians are the wealthy. Take the power away from the politicians and the rest of the "power players" can only whistle to themselves.

I'm not sure why we forget that we still have votes. And the "average" person is not so dumb and naive as to be duped into voting against his or her best interest. The list of issues mentioned are either fake (e.g. hacking away at public services - there's no evidence that's actually happening at present), or the result of "bought-and-paid-for" politicians (to use Herbert's own words). If one can be "bought" then the buyer is not to blame, the seller is.

There's an interesting psychological dynamic at play, whose literature I'd like to review. For some reason we believe our politicians (those from our party) are good, fair, and noble leaders. And while we typically associate great leaders with, well, leadership, we seem to justify their behaviors by implicitly suggesting that they are simply weak and unable to stand up to the Goliath in front of them. It's as if the biblical story was, instead, about a man who was killed by a giant but really tried his best.

HT to CafeHayek

Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong

2011-01-30T18:24:00.004-05:00

I just stumbled onto this post on the Huffington Post. Apparently, the basic premise is:

Bachmann says "[...] men, like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished [...]"
Chris Matthews calls her a "balloon head" (?) for saying this.
Glenn Beck erupts with some sort of rant against Chris Matthews.

First off, I'm not particularly fond of any of the three; however, Bachmann is actually correct! Adams was very much opposed to slavery, as were a small number of the founding fathers, and went so far as a propose scenarios to how it might be ended despite a lack of popular support.

I'm not sure which is more sad: that Bachmann is the "historian" of the three, or that the other two can engage in revisionist history without challenge from their viewers. I really don't have a strong opinion about the political side of this, but it saddens me that history is so poorly known and that TV/radio hosts are so rarely challenged to address facts.

StupidEST. Quote. Ever.

2011-01-20T23:07:00.002-05:00

But Texas has a rapidly growing population — largely, suggests Harvard’s Edward Glaeser, because its liberal land-use and zoning policies have kept housing cheap. There’s nothing wrong with that; but given that rising population, Texas needs to create jobs more rapidly than the rest of the country just to keep up with a growing work force.

P-Krugs is at it again. If you ever thought that he was still an economist, you were terribly, terribly wrong.

Basically, PK is trying to tell us that people move to Texas because housing is cheaper and thus Texas is falling behind the times unless they add new jobs. This, seriously, is how he justifies a claim that Texas doesn't really have a growing economy.

First, people move for jobs, not cheaper mortgages. The idea that economic growth drives immigration (and then immigrants help drive further growth) is basic econ. It's true even when immigrants are just 'Mericans from other states.

Second, part of what makes Texas' story impressive (and I'm otherwise no tremendous fan of the state), is that the economic growth is coupled by population growth - population growth which is, in large part, from less educated Mexican immigrants. That's not just impressive, it's good for the world.

Lessons for the Media: Coping with Tragedy

2011-01-13T23:20:00.003-05:00

Reason.tv provides a wonderful, wonderful short about the danger of misplaced anger, reactionary tactics, and pigeon holing that our media (and gubmint!) loves so greatly after a tragedy. It also contains my favorite data point about the Columbine shootings (spoiler alert: they were the bullies, not the victims of bullying prior to the event).

Watch it. Then watch it again.

Jobs with Incentives: Congress

2011-01-04T20:55:00.003-05:00

A while back, one of my favorite economists suggested tying congressional pay to the S&P 500. At the time, I loved the notion - I'm a big believer in merit pay, especially for people who otherwise are purely compensated on popularity. But it's indicative of a view that a) congress should primarily be concerned with "growing" the economy; b) congress actually can do that. Even if you put aside the timeline games one can play - say, pass a crappy reg that artificially boosts GDP for a decade (how much does the S&P tie to municipal bonds anyhow?) - is this really the strategy that best reflects our goals and understanding of the problem?

I'm going to suggest that the answer is "no." Not to criticize Yandle (he still is a hero of mine), but because I think there's a good exercise in this. I suggest that there are two fundamental truths to democracy:

If people really need a service (e.g. police), they will impose this desire upon their politicians by many, many means. It will be nearly impossible for politicians to avoid the issue. These issues will be pursued with "honest signaling" as getting new government programs would require the citizens' democratic effort.
If people are promised "free" stuff, they will take it. It will then become an assumed right and very hard to remove.

If these two axioms of democracy are correct, I say the incentives for politicians should always be pointed towards making things smaller. Effectively, #2 creates a vicious cycle of wasteful spending and this needs to be curtailed. And, allegedly, #1 prevents cuts from ever going too deep.

So, perhaps, the lesson is that we should incentivize our politicians to always make things smaller. Effectively, these would be public funds to bribe politicians to be frugal, much like special interests bribe them to be spendthrift. So why not take a big pot of money, peg it to the projected annual budget and give congress a juicy cut of the dough in proportion to whatever is slashed from the budget? Cut a trillion dollars, get a new house!

Anyhow, here's a video about the difficulty of cutting "free" stuff:

The Greatest Yet...

2010-12-27T13:52:00.003-05:00

This is the greatest post of Jacoby's that I've seen. It's a wonderful illustration of the true progressivism of taxation already in existence, as well as the amazing disappointment that BHO is.

I'm still waiting to see a serious difference between BHO and GW...

A Word from a TSA Scanning Machine

2010-11-28T11:47:00.001-05:00

It gratifies me to think that millions of travelers will now be able to fly just a little bit easier, secure in the knowledge of their newly complete and accurate TSA profiles—all thanks to my precise genital scans. Length, girth, heft, and any major identifying characteristics. Everything but the color; this is America, and we don't do that here.

The last sentence is definitely my favorite. Full thing here.

Taleb's Predictions

2010-11-25T10:44:00.004-05:00

Nassim Taleb provides a picture of 2036 via three predictions. My responses to each:

1. Adam Smith was the first to say that large corporations can't survive shocks and quickly changing environments. Taleb seems to be playing up his own brand of thought without considering the baseline: Only special advantages, afforded by government, change the landscape enough to favor large, and long-lasting, corporations. Unless Taleb is predicting a massive shift in policy (and one that is the opposite of the just-passed finance bill), I say "meh!"

2. Globalization leads to pandemic? First, WTF is an electronic pandemic? Second, bird flu, SARS, etc. were never documented as proven dangers by the academic communities. Meh.

3. More religion? This is the only point that merits some consideration in my view. But it seems to be the same old tune: "When things are bad, folks turn to religion..." There's a lot of dogma in the world. Given that we're in an education bubble, I wonder if we'll see an increase in "intellectual" dogma, not the religious flavor.

I'm giving Taleb 0 for 3.

The End of an Era

2010-11-07T08:36:00.003-05:00

Nate DiMeo gives a eulogy for the Walkman, which Sony retired October 23rd, 2010.

There are a lot of thoughts that come up when I found this out. Primarily, surprise that anyone still bought these, and then a question of what the closing margins on the product were (were they anything like the old TV tubes?).

But, really, it's a reminder that the world is a much bigger and much more segregated place than I credit. I've seen CD players, maybe once or twice in the last year, on the subway. But no one I know has one. I'm not sure anyone I know can name someone who does. iPods aren't just more expensive, they require computers. They require credit cards and bank accounts to purchase music.

The sadness I feel as we watch the end of the Walkman, is that while many in this country can afford Walkmans (Walkmen?) and tapes and everything else, sold at a premium for their current place in the product life cycle, is that indicators are lacking. The mere fact that these items were affordable means that income and wealth indicators suggest something positive. But the avoidance of credit cards and computers and other advances - which the indicators suggest are affordable - reminds us of structural and cultural factors which are often overlooked.

Of course, the Walkman is retired. And the world becomes a better place every day.

Expertise Bias

2010-11-06T14:27:00.003-04:00

How often do media outlets note a contributor's level of education (e.g. PhD), and how often do they note the level of education and the domain (e.g. PhD in Political Science)? I seem to see the former far more often than I would like...

The Higher Ed Bubble Is Coming

2010-08-23T04:22:00.001-04:00

That's all for now. More to come...

What I've Been Re-Reading

2010-04-18T08:44:00.003-04:00

I was leafing through some old books earlier and I'd thought I'd recommend both:

1. How the Mind Works, by Pinker: This book needs no further praise, it's gotten tons. But do read it, or re-read it!

2. Freedomnomics, by Lott: The title makes me cringe and the author's conservative leanings make me embarrassed to admit I've read it (though, really, what does that say about me?!), but it is, nonetheless, a tremendous book with very good insights. It's also less political than expected, given the author.

1 out of 3 Ain't Bad...

2010-04-17T19:47:00.002-04:00

Of course, we could (and should) expect more from a Nobel Prize winner.

So here we go again with the "PK is a dirty liar" grand game:

PK has a couple of arguments and some data points to back them up here.

1. Market forces can't prevent massive failures even if we allow them to fail. Data point: 1980's S&L crisis. Yep, I'm not kidding. Someone with a Nobel Prize in economics actually thinks that we didn't bail out banks in the 80's. Seriously. I'm pretty sure, in this climate, even kids know about the S&L bailouts.

Bonus: Freddie and Fannie just happen to be part of that story too!

2. Limiting the size of banks doesn't matter. Data point: during the depression, most of the big banks didn't fail in the first waves. This is true, but a remarkably silly argument. After all, I could argue that limiting your calories won't help you live longer; haven't you seen how early people who starve die?! Problem being that we didn't just have "smaller" banking in that era, we had unit banking. Banks were so controlled by this that they couldn't diversify at all and were incredibly volatile because of it. Comparing one extreme to the other isn't even remotely sensible. And PK also fails to note that (1) Canada - who didn't employ unit banking restrictions - didn't have the banking problems the States did in that era; (2) as stupid as the policy was, the "constant" bank runs pre-Fed are a grossly exaggerated and misunderstood phenomenon.

3. Saying "We won't bail them out" is politically infeasible. Ok, fine, he's got me there.

Ambiguous Sentences

2010-01-17T22:41:00.002-05:00

By this measure, if the provisions in the current Senate bill concerning undocumented aliens make it into the final bill, progressives, who put principle above politics, should bid adios to the whole effort.

The article is here, and the question is: Do the commas make this sentence more like "elephants, who are large, have a gestation period of 22 months" OR "elephants, who are trained carefully, can paint beautifully"? I suspect the former, though it makes the sentence rather silly.

The article is interesting throughout nonetheless. One interesting number that comes up is 17% - allegedly the percentage of the uninsured who are illegals. Now this makes for some serious questions about health care. A large chunk of the uninsured are people who could afford it, but choose not to - I seem to recall a number in the range of 30-40%. And it seems most likely that illegals don't have insurance because they can't get jobs which provide it, that's one of the ways they are discriminated against. But they might be able to if individual-based plans were the norm instead of these "one size fits all" employer-based plans were. So, again, I ask why are we changing the rules again before we remove the old changes that made the system worse? Primarily the WWII era absurd tax law that discounts taxes on employer based heath plans.

Also, you can find elephants painting here; it's really amazing.

Managing Journal Articles

2010-01-14T12:26:00.002-05:00

I recently joined academia.edu which seems to be a social networking site for researchers and students. I wasn't thrilled. There's a proliferation of niche-networks, and they seem to lose so much time trying to build the 'standard' features, that they don't actually get to the niche tools that would make their product relevant. In short, I think most new social networks are counting on niche communities without providing a compelling reason for these subgroups to join beyond a sense of separation.

However (and this is an enthusiastic however!) I've been notified by the tech team at academia.edu that they will start doing journal aggregation - this came about in my response to their rating request. I'm hoping that I'll soon use academia.edu to manage the topics and journals I follow and keep track of new publications while, simultaneously, discovering new research that's related but isn't directly labeled according to my a priori categories.

Here's the brief response I got from the tech team:

Journals are on the way!

Thanks for contacting Academia.edu,

Yuriy

Best of luck to them!

Transparency in Government

2010-01-08T21:31:00.001-05:00

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that the Obama administration argued in a recent court filing that the Privacy Act does not apply to the Executive Office of the President (EOP). This court filing came in a Judicial Watch lawsuit filed in 1996 against the Clinton White House related to a scandal known as "Filegate," where the Clinton White House obtained and maintained the private FBI files of hundreds of former Reagan and Bush officials [Alexander v. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Civil Action No. 96-2123/97-1288 (RCL)].

[...]

While the Obama administration continues to advance the legal and political argument that the White House and the FBI should not be held accountable for the Filegate scandal, former President Bill Clinton apparently disagrees. Clinton told historian Taylor Branch in preparation for a recently published book, "those files did not belong at The White House," and that they "should have been isolated and returned immediately." According to Branch, Clinton also said "[h]is administration should and would be held accountable."

"What the Obama administration is effectively saying here is that if the White House decides to illegally compile FBI files and violate your privacy rights, tough luck," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "It is disturbing that the Obama administration has taken the legal position that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House and the Clinton FBI files scandal was not a scandal. It is worrying to those of us concerned about the Obama White House's collecting "fishy" emails and compiling an enemies list of new organizations, radio hosts, businesses, and industry associations to attack and smear. Is the Obama defense of the FBI files scandal less about that Clinton scandal and more about what his White House is up to now?"

Full article from Judicial Watch.

We Won!! Well, sort of...

2010-01-07T22:45:00.001-05:00

Merry XMas to Don Boudreaux

2009-12-25T20:13:00.002-05:00

My favorite grumpy economist received a Kindle for the holidays and has bought himself the complete works of Shakespeare for the amazing price of 99 cents. That's a LOT less than what I paid for the massive tomb sitting on the bottom shelf of my bookcase (which is the only shelf which I think could hold it!). Technology is a wonderful, wonderful thing. While I don't have a Kindle, it's becoming more desirable every day. If you have one, I highly recommend the content, obviously, but some of the comments claim navigation within the book is horrible. Hey, I said technology was wonderful, not perfect or complete :)

PS. I'm still looking for good uses for wingedcupidpaintedblind.com. Your ideas are always welcome.

Matt Welch: I Want French Health Care

2009-12-20T22:50:00.001-05:00

Koch Talks iPhones and Web Apps

2009-11-28T00:28:00.002-05:00

Starting with a somewhat misinformed rant, PPK has been organizing his thoughts and opining on the roll of web versus native apps on mobile technologies such as the iPhone. It's quite good throughout - I think it's going to be the most insightful and interesting set of posts from a blog I always read anyway. Please do check out the PPK blog here.

I think I'll add to the conversation when I have a bit of time, but my current thought is that there are only two real reasons for the App Store:

To guarantee payments to coders. This will end the same way DRM on music did - deal with it. The problem isn't "pirates," it's producers pricing themselves out of the market.
To guarantee that your apps don't corrupt your phone. To this end, I wonder if we will see a network of 'app reviewal companies' that provide downloads at cost that have been checked in the same manner that Apple does now. Regardless, I wonder just how sandboxed the environment for apps currently is and what that means for security...

That's Not What She Said!

2009-11-13T00:54:00.003-05:00

Kevin Bartz shows a simple chart of bill length versus support in the House:

Of course the increasing variance is a good reminder that successfully adding pork in exchange for support is actually a more difficult task than one might imagine. Additionally, I'd like to see the same chart with all resolutions, not just those that passed. I suspect that the effect would be even stronger in that case, but I'm not sure...

Loaded Questions

2009-11-04T07:46:00.002-05:00

Good surveys avoid loaded questions, it's why you never ask questions like "How many jobs did your received stimulus money help you to create or save?"

Markets Versus Government: Gay Rights

2009-11-02T00:28:00.003-05:00

Here's a clip from the Daily Show at the Gay Rights parade in DC. At 1:02 you'll see the common argument about gays and shared medical benefits (spoiler alert: they want them).

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Queer and Loathing in D.C. - Radical Gay Agenda

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Here's an article from 2005 - 92% of Fortune 500 companies offer shared benefits for same sex partners. In fact, every company I've worked for has done the same.

So why the hell are people saying we need more of a government who won't even grant them the basic freedoms their employers offer?! And why do these same people want less of the free markets that granted them these privileges??

The Title Alone is Reason to Read It

2009-10-26T02:55:00.001-04:00

Why Love Has Wings and Sex Has Not: How Reminders of Love and Sex Influence Creative and Analytic Thinking
by Forster, J., Epstude, K., Ozelsel, A.
This article examines cognitive links between romantic love and creativity and between sexual desire and analytic thought based on construal level theory. It suggests that when in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective, which should enhance holistic thinking and thereby creative thought, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters, they focus on the present and on concrete details enhancing analytic thinking. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or when they experience sex, subtle or even unconscious reminders of love versus sex should suffice to change processing modes. Two studies explicitly or subtly reminded participants of situations of love or sex and found support for this hypothesis.