July 8, 2009
July 7, 2009
-
"Before you start spooning up your next bowl of Frosted Flakes, ponder this: driven partly by the demand for ethanol, the price of the corn in your flakes is about 40 percent higher than it was a few years ago; the sugar easily cost you more than double the world price; and your milk is at least 15 percent more expensive than it would be in many other countries."
-
What people need is a medical system that allows them to make the basic rationing decisions: what kind of insurance to buy, what kind of coverage to choose, what kind of trade-offs to make between spending on medicine and spending on other goods and services.
Such decisions are complex and people with little means will need assistance. But the specific “rationing” decisions–i.e., the inevitable trade-offs–vary dramatically by individual and family preference and circumstance. Even today’s system allows many people some choice between plans and providers. The rise in consumer-directed care is a positive development which is expanding the choices available to Americans.
The worst strategy would be to increase the government’s authority. Washington already has to “ration” care through its own programs. Politicizing everyone’s care by increasing federal control would override the differences in preferences and circumstances which are so important for all of us.
-
To wit, every product whose ingredients benefit from a subsidy should include the following language on the label:
“This product has been subsidized by the U.S. government at taxpayer expense. For more information, please visit usda.gov.”
And every product that benefits from tariff protection should have the following language on the label:
“This product is protected from foreign competition by U.S. import tariffs. Its price is higher as a result. For more information, please visit usitc.gov.”
-
Much like Arnold Kling, I can't recommend Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" enough. Excellent.
-
"One is that wages can't fall low enough to clear markets ….
Another is that the prevailing wage rate is below the prevailing reservation wage for most workers. Unemployment benefits aren't particularly generous, but available work may be very unpleasant, and declines in housing and energy costs have increased the purchasing power of whatever savings or income the unemployed do have.
Another possibility is that there are available wage rates that would suit both employer and employee, but other factors are preventing a match. Geographic mismatch could be an issue, for instance—the jobs could be in one place and the people in another, with no means available to move.
And another option might be the effect of structural change in the economy. If workers are highly uncertain about where new jobs will appear, they may delay training or relocation until they have a better idea where job opportunities will be."
July 6, 2009
-
"Imagine, for a moment, that Fred and Jane each have a credit card from a different bank. Fred charges $5,000 a month, and Jane charges $1,000 a month. Suppose it costs each bank $5 to produce and send a plastic credit card when the account is opened. That $5 "administrative cost" is a much lower percentage of Fred's monthly charges than it is of Jane's, but that does not mean Fred's bank is more efficient. It is purely a mathematical artifact of Fred's charging pattern, and it would be silly to compare the efficiency of bank operations on that basis. Yet that is how many analysts compare Medicare with private insurance."
-
"This is not just a pet issue of the “Vast Right-wing Conspiracy.” The libertarian activists at Downsize DC have been advocating a Read the Bills Act for years, and a left-leaning coalition at ReadTheBill.org is also demanding that Congress read the legislation before voting on it. But don’t hold your breath for Congress to actually implement such sensible, transpartisan-supported reform."
-
"But there were unintended consequences. 'Chinese factories said, `We'll go to Vietnam and other countries and set up business there.' Now there are more factories in more countries shipping to the U.S.,'' Koenig said.
Rather than reducing competition, the effort increased it.
The tariffs also raised costs for American consumers and served as a bonus for the furniture makers who filed the suit, since they eventually received the duties, Koenig said.
A report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, concurred, saying the case was “a tactical maneuver by one group of domestic producers to get a leg up on its domestic competition.''
The lesson, said Koenig, is that anti-dumping rules are complicated and can be manipulated. ''Any barrier to trade blows up,'' Koenig said."
-
"Who says the Chinese government isn’t susceptible to pressure? Its last-minute suspension of an order requiring the pre-installation of Internet filtering software called into question the popular notion that China is chronically impervious to pressure.
The “Green Dam Youth Escort” software attracted ire inside and outside China due to assessments by both independent analysts and computer industry representatives that the program, pitched as a tool to block pornographic content from personal computers, represented a much more sinister threat to privacy, choice and security."
July 5, 2009
July 4, 2009
Great American Novel Challenge: The Last of the Mohicans (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper
Posted by Carl Oberg under culture | Tags: american, book, challenge, last, mohicans, native, novel, review |1 Comment
This is my first entry in the Great American Novel Challenge, as created by Aaron Massey. I discussed this earlier, here.
The Last of the Mohicans (TLOTM) is James Fenimore Cooper’s classic (7-times put on film!) tale of the early frontier, white-Native American relations, and the last great war between Great Britain and France on this continent. It is, more specifically, a fictionalized account of the Battle of Fort William Henry and the Indian “massacre” which happened after the fort was surrendered. It tells the story of a British General’s two daughters, a well-meaning but haughty British captain, a white-gone-native-mountain-man guide, and his two Indian friends (they of the title) and their efforts to escape capture by the French and their Huron allies.
I’ll go straight to the significance in culture and literature, starting with the least important and building up. First, it perpetuates that great pre-World War II myth of the French as sneaky, clever, perhaps a little devious, but always honorable and respectable in war. The Marquis de Montcalm is presented as a chivalrous and honorable character, even as he fights in this decidedly un-European savage wilderness and attempts to reign in his barbarous Huron allies on the even of the massacre. A few years later, in 1759, both the Marquis and General Wolfe would die together on the Plains of Abraham, thus securing one of the classic images in history of “romantic war” and creating North American legend. This book perpetuates that legend, and in 1826 would have been much more recognizable to readers.
Second, this book is first and foremost an adventure novel. It is a story of outdoor prowess, skill with a weapon, and the ability to survive against all odds. There is revenge. There are Indians. There are ladies in distress. In other words, it is Western in the truly American sense even if it doesn’t take place west of the Mississippi. Of course, American Westerns are just knight-errant tales translated into a new geography, so it’s not American in its origin, although an argument could probably be made for Cooper bringing the European knight tale into an American idiom.
(This is as good a place as any for my note to all those who have seen the Daniel Day-Lewis movie version. The novel makes no effort at all to connect the feelings and treatment of the local New York militia and the upcoming Revolution. While there was some tension nobody was thinking Independence in 1757. In addition, the novel does not interject some tacked-on fake love triangle between one the the daughters, the Captain, and Hawkeye. Utter nonsense.)
Third, the novel introduces for the first time (to my knowledge) the white-native / mountain man character in the person of Nathaniel “Hawkeye” Bumppo. After losing his parents to an Indian raid, Bumppo is raised by a local tribe of Mohicans and becomes the classic man stuck between two worlds. He can negotiate calmly with a British General, yet never truly be trusted by that General. At the same time, he can track a deer as well as any Iroquois, yet there are still things that are a mystery to him in the forest. He repeatedly says throughout the book at he is “a man without a cross.” He is not of Christendom, yet he has no Indian ancestors to ask for assistance. He is “a son of a trackless forest.” This theme is as American as it gets. Be it culture, religion, race, or any other separator, the American protagonist almost always doesn’t belong and knows it.
Fourth, and most important in my mind (although my third point is arguably equally critical), TLOTM fixes the Native American character firmly in place for over a century. The three main Native characters in the novel (Chingachgook, Magua, and Uncas) all exhibit similar characteristics: they are contemplative and quiet. They are one with nature. When they do speak, it is in round-a-bout and vaguely poetic sentences that refer to ancestors and great gods in the sky. They are capable of great kindness, but when wronged become little more than animals that cannot be controlled by the logic and dignity of Western civilization (see Montcalm). They only desire freedom from the white man, yet can be easily manipulated with promises of scalps, trinkets, or alcohol. They are the spirit of the land, yet stand in the way of the agricultural dreams of Western moving colonists. They try to play the British and French off of one another, yet never seem to win. TLOTM in 1826 or a John Wayne movie, its pretty much all the same stereotypes. I’m not a deep enough student of American literature to say we have Cooper to blame for all of it, but he seem pretty seminal to me.
Overall, I really enjoyed TLOTM. The writing is a bit flowery and antiquated for my normal taste, but the action, history, and fundamental connection to American style kept me interested. I may move on and read (outside of the Challenge) the other Leatherstocking Tales, which continue the adventure of Hawkeye as he moves farther west.
July 4, 2009
July 2, 2009
-
"As the most ambitious energy and climate-change legislation ever introduced in Congress made its way to a floor vote last Friday, it grew fat with compromises, carve-outs, concessions and out-and-out gifts intended to win the votes of wavering lawmakers and the support of powerful industries.
The deal making continued right up until the final minutes, with the bill’s co-author Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, doling out billions of dollars in promises on the House floor to secure the final votes needed for passage.
The bill was freighted with hundreds of pages of special-interest favors, even as environmentalists lamented that its greenhouse-gas reduction targets had been whittled down."
-
The bad economics behind "Drag Me to Hell."
"The money that our heroine denies to mystics with bad credit does not come from some bottomless pot of wealth. It comes from the bank’s vaults, which are—as we’ve recently learned—very much finite. An extension granted to one debtor means an extension denied to another. A loan given to an unworthy borrower is a loan taken away from someone worthier. How many people, nodding along to what Christine “should have done,” give a moment’s thought to whomever gets that loan instead off-camera? Maybe the loan goes to a family man investing in his kids’ education, or to a small business owner looking to hire some new hands. Why does our soul-damning antagonist deserves credit more than anyone else?"
-
I wish articles like this would include some recognition that the structure of employment can change along with the economy. Manufacturing jobs didn't exist in today's numbers 100 years ago. And they won't again 100 years from now.
-
"The spending on overseas travel is up almost tenfold since 1995, and has nearly tripled since 2001, according to the Journal analysis of 60,000 travel records. Hundreds of lawmakers traveled overseas in 2008 at a cost of about $13 million. That's a 50% jump since Democrats took control of Congress two years ago.
The cost of so-called congressional delegations, known among lawmakers as "codels," has risen nearly 70% since 2005, when an influence-peddling scandal led to a ban on travel funded by lobbyists, according to the data."
-
"If legislation of this sort, which establishes the first-ever regulatory controls on the most ubiquitous byproduct of modern industrial society, imposes new efficiency requirements on all-manner of appliances and consumer products, could trigger the imposition of tariffs on foreign products (likely in violation of U.S. trade commitments), furthers the federal government's environmentally destructive love affair with corn-based ethanol, contains numerous provisions drafted or urged by various special interest groups, and (at least in one version) contained provisions designed to create a national housing code, can be adopted by a House of Congress within hours of being written (let alone becoming public), then any claim of transparency in government is a farce."
-
Here I am, working, like a sucker.
June 29, 2009
-
Waxman-Markey funding comes with Davis-Bacon union labor requirements. Did anybody talk about that on Friday during the debate?
June 28, 2009
-
Then NPR host Guy Raz asked Krugman to comment on bill cosponsor Rep. Henry Waxman’s claim that his bill would create jobs. Krugman said:
"There will be more wind farms built. There will be people retrofitting power plants to reduce their emissions. There will be people weatherproofing housing and commercial buildings.”
What economists would say is that economists is that employment would be just about the same as it would have been otherwise, but it will be a different mix of jobs."
June 27, 2009
