I have to imagine policy makers realize this. That policymakers still insist on pushing measures like this through rather than educate their supporters suggest simple political opportunism and an unfortunate lack of leadership with costs that are borne by society's most vulnerable. From John Stossel:
Minimum wage laws actually kill off the entry-level jobs most needed by poor people to break into the job market.Read on.
Ugh. Apparently the FAA is now recommending that before takeoff "nothing [can] be placed in seatback storage pockets — no eyeglasses, no ticket stubs, no iPods or bottles of water or magazines" (NYT via Paul Kedrosky). As Kedrosky goes on to note: "My suggestion: Let’s go straight to no humans on planes. They’re just a general security risk, and they smell badly too."
I really hope they don't start attempting to enforce this for overseas flights.
Despite not liking the act of travel I find the idea of space travel fascinating. Spurred in part by the Ansari X-Prize, the level of private innovation is nothing short of exciting. In one of the few policies that I do support (though this seems to be more out of necessity than desire), the Obama administration seems poised to outsource large swaths of NASA's mandate to the private sector to companies including SpaceX (WSJ), founded by Elon Musk who also founded PayPal.
Popular Mechanics takes a cool behind the scenes look at SpaceX one of the leaders in the new space race led not by governments but companies.
There's just so much that's wrong and hilarious about this bad Photoshopping job it's difficult to know where to begin (PhotoshopDisasters via TechCrunch):
Here's the original:
Here's the edited version used on Microsoft's Polish site:
The comments from PhotoshopDisasters highlighted by TechCrunch:
It's something that I'm trying to do a lot less of, and not terribly successfully. But it makes sense - multi-taskers are a lot less productive than they think they are and are less efficient at processing information overall even when it doesn't involve a computer (Crunchgear).
Heh. That's pretty much the description by Megan McArdle though not really in a complimentary way in thinking about why Americans like Europe: "Without the pretty buildings, what would often most strike Americans is the cramped space and a succession of petty inconveniences. "
She may be right - I've often thought that Toronto lacks much of the character that other cities I've visited. The two must sees for visitors seem to be Niagara Falls which isn't even in Toronto and the CN Tower.
Great advice and a useful gut check (inc.com): "Strong problem-solving skills are important in business. Knowing which problems you absolutely must solve is even more important"
A somewhat random article that came across - Survivors of extreme situations—on Everest and elsewhere—credit the help of a 'third man' who is not there (WSJ):
In 1953, Austrian mountaineer Herman Buhl became the first person to climb Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas—at 26,660 feet, the ninth tallest peak in the world. He climbed by himself and not far from the summit was forced to spend the night out in the open without a sleeping bag or tent. It was an agonizing bivouac, but Buhl survived—in part, he later wrote, because he sensed that he shared the ordeal with a companion. "I had an extraordinary feeling," he wrote, "that I was not alone."Read on.
Higher tax rates result in less incentive for high income earners to make more money. Taken from Greg Mankiw's blog who quotes a recent article (NYT):
In the three decades after World War II, when the incomes of the rich grew more slowly than those of the middle class, the top marginal rate ranged from 70 to 91 percent. Mr. Piketty, one of the economists who analyzed the I.R.S. data, argues that these high rates did not affect merely post-tax income. They also helped hold down the pretax incomes of the wealthy, he says, by giving them less incentive to make many millions of dollars.
Xinhua News Agency reported earlier this week that China's reduced its holdings of US government debt (ChinaNewsWrap) though one wonders if there is debt being moved around internally rather than at the sovereign level. Either way, this can't be good news for the US where the Obama administration reported that they are projecting a ten year deficit of $9 trillion, up from $7 trillion this past Friday (to put this in context it's estimated that the Iraq war "only" $700 billion since 2003).
There is growing number of those who believe China's economic problems may be bigger. Seeking Alpha asks whether China is exactly where Japan was in the 1980s (before it entered into its decade long recession). Of course it might help if we could be more certain China wasn't manipulating the data that it releases (Kedrosky). Meanwhile, despite stated ambitions for Shanghai to become a global financial center that displaces even Hong Kong, a recent quote from Shanghai's mayor highlights some of the issues that they'll have to navigate before they can do so (Kedrosky): "Financiers have the least conscience in the world when it comes to making money. By saying that, I would have offended many bankers and financiers, but this is my personal experience".
Absolutely hilarious (and not even in the usual snarky way generally reserved for journalists):
On the difference between charity and markets:
Where I think those who favor government spending trip themselves up is in thinking that they can spend better than the poor. You have to ask yourself if they really believe in empowerment when they ask questions like "but won't they buy a pack of cigarettes instead of that bar of soap?" Now, if only Godin would apply his same level of logic to areas where private markets can play a greater role like healthcare and education.From a fundraising point of view, this endless emergency is exactly what a non-profit needs to find and close donors. A dollar donated today will save someone’s life. It will. One dollar, one life. That’s urgent. As urgent as it gets.
The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t save that person's life forever, it saves it for today. Tomorrow, there’s another emergency, and yesterday’s dollar is gone. So you need another dollar. Two billion people, two billion dollars. Every day. Today, tomorrow, the day after that. It’s an endless emergency, and it never gets better. [...]
How to prime the pump of the system to improve productivity enough that things get better [sustainably, moving away from the constant emergencies]?
Markets.
When two people trade, both win. No one buys a bar a soap unless the money they’re spending for the soap is worth less to them than the soap itself.
When someone in poverty buys a device that improves productivity, the device pays for itself (if it didn’t, they wouldn’t buy it.) So a drip irrigation system, for example, may pay off by creating two or three harvests a year instead of one.
In short, Edward Morse, director of economic research at LCM Commodities makes the argument that the last round of high oil prices, surprise surprise, resulted in the development of new capacity - both in Saudi Arabia and deep sea resources (FT Alphaville, emphasis theirs):
If there was an obstacle, it was not a lack of hydrocarbon reserves— deep-water resources appear to be even more abundant than was thought a decade ago—but a lack of equipment to discover and produce them. Fewer than two dozen drilling vessels (each costing $1 billion) were available in 2000. But as contracts were put in place at the time of very high oil prices, the fleet of vessels started to expand. By 2012, there should be closer to 150 such units available for finding and developing deep-water resources.He also cites the development of the massive abundance of shale gas - though it seems even here he's understating the case. Read on here.
There are developing alternatives to DEET (Wired.com, just as there are concerns about its use [em. mine]):
The new repellent was discovered at just the right time. Earlier this month, a team of French researchers reported that DEET affects cells in a manner similar to nerve gas, and enhances the toxic effects of a common pesticide. Though the study was preliminary and may not be relevant for humans, it became fodder for dozens of cautionary headlines leaving the public looking for alternatives. [...]Of course one of the better alternatives is for environmentalists to stop killing poor people with bad science and bring back DDT (WSJ).
Her team used a computer program to find 2,000 chemicals that might repel mosquitoes. The scientists went on to make 23 of those compounds in their laboratory and evaluated their ability to repel a common type of mosquito.
For one of the tests, brave volunteers dabbed a bit of the substance on a cloth attached to their arms, and then stick them into a cage filled with 500 mosquitoes.
The best compound made by Tsikolia and her team provided the volunteers with protection for an average of 73 days, whereas DEET only worked for 17 days.
"On second thought, maybe I'll go home and take a bath." Apparently posted at a public pool (passive-aggressive notes):
You can find more here.
I've been wanting to do a post on some of the absurd criticisms by the media and those who should know better of opponents to "ObamaCare" but just haven't had enough time.
It's a pretty important issue for everyone around the world given how the US greatly dominates and exports its medical innovation. Beyond this, from a policy standpoint, it's one of those useful things to consider whether not having access to government run healthcare is hindering entrepreneurship and innovation in other industries.
The CEO of Whole Foods proposed an alternative to ObamaCare in the pages of the Wall Street Journal:
While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyoneBecause of his opposition of a tax payer funded and government managed system, there are some who have gone absolutely unhinged and have called on supporters to boycott Whole Foods (maybe they'll go shop for groceries instead at Walmart? - you have to giggle at the irony). I think the best conservative response to the calls to boycott is from Radley Balko at theAgitator (via ClubforGrowth):
Mackey didn’t deliberately offend his customers, as some have suggested. He didn’t spit in your face, or, as one commenter so delicately put it, he didn’t “squeeze a turd in [your] punch bowl.” He just overestimated you.
You see, he shared his ideas on health care reform, thinking that you, being so famously open-minded and all, might take to a few of them, or that it at least might start a conversation. I guess he felt he’d built up some cache with you, and wanted to introduce you to some new ideas. His mistake wasn’t in intentionally offending his customers. He’s a businessman who has built a huge company up from the ground. I’m sure he knows you don’t deliberately offend your customers. His mistake was assuming you all were open-minded enough consider these ideas without taking offense—that you wouldn’t throw a tantrum merely because he suggested some reforms that didn’t fall in direct line with those endorsed by your exalted Democratic leaders in Washington. In retrospect? Yeah, it was a bad move. Turns out that many of you weren’t nearly mature enough to handle it.
Hey, the guy isn’t perfect!
Not a good day for law enforcement. NYT via Instapundit:
The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.
“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”
Would you believe that it costs 54K USD/month in rent for a hotdog stand outside the Met in NYC? (TheBSReport):
Sherpa agreed late last year to pay almost $643,000 annually for the right to sell food and drinks from carts on either side of the Met’s entrance.What's cool about this story is that it's illustrative of a number of economics ideas complete with pirates and a black market, a government granted monopoly and the advantage of auctions. First the scarcity and the government granted monopoly (Slate):
Rent is set at auction (with vendors battling it out) rather than by the city ... (The museum attracts 5 million visitors a year, and the hot dog stands are the only food outlets for blocks.) Last year's occupant paid $415,000 a year for the Met stands plus at least $25,000 for supplies and labor, and didn't go under—so we can assume he brought in significantly more than $440,000.They compete with vendors on the streets who purchase permits instead of bidding on them at auction:
They don't have to pay rent for specific spots; their only real estate expense is the cart permit the city requires them to buy. Theoretically, that'll put you back just $200 a year. But since the city caps the number of food vendor permits at 3,100, far below demand, there's an extensive black market. Some companies buy up the permits for dozens of carts and then lease them to individual vendors at highly inflated prices.But because of the scarcity and significant incentives, there are pirates:
Of course it's not so much fun for the vendor who was evicted and fell behind on his rent, but it's amazing how effective auctions of government monopolies can be at soaking up all economic profits.“As soon as they pulled Sherpa’s cart out yesterday, all these guys just pulled in. The city has to enforce the law,” said Rossi.
These unlicensed dealers offer dogs and drinks for less money than the legit businessmen, whose prices are set by the Parks Department.
Somehow er, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies made it to #7 of the top Business and Investing Bestsellers at Amazon.
Though it's labeled as "a communist utopia" by Spiegel, the reality is that it's more like the negative income tax system as advocated by Milton Friedman (Wikipedia via HN):
The idea is simple: The payment of a basic monthly income, funded with tax revenues, of 100 Namibia dollars, or about €9 ($13), for each citizen. There are no conditions, and nothing is expected in return. The money comes from various organizations, including AIDS foundations, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Protestant churches in Germany's Rhineland and Westphalia regions.The idea is that over time this would be financed through taxes. The program, called the Basic Income Grant (BIG) has a website here. In many ways it's brilliant because in effect it provides a baseline for everyone and the truly poor are empowered to make their own choices. One of the problems for welfare today, you have perverse disincentives to accept a part time job (or even get a small windfall from a relative) as you would no longer meet the income/asset test to receive welfare and would in effect lose money by doing so. This corrects for it and then some - reducing a massive amount of bureaucracy in the administration of social welfare programs. Of course, the political issue becomes what should be the amount of the windfall be? What should the break even point be? What programs/services/tax breaks/exemptions should be eliminated (there are clearly many including less obvious ones like minimum wage)?
The organizers of the trial want to know what their subjects will do with the 100 Namibian dollars, whether they will invest the money or waste it on drink, and whether it will deter them from working or motivate them to work harder. Most of all, they want to know if it alleviates poverty.
