Now we can all move on to... Saturday.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Haters Gonna Hate
One thing which always amuses me about my good friends the Inqy commenters is that everything in my urban hellhole can simultaneously be about "rich hipster yuppie scum ruining the neighborhood for working class folks" and "disgusting filthy poor people and immigrants." Oddly, they're not entirely wrong, as many parts of the city manage to maintain a reasonable class mix, but the point is that..whatever it is, it's bad. "Rich people" move in, it's bad. Poor people move in, it's bad. It's always bad.
Anyway, the urban hellhole is still fairly affordable, just don't tell anybody. Especially if they're rich and/or poor.
Anyway, the urban hellhole is still fairly affordable, just don't tell anybody. Especially if they're rich and/or poor.
Short Term/Long Term
I'm a lazy blogger so I haven't even clicked through to the study yet (but I will!), but the interesting question is what happens if we have, say, a 60% gas price spike that persists over several years. All of the recent price spikes haven't lasted very long, and, yes, for most people there isn't an immense amount of flexibility in their driving habits, at least in the short run.
Probably Stupid
The eternal debate rages on, though in this case I vote stupid.
It's also useful to imagine what kind of media reaction we'd have if, say, Dennis Kucinich had said something like this back in 2003.
It's also useful to imagine what kind of media reaction we'd have if, say, Dennis Kucinich had said something like this back in 2003.
At Least He's Talking About Jobs
Yes Mittens' diagnosis of the problem makes him an absurd buffoon, but I still appreciate that there's a politician actually talking about jobs.
SUPERTRAINS
I don't actually think it's the worst thing in the world (though bad for Florida) that Governor Luthor shot down the Florida HSR project. It was more of a relatively quick and inexpensive demonstration project than an ideal route. Hopefully the money is well spent elsewhere.
How About Prison, Then?
That's what the state AGs should say.
Some of the State AGs, including the lead on the investigation, Miller, as well as federal regulators and administration officials appear to be looking toward principal forgiveness as the punishment the banks should pay. But as recently as last night, JP Morgan Chase's [JPM Jamie Dimon told reporters, "Yeah, that's off the table."
At Least The Porsche Dealers Are Doing Well
Monthly jobs report comes out tomorrow. As always I'm rooting for actual good news, but if there isn't good news, I'm rooting for a really bad measurement. I don't want people to be unemployed, but a lot of them are, and people in DC don't seem to notice. I don't have much faith that a big spike in measured unemployment will cause them to change course, but it's about the only chance we have.
Unpossible
As always, it's impossible to resolve the "stupid or lying" question, but it does not speak well for the self-styled school reform leader. She always seemed to be a transparent huckster to me, but one who suckered a lot of people.
Thursday Is New Jobless Day
Again we have almost, but not quite, good news.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 388,000 the Labor Department said. The government revised weekly claims data back to 2006 to take into account new seasonal factors.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims edging down to 380,000. The prior weeks figure was revised up to 394,000 from the previously reported 382,000.
Morning Thread
by Molly Ivors
All your emails are belonging to us.
Ya gotta love Rachel: she sure pisses off the right people.
All your emails are belonging to us.
"The latest incarnation of this breed of conservatism weirdly involves this show," Maddow said. As she described it, a conservative think tank in Michigan called the Mackinac Center submitted a FOIA request seeking any emails from labor professors at the University of Michigan, Wayne State University and Michigan State University. The center demanded any email that includes the words "Scott Walker," "Wisconsin," "Madison," and "Maddow."
Maddow said she thought that the Center's interest in her was due to her highlighting of a controversial bill in the state that seeks to allow the state government to declare a financial emergency in a town and send in an unelected official who can actually dissolve the town.
Ya gotta love Rachel: she sure pisses off the right people.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Early Happy Hour
I am watching my local sports franchise engage in an even more pointless than usual sporting competition.
And Zombie Unicorns
It's actually possible that Fed is causing some problems with policies which are mostly about goosing asset prices and feeding the banksters - policies I support in the absense of a viable alternative - but Hoenig has never seen a moment were zombie inflation unicorns weren't just around the corner.
If I ran the zoo we'd have a massive one time helicopter drop, but I don't.
...housekeeping: comments links seem to be fading in and out, that's a disqus-side thing, but you can just click on the timestamp permalink to have access to the brilliant wit of my commenters.
If I ran the zoo we'd have a massive one time helicopter drop, but I don't.
...housekeeping: comments links seem to be fading in and out, that's a disqus-side thing, but you can just click on the timestamp permalink to have access to the brilliant wit of my commenters.
Optics
I'm sure the Immelt appointment is mostly a "better have them pissing out than pissing in" kind of thing, but can't we have a slightly better set of Galtian overlords?
Late Night Service
As longtime readers know, one of my big pet peeves is that we fret a lot about drunk driving (rightfully), while not doing the the rather obvious thing - sufficient late night public transportation, at least on weekends - in most places.
Good public transportation isn't really viable in a lot of places, but at least in the places where it is there should be more late night service. My own local transit authority has, to its credit, made some slight improvements in recent years in this area.
Good public transportation isn't really viable in a lot of places, but at least in the places where it is there should be more late night service. My own local transit authority has, to its credit, made some slight improvements in recent years in this area.
Inqy Commenters Explained
No I'm not surprised to find out that the Philadelphia metro area is highly segregated. The city itself is quite diverse, having both white and various non-white groups represented, but the suburbs are still pretty white.
Abortion Is Icky
And, sadly, there are lots of squishy pro-choicers who don't entirely get the choice concept, so if you pass laws trying to outlaw "bad" abortions they'll be on board with it.
Fail
Worst governor ever.
Inconsistency, the governor’s office insisted, this surely was not. The $150 million in funds Walker was now requesting were for improvements to the Hiawatha line -- between Milwaukee and Chicago – which, the governor stressed, was more popular and profitable. The previous batch of money was for a line between Madison and Milwaukee, which, because it was new, would have had cost overruns and required additional state obligations.
A Department of Transportation source, however, says that while the majority of the $800-million-plus in funds set aside for Wisconsin was for the Madison-Milwaukee rail, a small but not insignificant chunk was for improvements to the Hiawatha line.
“They received $12 million to upgrade and lay new track on the Hiawatha line between Milwaukee and Chicago,” the DOT official said.
A Cunning Plan
Another way to put this is that if UK household debt does not rise, their economy will tank. And they know this.
Reading Tom Friedman's Entrails
Oh boy.
So there will have to be boots on the ground. But they can't be "ours," and certainly not Tom Friedman's or those of any of the Friedman clan. But they won't be anybody else's either, so they will be ours.
I don’t know Libya, but my gut tells me that any kind of decent outcome there will require boots on the ground — either as military help for the rebels to oust Qaddafi as we want, or as post-Qaddafi peacekeepers and referees between tribes and factions to help with any transition to democracy. Those boots cannot be ours. We absolutely cannot afford it — whether in terms of money, manpower, energy or attention. But I am deeply dubious that our allies can or will handle it without us, either. And if the fight there turns ugly, or stalemates, people will be calling for our humanitarian help again. You bomb it, you own it.
So there will have to be boots on the ground. But they can't be "ours," and certainly not Tom Friedman's or those of any of the Friedman clan. But they won't be anybody else's either, so they will be ours.
Miserable Failures
Leonhardt is an obvious exception here, but the other group of people who spend all their time fretting about inflation and other zombie unicorns, instead of jobs, are elite journalists.
One group of Fed officials and watchers worries constantly about the prospect of rising inflation, no matter what the economy is doing. Some of them are haunted by the inflation of the 1970s and worry it may return at any time. Others spend much of their time with bank executives or big investors, who generally have more to lose from high inflation than from high unemployment.
There is no equivalent group — at least not one as influential — that obsesses over unemployment. Instead, the other side of the debate tends to be dominated by moderates, like Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, and Mr. Meyer, who sometimes worry about inflation and sometimes about unemployment.
The result is a bias that can distort the Fed’s decision-making. Just look at the last 18 months. Again and again, the inflation worriers, who are known as hawks, warned of an overheated economy. In one speech, a regional Fed president even raised the specter of Weimar Germany.
Jobs
Actual number comes out Friday, estimate of private sector job growth is +201K.
That'd be good, but not great, news.
That'd be good, but not great, news.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sucks To Be A Republican Congressional Staffer
Well, sucks for Democratic ones, too, but they're also going to be missing paychecks soon.
Good
There's a weird aversion to putting any kind of commerce in certain kinds of public spaces in this country, as if people don't need food, drink, and bathrooms. So, yes, put some vendors in the pedestrian plazas.
Shutdown
A lot of things will be bad in a shutdown, but a rather obvious one is lots of federal workers will stop receiving paychecks.
We Can Always Bail Them Out Again
The saga of Big Shitpile will never end.
(Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) could be forced to repurchase thousands of home equity loans, after a judge ruled in favor of a bond insurer that argued it could build its case based on a sampling of loans.
The ruling against EMC Mortgage Corp, once a unit of Bear Stearns Cos, comes amid many lawsuits seeking to force banks to buy back tens of billions of dollars of mortgage and other home loans that went sour. JPMorgan bought Bear Stearns in 2008.
Governor Luthor
They weren't smart enough to avoid electing a supervillain, but at least they're smart enough to regret it.
Cheating
I wasn't suggesting there should be no performance measurement, just that if you design a system where it's easy to cheat, potential cheaters are unlikely to be caught, and there are big carrots and sticks for success and failure respectively, people are going to cheat. This has no direct benefit for the kids, and perhaps as importantly any education policy decisions made based on the data are going to be flawed. So time to design a new system.
Foxy
Fox has pulled off a neat trick whereby most of the rest of their "peers" at other outlets pretend that they operate under the same rules yet then somehow manage to ignore it when they don't.
In newly uncovered audio, a Fox News executive boasts that he lied repeatedly during the closing days of the 2008 presidential campaign when he speculated on-air "about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism."
Speaking in 2009 onboard a pricey Mediterranean cruise sponsored by a right-wing college, Fox Washington managing editor Bill Sammon described his attempts the previous year to link Obama to "socialism" as "mischievous speculation." Sammon, who is also a Fox News vice president, acknowledged that "privately" he had believed that the socialism allegation was "rather far-fetched."
Morning Post
by Molly Ivors
In which my friend Susie Madrak says goodbye to Joe Bageant.
(BONUS: She's been sneered at by Robert Stacy McCain for this!)
In which my friend Susie Madrak says goodbye to Joe Bageant.
He wrote so powerfully about the tyranny of owning things, but also had a deep well of compassion for fellow Americans who were caught on the wheels of the economic machine. He was always urging me to stop looking for a job and “just write, goddamnit!”
He was my friend, a mentor, and a fellow traveler on the road to enlightenment. He was no doubt easier from a distance, but really, aren’t we all?
(BONUS: She's been sneered at by Robert Stacy McCain for this!)
Monday, March 28, 2011
Massive Incentives To Cheat
I did a wee stint as a delivery guy from Domino's years ago. I had a very young manager who had found her way into the position sort of by default when the previous manager left. She was ambitious. Domino's had a pretty rigorous accounting system - wage hours, ingredients used/wasted, number of late fees (I think it was $3 off >half hour delivery) - and the mangers were scored using it. Presumably doing well was the way to move up in the company. And, well, my manager totally cheated. Not sure how she covered all of it, but she'd usually eat the late fees herself and not record them as late, and then sympathize on the phone with distraught managers at other branches who weren't doing as well.
Point is, give people an incentive to cheat (big benefit of success, big cost of failure, low likelihood of getting caught), and many people will.
Point is, give people an incentive to cheat (big benefit of success, big cost of failure, low likelihood of getting caught), and many people will.
Journalism!
McClatchy.
Unsurprisingly, the obvious course of action is to cut taxes on rich people and big corporations.
States broke? Maybe they cut taxes too much
By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — In his new budget proposal, Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich calls for extending a generous 21 percent cut in state income taxes. The measure was originally part of a sweeping 2005 tax overhaul that abolished the state corporate income tax and phased out a business property tax.
The tax cuts were supposed to stimulate Ohio's economy and create jobs. But that never happened once the economy tanked. Instead, the changes ended up costing Ohio more than $2 billion a year in lost tax revenue; money that would go a long way toward closing the state's $8 billion budget gap for fiscal year 2012.
Unsurprisingly, the obvious course of action is to cut taxes on rich people and big corporations.
It's Easy If You Cheat
A bunch of people sent this to me.
A closer look at Noyes, however, raises questions about its test scores from 2006 to 2010. Its proficiency rates rose at a much faster rate than the average for D.C. schools. Then, in 2010, when scores dipped for most of the district's elementary schools, Noyes' proficiency rates fell further than average.
A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.
Cunning Plan
Obama is apparently using his KENYANMUSLIMSOCIALIST mind meld powers to get conservatives to keep talking about completely nutty stuff.
It's obviously the only explanation that makes any sense.
I have no idea if the White House thinks this is stuff is good or bad for them politically, but that's very different from saying it's their strategery.
It's obviously the only explanation that makes any sense.
I have no idea if the White House thinks this is stuff is good or bad for them politically, but that's very different from saying it's their strategery.
What's The Deal With Maine And Vermont
Weren't, as far as I know, ground zero for the housing bubble. Why all the vacant houses?
...ah, seasonal/vacation homes and similar.
Maine had the highest proportion of empty housing stock, at 22.8%. Other states with gluts of empty houses included Vermont (20.5%), Florida (17.5%), Arizona (16.3%) and Alaska (15.9%).
...ah, seasonal/vacation homes and similar.
Good Luck With That
Transportation trolls who fight rail by arguing that buses are better, then fight buses based on, well, FREEDOM FROM ALL TAXATION, always argue that one reason buses are better is that their routes are more flexible. That's true in theory, but in practice all it takes is one stakeholder - as in, bus passenger - to lose their shit about a service change and get their local councilperson to do something about it. So, yes, I do applaud a pilot program to try to speed up a bus route by reducing the frequency of stops along a segment of it from every block to every other block, but all it'll take is one little old lady who, understandably, doesn't want to walk that extra block to mess with the plan. It's what happened last time they tried.
Nobody Could Have Predicted
That Republicans would sucker Dems into supporting entitlement cuts and then pull the football away.
Global Banksters
Corrupt everywhere.
KABUL, Afghanistan — When a brother and nephew of an Afghan vice president wanted to build up their fuel transport business, they took out a $19 million loan from Kabul Bank. When a brother of the president wanted to start a cement factory, he took out a $2.9 million loan; he also took out $7.9 million for a luxury townhouse in Dubai. When the bank’s chief executive officer wanted to invest in newly built apartments in Kabul, he took almost $18 million.
At War
The terms were hard to beat: no collateral, little or no interest. And repayment optional, at least in practice.
Gotta Hate Somebody
The GOP likely candidates are fighting to out-bigot each other because our mainstream media won't call it what it is. I don't think the great guardians of our discourse are generally very good referees when it comes to racism and bigotry (and definitely not misogyny), but at least if someone important says something explicitly racist against African-Americans it has a reasonable chance of becoming a "controversy" (Trent Lott, Don Imus). But anti-Muslim bigotry gets a total free pass.
The Cuts Matter
In the context of 8.9% unemployment, sometimes it's easy for liberals like me to start sounding like a (dumb) conservative caricature of a liberal, talking about government spending as if it was an end in itself. That is, more government spending is always good! That is actually mostly true at the moment, because we need more stimulus and the spending is what provides that stimulus. And reducing spending is contractionary, which will be a drag on the economy.
Still we shouldn't forget the specifics of those cuts, that aside from their impact on the macroeconomy they'll have an impact on jobs and on the people who benefit from those programs.
Heckuva job.
Still we shouldn't forget the specifics of those cuts, that aside from their impact on the macroeconomy they'll have an impact on jobs and on the people who benefit from those programs.
Heckuva job.
Starting To Forget About The Jews
I never thought they meant it, but for quite some time most "respectable" people pushing the "Christian Nation" crap usually managed to pay some lip service to "Judeo-Christian" so it wasn't quite as obvious that they're exclusionary bigots.
The God talk in politics quieted down for a bit, but if we're going to go down this path again it's time to cut the can't-we-all-get-along ecumenical stuff and start talking disagreements. Does Mittens qualify under Radical Cleric Gingrich's definition of Christian?
The God talk in politics quieted down for a bit, but if we're going to go down this path again it's time to cut the can't-we-all-get-along ecumenical stuff and start talking disagreements. Does Mittens qualify under Radical Cleric Gingrich's definition of Christian?
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Our media, not theirs
Culture of Truth and I are doing Virtually Speaking Sundays at 9:00 PM Eastern (that's about now), and you can stream live here.
Signed,
Not Atrios
Signed,
Not Atrios
Adding...
Krugman's of course right that there's no reason for general deflation to have any impact on employment whatsoever.
...though expected deflation could have a negative impact.
...though expected deflation could have a negative impact.
Inflation Rocks
One of the great triumphs of elites was convincing people that inflation is a really really really bad thing. And, yes, if it's too high it can be a bad thing, and in the shorter term wages adjustments are probably unlikely to keep up so it will feel like a bad thing for a lot of workers, but the truth is for a lot of people inflation is a good thing. Basically anyone with a nominally denominated debt with a fixed interest rate, like a 30-year mortgage, is going to benefit from a bit of inflation. It was the big boogeyman in the 70s, but once the economy finally turned around a lot of people woke up and discovered that their mortgage payments were a pittance.
It's the people we owe the money to who don't like inflation, and they've convinced us that we shouldn't like it either.
It's the people we owe the money to who don't like inflation, and they've convinced us that we shouldn't like it either.
Other Peoples' Politics
German edition:
The environmentalist Greens meanwhile took 25% of the vote, ahead of the 23.5% secured by the Social Democrats. The results mean that the center-left parties can now form a coalition, with the Greens set to name the governor in a German state for the first time.
That the upset should happen in Baden-Wuerttemberg, a wealthy region along Germany's border with France and Switzerland home to luxury car makers Daimler AG (DDAIY) and Porsche SE (POAHY), is doubly embarrassing for Merkel and her party. CDU rule in the state was unchallenged in the post-war era until this election cycle, when creeping voter fatigue with such a protracted political order was magnified by vociferous protests against plans to redevelop Stuttgart's central train station that drew the attention of the nation.
Same As It Ever Was
It would be nice if reporters would recognize that the Tea Partiers are just the same tribal 27percenter social conservative Republicans that we've always had with us. They don't give a shit about "fiscal issues," and they never did. They might care about tax rates, but they still want their Medicare. They care that their perceived tribe is not in charge, and are animated by the fact that they imagine some other tribe is getting all of the goodies, but that doesn't really have anything to do with "fiscal issues" as we generally understand them. They think their money is going to the "other" because the KenyanMuslimSocialist is in charge.
Religious Liberty
While I'm usually at peace with the plight of the atheist in this country, I do occasionally get a bit cranky about the fact that most of us are in actuality much more "tolerant" of religion in the sense of not actively justifying employment discrimination based on it. Atheists are no threat to religion, zealous religious bigots are.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Afternoon Thread
Had spicy seafood noodle soup in Chinatown then shopped at Reading Terminal Market.
Thanks, Democratic Consultants
I know Steve's mostly kidding about blaming midterm voters, but, look, more than any time that I can remember I had no idea what the Dem campaign message in 2010 was. There was no national messaging. Vote for Dems... and? We barely even got vote for Dems because they're slightly less evil than the other guys. There was no sense that anything was at stake.
The other side got kenyanmuslimsocialistdeathpanel also, too, he's CUTTING YOUR MEDICARE AND HAVING THE GOVERNMENT TAKE IT OVER. That was enough.
The other side got kenyanmuslimsocialistdeathpanel also, too, he's CUTTING YOUR MEDICARE AND HAVING THE GOVERNMENT TAKE IT OVER. That was enough.
Chump Change
Lawyers enabling the banksters ordered to pay pennies for their misdeeds.
I'm sure the state bar association will take some action (hahahahaha).
I'm sure the state bar association will take some action (hahahahaha).
Lost Our Way
Bob Herbert's last column.
The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.
Good Morning
At the table are the hard right loons and the right of center Dems. Everyone else can take a ticket. To borrow a phrase, it's quite irksome.
Friday, March 25, 2011
With What Army
It's always been the case the executive branches are more than able to ignore pesky spitballs from judicial branches. Without deference, the power of the judiciary over executives is pretty limited in practice...
Blog Life
As a blogger who posts a lot I frequently repeat myself in various ways. I also quite frequently write things which are fairly obvious. In addition, not every post contains the entire universe. But, you know, I'm aware of all these things and it's always amusing when occasionally people think I don't. I don't think if I say something fairly obvious that I am showering great wisdom on you, thinking thoughts no one has thought before. The fact that I leave something out of a post does not necessarily mean I am unaware of it. And as for repetition, I actually think repetition is important.
This sounds like a grumpy post and I don't mean it to be, just highlighting something.
This sounds like a grumpy post and I don't mean it to be, just highlighting something.
Why Didn't You Kill Him When You Had The Chance?
John McCain didn't even have to go back in time to get close enough to kill the latest Hitler of the Week.
Flashback from the twitter:
Flashback from the twitter:
Late evening with Col. Qadhafi at his "ranch" in Libya - interesting meeting with an interesting man.
Oh That William Cronon
For some reason his name didn't click. I don't recommend a lot of non-fiction books to people - in part because (to be honest) I don't read all that many (brain tired after staring at tubes all day) - but yes his book Nature's Metropolis is truly awesome.
What The Debate Should Be
In a rational world, there should be no discussion of the deficit as policy. Team D and Team R would prevent their competing visions for what the government should spend money on, and where that money should come from. People should understand that modest deficits are never a problem, and that large deficits in recessions are predictable (drop in revenue) and often desired (stabilizers to prevent state budget cuts). We should not be discussing whether we must cut granny's pension to cut the deficit, we should be discussing how big we think granny's pension should be and how we should be funding that pension. Ideally, we'd have one party that thinks we should spend a bit more on things like social safety nets, and do so with more progressive taxation, and one party which thinks we should spend a bit less, and with more regressive taxation, and the voters would have a reasonably clear choice.
But instead we're having a debate about just how much we should be cutting the deficit now and in 20 years, even though the former is a stupid idea and the latter we have no control over.
But instead we're having a debate about just how much we should be cutting the deficit now and in 20 years, even though the former is a stupid idea and the latter we have no control over.
Knowns and Unknowns
This is the most thorough summary of the current situation in Fukushima that I've seen, though having said that it still isn't really clear exactly what is going on.
Thug Life
There were many evolving reasons I was 'anonymous' for the first couple of years I ran this blog, and one of them was that I was an employee at a state university.
Spring Fundraising FunDay The Fifth And Final
Week's ending, Spring Fundraising FunDays are coming to the end, but just think of all the great memories we have.
Thanks to all who have contributed! And to all who read this sucky blog!
Thanks to all who have contributed! And to all who read this sucky blog!
So What To Do
Adding to yesterday's post, it isn't that I think we should do nothing. We should spend less money on stupid wars. We should bring down the cost of our health care system, because we spend stupid amounts of money for a mediocre product, and a lot of that (most!) is government spending. But we shouldn't maintain the fantasy that any of these things will lower the deficit. If, for example, we reduce the rate of growth in health care costs, this means that future lawmakers will spend less money on health care than projected. It does not mean that the deficit will be lowered. It will only lower the deficit if lawmakers don't cut taxes on rich people or spend more money on future stupid wars.
My point is that, yes, we should make sensible policy decision, but sensible policy decisions have nothing to do with the deficit 20 years from now. We can't control that.
My point is that, yes, we should make sensible policy decision, but sensible policy decisions have nothing to do with the deficit 20 years from now. We can't control that.
Clarity
Shorter version of yesterday's screed.
The voters Andrew Romano was deriding want jobs, retirement security and a health care system that doesn't threaten them with bankruptcy. No matter how frequently he and his fellow Beltway denizens characterize those voters as wanting the moon, these are not unreasonable demands. The rest of the OECD does a far better job than the US does at meeting them. The rest of the OECD does so without significantly lower growth rates and with better public infrastructure.
Cutely named cliques of elected officials are working in back rooms to find a way for the Congress and the President to not deliver what voters (very reasonably) want, and to do so without anybody's fingerprints on that failure. This is styled a "courageous" "Grand Bargain."
I don't know what kind of government you call that, but "representative" isn't one of the adjectives that come to mind.
The voters Andrew Romano was deriding want jobs, retirement security and a health care system that doesn't threaten them with bankruptcy. No matter how frequently he and his fellow Beltway denizens characterize those voters as wanting the moon, these are not unreasonable demands. The rest of the OECD does a far better job than the US does at meeting them. The rest of the OECD does so without significantly lower growth rates and with better public infrastructure.
Cutely named cliques of elected officials are working in back rooms to find a way for the Congress and the President to not deliver what voters (very reasonably) want, and to do so without anybody's fingerprints on that failure. This is styled a "courageous" "Grand Bargain."
I don't know what kind of government you call that, but "representative" isn't one of the adjectives that come to mind.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Not Good
Ezra tweeted that "Romer is very good at enemployment and excuses people give for not doing anything about it," but she's not very good if she's signing on to the ZOMG WE MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE DEFICIT ESPECIALLY CUTTING GRANNY'S MEAGER PENSION crowd.
There's literally nothing that this Congress today can do to reduce the deficit 20 years from now. What you can do is sign into law legislation which reduces granny's pension 20 years from now. And, yes, given the way our system works it wouldn't necessarily be easy to reverse that decision 20 years from now depending on the politics and who is in power. But what will still be easy to do 20 years from now is cutting taxes on rich people and writing giant checks to defense contractors. Those things are always easy to do when Congress and their donors are mostly rich people. Reduce the deficit by cutting granny's pension, increase it again by cutting taxes on rich people. Rinse repeat.
It'd be one thing if there was anything out there suggesting that borrowing costs were going to spike. But there isn't.And as long as the Fed is willing to buy Treasuries, there's no need for borrowing costs to ever spike. As long as we're in a recession, they should be doing this. Anyone sending message other than "we should borrow a large amount of money basically for free and spend it on jobs and boosting aggregate demand" is sending the wrong message. Worrying about problems 10-20 years from now is worrying about things you have almost precisely zero control over.
...adding, just to remind us of history I'm sure we all remember. That Democratic Socialist Bill Clinton got rid of the deficit. Alan Greenspan, who spent years fretting about the deficit, suddenly decided the great danger we faced was not having a deficit. And Bush tax cuts, and too and such.
There's literally nothing that this Congress today can do to reduce the deficit 20 years from now. What you can do is sign into law legislation which reduces granny's pension 20 years from now. And, yes, given the way our system works it wouldn't necessarily be easy to reverse that decision 20 years from now depending on the politics and who is in power. But what will still be easy to do 20 years from now is cutting taxes on rich people and writing giant checks to defense contractors. Those things are always easy to do when Congress and their donors are mostly rich people. Reduce the deficit by cutting granny's pension, increase it again by cutting taxes on rich people. Rinse repeat.
It'd be one thing if there was anything out there suggesting that borrowing costs were going to spike. But there isn't.And as long as the Fed is willing to buy Treasuries, there's no need for borrowing costs to ever spike. As long as we're in a recession, they should be doing this. Anyone sending message other than "we should borrow a large amount of money basically for free and spend it on jobs and boosting aggregate demand" is sending the wrong message. Worrying about problems 10-20 years from now is worrying about things you have almost precisely zero control over.
...adding, just to remind us of history I'm sure we all remember. That Democratic Socialist Bill Clinton got rid of the deficit. Alan Greenspan, who spent years fretting about the deficit, suddenly decided the great danger we faced was not having a deficit. And Bush tax cuts, and too and such.
Silver Linings
Our kinetic military action has brought the Medium Lobster back to life.
(ht ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©)
(ht ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©)
CNN's Finest
It's weird to me that someone who is relatively young could so fully internalize these dumb faux-1950s misogynistic stereotypes.
If We Only Just Do It Right
A brief reminder that any military conflict you're thinking of being in support of will not be your fantasy war with your fantasy perfect general involved. This is doubly true in the case of civil war where the identity of one of the "sides" isn't entirely clear.
Also, it will kill people.
Also, it will kill people.
Perspective
CNBC:
Because, uh, large numbers of people in the economy have been unemployed or unemployed for a very long time?
What seems to be happening is that businesses have been ramping up their production and hiring in expectations of strong consumer demand.
Consumers, however, have failed to provide that expected demand.
Because, uh, large numbers of people in the economy have been unemployed or unemployed for a very long time?
Spring Fundraising FunDay The Fourth
Thanks again to all who have contributed. No worries for those who can't or just don't want to. I certainly appreciate the contributions, but don't expect them!
Freedom Bombs Are Kinetic Military Action Is Not Free
One of the ickier things too come out of our Great And Glorious March To War In Iraq was the popularization of the phrase "freedom isn't free," as if cutting taxes and sending other people off to war actually costs you anything (yes it costs the people who go and their families, along with the people who get a freedom bomb dropped on their heads are on the receiving end of kinetic military action, but the rest of us...tax cuts!) But it is true that this stuff does, in fact, cost a lot of money and the only question is who is ultimately going to pay for it. Presumably tax cuts for rich people will be the solution.
Unsafe Working Conditions
I don't even want to think about the consequences for the heroic workers who are trying to fix this mess.
Three workers were exposed to high-level radiation Thursday while laying cable at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and two of them were taken to hospital due to possible radiation burns to their feet, the nuclear safety agency and the plant operator said.
The three men in their 20s and 30s were exposed to radiation amounting to 173 to 180 millisieverts at around 12:10 p.m. while laying cable underground at the No. 3 reactor's turbine building.
Multipliers
In the short term the net impact on the economy of reducing taxes on rich people, or failing to boost them, in exchange for cutting government worker jobs and services and income transfers to poor people is going to be negative. State governments don't really have to balance their budgets as they can borrow to do things like build roads and other capital projects. And if you're turning down capital projects that are largely federally funded, then you're just turning down free money. Sure that federal money will likely be redistributed elsewhere, but not necessarily very quickly.
Narrative
Andrew Romano at the Daily Beast presents the narrative of the Third Way Democratic elite:
This harkens back to Atrios commenting yesterday that we don't hear from the many economists who know this is hackery. It's certainly not the case, as Andrew Romano conceded to me on the twitter yesterday, that "every economist knows" cuts to social programs are essential. He tweeted, instead, that he should have referred to "the vast majority" of economists. I also rather doubt that's true, but he certainly couldn't be bothered to cite a few examples.
That people oppose cuts to the social insurance safety net seems pretty sensible. Social Security is fully funded, prepaid out as far as projections can reasonably go. Medicare is not itself the problem; the fact Americans in every part of the healthcare sector pay twice as much as the rest of the OECD for worse results (higher mortality, higher morbidity) is the problem. And, in our system, Medicaid is the insurer of last resort--after you've gone through personal bankruptcy. So you really want to keep that around if you aren't in the top income decile.
I suspect many people view troops in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East as falling into the "foreign aid" category, not the defense category. That'd be an interesting question for Markos to poll someday. As for waste, they've been hearing that canard reported ceaselessly, so it's not surprising they are misinformed.
What is striking, though, is Romano's rejection of democracy as an important input to his policy recommendations. The requirement to cut social insurance programs, converting them from middle class programs to welfare, is reported as an inevitable consensus among all the cognoscenti--call them what you will: "the elites" "the Villagers" "the Third Way" or "the New Democrats. That inevitable consensus dominates the Beltway narrative right now. In fact, as the current Gang of X gathers behind closed doors to "courageously" make lives worse for ordinary Americans, it seems to be the only narrative. It's also striking that Romano doesn't even bother to state what policy goal these program cuts achieve; the evil deficit now lurks, unspoken, in the narrative framework.
They've never made a case for this policy regime, but nonetheless "everyone knows" something must be done.
The current conflict over government spending illustrates the new dangers of ignorance. Every economist knows how to deal with the debt: cost-saving reforms to big-ticket entitlement programs; cuts to our bloated defense budget; and (if growth remains slow) tax reforms designed to refill our depleted revenue coffers. But poll after poll shows that voters have no clue what the budget actually looks like. A 2010 World Public Opinion survey found that Americans want to tackle deficits by cutting foreign aid from what they believe is the current level (27 percent of the budget) to a more prudent 13 percent. The real number is under 1 percent. A Jan. 25 CNN poll, meanwhile, discovered that even though 71 percent of voters want smaller government, vast majorities oppose cuts to Medicare (81 percent), Social Security (78 percent), and Medicaid (70 percent). Instead, they prefer to slash waste—a category that, in their fantasy world, seems to include 50 percent of spending, according to a 2009 Gallup poll.
This harkens back to Atrios commenting yesterday that we don't hear from the many economists who know this is hackery. It's certainly not the case, as Andrew Romano conceded to me on the twitter yesterday, that "every economist knows" cuts to social programs are essential. He tweeted, instead, that he should have referred to "the vast majority" of economists. I also rather doubt that's true, but he certainly couldn't be bothered to cite a few examples.
That people oppose cuts to the social insurance safety net seems pretty sensible. Social Security is fully funded, prepaid out as far as projections can reasonably go. Medicare is not itself the problem; the fact Americans in every part of the healthcare sector pay twice as much as the rest of the OECD for worse results (higher mortality, higher morbidity) is the problem. And, in our system, Medicaid is the insurer of last resort--after you've gone through personal bankruptcy. So you really want to keep that around if you aren't in the top income decile.
I suspect many people view troops in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East as falling into the "foreign aid" category, not the defense category. That'd be an interesting question for Markos to poll someday. As for waste, they've been hearing that canard reported ceaselessly, so it's not surprising they are misinformed.
What is striking, though, is Romano's rejection of democracy as an important input to his policy recommendations. The requirement to cut social insurance programs, converting them from middle class programs to welfare, is reported as an inevitable consensus among all the cognoscenti--call them what you will: "the elites" "the Villagers" "the Third Way" or "the New Democrats. That inevitable consensus dominates the Beltway narrative right now. In fact, as the current Gang of X gathers behind closed doors to "courageously" make lives worse for ordinary Americans, it seems to be the only narrative. It's also striking that Romano doesn't even bother to state what policy goal these program cuts achieve; the evil deficit now lurks, unspoken, in the narrative framework.
They've never made a case for this policy regime, but nonetheless "everyone knows" something must be done.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Life Among The Econ
Chris Hayes tweeted that he was emailing Kenneth Arrow, who is getting close to living forever, and is one of the granddaddies of so much in economics. I've been rather down on my former profession for some time, but the truth is I'm mostly just down on the public face of the profession which is largely dominated by right wing hacks with little pushback from the less hackish (and here I honestly don't even more liberal) members of the tribe.
But reading the linked wiki about him, and being reminded of all of the truly interesting and innovative approaches to things he was a part of, makes me remember what I liked about it all once upon a time.
But reading the linked wiki about him, and being reminded of all of the truly interesting and innovative approaches to things he was a part of, makes me remember what I liked about it all once upon a time.
Anti-Stimulus
All the various cuts that our horrible new Republican governors are trying to implement aren't just going to make the residents of their states suffer, they're also going to work against the macroeconomy.
Oh well. Just call this another "maybe somebody should do something" post.
Oh well. Just call this another "maybe somebody should do something" post.
THEY HAVE BIG SCREEN TVS
Various internet shopping sites tell me that you can get a 40+inch flat screen HDTV for about $450. My memory could be faulty, but I'm reasonably sure that's about what the 19" color TV my parents bought in 1980 cost. Of course $450 then is the equivalent of about $1200 now, but even in the Strapping Young Buck era I don't think the possession of a color TV was seen as some sort of display of obscene wealth.
Still I imagine the ZOMG FLAT SCREEN TV IS IN THE HIZZZHOUSE will long be held up as PROOF that the poor are NOT POOR.
Still I imagine the ZOMG FLAT SCREEN TV IS IN THE HIZZZHOUSE will long be held up as PROOF that the poor are NOT POOR.
Spring Fundraising FunDay The Third
Much thanks to all who have contributed so far. I'm always amazed by the generosity of people, both those who give a little and those who give a lot.
Once I'm convinced (or not) that the comment system and new site has basic functionality I need I'll work on making it a bit prettier. Things seem to run a lot more smoothly on firefox 4, at least for me.
Once I'm convinced (or not) that the comment system and new site has basic functionality I need I'll work on making it a bit prettier. Things seem to run a lot more smoothly on firefox 4, at least for me.
Pissing Off Liberals
Obviously there are other agendas - no taxes for rich people, give poor peoples' money to favored corporate interests - but otherwise pissing off liberals is the prime motivation. Some liberals like trains! And they have them in that liberal hellhole PORTLAND!!!
Urban Hellhole Blogging
When I have more time I'll see if the Census annual estimates offer any more clue, but I am curious about just when Detroit's radical decline started in the past decade. A few years back there were plenty of stories about Detroit having a modest rebirth. This isn't actually necessarily at odds with population decline citywide, as a rebirth can exist in certain population centers, while other neighborhoods become ghost towns, but I also get the sense that Detroit had a bit of comeback, interrupted.
The Catholics Are Alright
I'm not really surprised by these numbers, but my futile hope is that maybe just maybe some in the press will stop letting Bill Donohue be the spokesperson for all Catholics. I get that what the hierarchy says will inevitably get some additional weight, but there's no need to compound that by pretending that asshole speaks for the people.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Late Night
Started watching Inside Job. Had to turn it off after 25 mins. because the blood pressure was spiking.
Public Policy Can Actually Achieve Things
Sadly, it usually goes unnoticed when it does.
Relatedly, I do think this is one of the reasons our political press are somewhat-but-not-really-liberal. I think many of them probably are somewhat liberal on desired outcomes, but they just don't think government can actually do any good. Well, except turn other countries into paradise with our military.
Relatedly, I do think this is one of the reasons our political press are somewhat-but-not-really-liberal. I think many of them probably are somewhat liberal on desired outcomes, but they just don't think government can actually do any good. Well, except turn other countries into paradise with our military.
The Very Serious Republican Candidate
Looking at the dynamic of the 1996 and 2008 Republicans primaries, the voters seem to have flirted with the crazy and then gone for the "serious" candidate. Remember McCain appeared to be getting crushed in polls not all that long before the primaries began. Now I think McCain is a very silly person, but he was still in the position of the very serious elder Washington statesman beloved by Villagers.
This is why I'm a bit puzzled by Mittens. I know Mittens 2012 is going to be more conservative than Governor Mittens, but more conservative doesn't mean sounding like Sarah Palin. His only chance is to run on electability. It might not work, but if people want a real wingnut there are other options.
This is why I'm a bit puzzled by Mittens. I know Mittens 2012 is going to be more conservative than Governor Mittens, but more conservative doesn't mean sounding like Sarah Palin. His only chance is to run on electability. It might not work, but if people want a real wingnut there are other options.
Freak Show
Unlike Digby, I am not looking forward to the primary season. I don't much enjoy the freak show aspect of politics, and the fact that this gang will actually be a freak show doesn't make it any better. And there is, of course, the lingering chance that one of these horrible people (Huntsman might not be horrible, I really don't know) might actually become president...
Spring Fundraising FunDay The Second
If your budget can handle it, please consider supporting my mighty blog.
Suburbs: Increasingly Brown And Scary
The leading lights of humanity known as the Philadelphia Inquirer commenters respond predictably to the news that local suburbs are somewhat less white than they used to be. This is something that is happening basically everywhere, though starting at different times, happening at different speeds, and with different racial/immigrant groups.
The Pottery Barn Rule
I think something we've learned is that the "Pottery Barn Rule" (which doesn't exist) isn't you broke it, you bought it, but more if you broke it you are obligated to spend another several years smashing up the rest of the store.
Morning Thread
by Molly Ivors
I'm actually kind of hopeful about the reform of Stanley Fish and what it means for the rest of us and what I'll call the Wisconsin Effect.
Snobbery, pure and simple.
Now, it's hard to be a snob if you've spent any time as an adjunct (maximum annual salary caps out at maybe $20K, and that's stringing a bunch of not-very-sure things together and driving a lot), or as a prof at a non-elite school (in which I include all community colleges, most state schools, and a good proportion of private, four-year liberal arts schools): we teach the kids of the working class, hopefully giving them the skills they need to get decent jobs in the future, jobs which offer them a shot at the middle class.
Side note: It's starting to look like we've been lying to them. Egypt, here we come.
But as far as the Wisconsin Effect goes: Fish seems to realize here that everyone is, well, not him. "[F]or a small percentage of academics there is something like a free agent market: another university comes calling and you’re in the nice position of being able to pit your current employer against your suitor and wait to see who will come up with the best package. But most of us are not in this position, and so it doesn’t pay (quite literally) to conceptualize our situation as if we were all stars."
Fish is a star, or has been, partly because of his willingness to be a House Academic for the Wingnut Hordes, making them feel smarter because "even Stanley Fish is a conservative!" (NB, dunno that anyone ever said that, as such, but how else does he merit NYTimes editorial page space? It's not because of his seminal role in developing Reader-Response Criticism.) And his stardom does disprove the whining of conservative academics who want to be loooooooved more.
But if Fish, who benefits disproportionately from the system as now gamed, can see the point of what's being accomplished by our Badger friends, then maybe we are at a tipping point and people will start to see that collective bargaining is a right and a necessity in a nation increasingly governed by the savage rapacity of corporations, which colleges are starting to resemble.
Hey, a girl can hope.
I'm actually kind of hopeful about the reform of Stanley Fish and what it means for the rest of us and what I'll call the Wisconsin Effect.
In over 35 years of friendship and conversation, Walter Michaels and I have disagreed on only two things, and one of them was faculty and graduate student unionization. He has always been for and I had always been against. I say “had” because I recently flipped and what flipped me, pure and simple, was Wisconsin.
When I think about the reasons (too honorific a word) for my previous posture I become embarrassed.... The big reason was the feeling — hardly thought through sufficiently to be called a conviction — that someone with an advanced degree and scholarly publications should not be in the same category as factory workers with lunch boxes and hard hats.
Snobbery, pure and simple.
Now, it's hard to be a snob if you've spent any time as an adjunct (maximum annual salary caps out at maybe $20K, and that's stringing a bunch of not-very-sure things together and driving a lot), or as a prof at a non-elite school (in which I include all community colleges, most state schools, and a good proportion of private, four-year liberal arts schools): we teach the kids of the working class, hopefully giving them the skills they need to get decent jobs in the future, jobs which offer them a shot at the middle class.
Side note: It's starting to look like we've been lying to them. Egypt, here we come.
But as far as the Wisconsin Effect goes: Fish seems to realize here that everyone is, well, not him. "[F]or a small percentage of academics there is something like a free agent market: another university comes calling and you’re in the nice position of being able to pit your current employer against your suitor and wait to see who will come up with the best package. But most of us are not in this position, and so it doesn’t pay (quite literally) to conceptualize our situation as if we were all stars."
Fish is a star, or has been, partly because of his willingness to be a House Academic for the Wingnut Hordes, making them feel smarter because "even Stanley Fish is a conservative!" (NB, dunno that anyone ever said that, as such, but how else does he merit NYTimes editorial page space? It's not because of his seminal role in developing Reader-Response Criticism.) And his stardom does disprove the whining of conservative academics who want to be loooooooved more.
But if Fish, who benefits disproportionately from the system as now gamed, can see the point of what's being accomplished by our Badger friends, then maybe we are at a tipping point and people will start to see that collective bargaining is a right and a necessity in a nation increasingly governed by the savage rapacity of corporations, which colleges are starting to resemble.
Hey, a girl can hope.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Move Along
Probably no biggie.
People farther than 20k from the plant have not been evacuated.
Radiation 1,600 times higher than normal levels has been detected in an area about 20 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, International Atomic Energy Agency officials said Monday.
Data collected by an IAEA team show that radiation levels of 161 microsievert per hour have been detected in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, the officials said.
People farther than 20k from the plant have not been evacuated.
The Keynesians Have Some Blame
My macroeconomics education came from a mix of old school and new school Keynesians, and I mostly only learned real business cycle stuff at a surface level (basic points and conclusions without delving into the mathematical models all that much), but even back then I got the sense that people learning macro in "freshwater" schools were largely unaware of anything of the past other than the fact the Keynesianism was proved fucking wrong.
Still at the time I also found the new Keynesians to be somewhat apologetic about what they were doing, with a weird deference to the people doing the "real" cutting edge work. They were kind of ashamed that they were clinging to those old heretical ideas or something. Similarly at the time, people in the US doing heretical micro research suggesting minimum wage laws didn't destroy the universe, or whatever, were also almost ashamed of themselves.
Basically the ignorant bullies took over the profession to some degree.
Spring fundraiser fun!
Still at the time I also found the new Keynesians to be somewhat apologetic about what they were doing, with a weird deference to the people doing the "real" cutting edge work. They were kind of ashamed that they were clinging to those old heretical ideas or something. Similarly at the time, people in the US doing heretical micro research suggesting minimum wage laws didn't destroy the universe, or whatever, were also almost ashamed of themselves.
Basically the ignorant bullies took over the profession to some degree.
Spring fundraiser fun!
Good Luck With That
It's always my basic response when online newspaper paywalls go up. I actually mean it, even though I also don't expect most entities to have much luck. And every minute spent obsessing about the fact that your readers don't pay to read your product is a minute not spent trying innovate in other ways. From the beginning newspapers were high traffic sites, and they could have leveraged that into basically everything that does make money on the internet. Online dating. Social Networking. Working with advertisers to create more effective online ads (I think the biggest problem with most online advertising is that the landing pages suck). Online coupons. The internet equivalent of the "Real Estate" and "Auto" sections which were of course all about packaging advertising, and not really about the paltry content attached to it.
Obviously some of this is just saying "if only the New York Times had invented Facebook..." But the point is that newspapers should have hired smart people who were interested in making money on the internet, people who were always on the lookout for good ideas which they could adapt and use, instead of spending years trying to figure out how to get $10 a month out of their readers.
Obviously some of this is just saying "if only the New York Times had invented Facebook..." But the point is that newspapers should have hired smart people who were interested in making money on the internet, people who were always on the lookout for good ideas which they could adapt and use, instead of spending years trying to figure out how to get $10 a month out of their readers.
Urban
One thing I fail to communicate often is that when I use the word "urban" I'm not actually referring to Manhattan, or downtown Chicago, or even a large city at all. Here's a profile of a guy who tries to bring small towns back to life. I like big cities because I like the variety they offer over smaller places, but a lot of what I like about urban living can be found in smaller places. I get that lots of people don't like big cities, but I also think some of those people would probably like nice small towns if there were more nice small towns to choose from.
How About Sending Signals To Jobless People
It is truly depressing that our overlords really use phrases like "send a signal to markets" seriously. But, hey, if granny needs to starve so that we can slay the invisible bond vigilantes so be it. Also, too, the zombie unicorn menace.
... to be clear, wasn't actual administration quote just a representation of the general sentiment by the reporter.
Spring fundaiser fun!
... to be clear, wasn't actual administration quote just a representation of the general sentiment by the reporter.
Spring fundaiser fun!
And Monkeys Might Fly Out Of My Butt
I would bet almost any amount with almost any odds that the Obama administration is not, in fact, planning on either threatening or implementing air strikes against Israel. Very Serious Right Wingers can say anything. Though, in fairness, Very Serious EvenTheLiberals can say almost anything, as long as it's Very Serious.
Spring Fun
Because you can't spell fundraiser without fun! har dee har har.
But, yes, a wee ask for some donations to help keep this humble blog going. This isn't charity, if it was (as in I was in desperate need) I would say so. Don't give me your help victims of natural catastrophes money, give me your expensive bottle of scotch money or your Washington Post subscription money. And of course no need to give at all. Always grateful for donations received, but certainly have no expectations about it.
This blog is much more time consuming than many people think. It's still a privilege to have something like this, and I usually don't forget that, but sometimes it can be a long hard slog...
But, yes, a wee ask for some donations to help keep this humble blog going. This isn't charity, if it was (as in I was in desperate need) I would say so. Don't give me your help victims of natural catastrophes money, give me your expensive bottle of scotch money or your Washington Post subscription money. And of course no need to give at all. Always grateful for donations received, but certainly have no expectations about it.
This blog is much more time consuming than many people think. It's still a privilege to have something like this, and I usually don't forget that, but sometimes it can be a long hard slog...
Against College
As for why I'm not a big fan of the "everybody needs to go to college" model, there are a couple of main reasons. The first is that I'm a big believer in the signaling model of higher education, in that a big chunk of its value is simply that it provides a signal to employers that you don't suck. Essentially you spend a lot of money and time to get a certificate which makes screening easier for potential employers. It doesn't make you a more productive worker, it simply sends that message that you are a more productive worker. The wikipedia has a reasonable explanation of how this works. Key line:
The second big reason is that we have a big cultural bias in favor of jobs requiring a college education over jobs which don't, over and above whatever income difference there is between these jobs. That is, jobs requiring a college education generally have a higher class status than jobs which don't.
Of course education has other benefits and I don't want anyone to think I'm against education. I think the college experience can have value for a lot of people over and above its career enhancement potential. But an expensive four year liberal arts education shouldn't be a requirement to be hired for a lot of jobs when doing those jobs doesn't really require that education.
[E]ven if education did not contribute anything to an employee's productivity, it could still have value to both the employer and employee. If the appropriate cost/benefit structure exists (or is created), "good" employees will buy more education in order to signal their higher productivity.
The second big reason is that we have a big cultural bias in favor of jobs requiring a college education over jobs which don't, over and above whatever income difference there is between these jobs. That is, jobs requiring a college education generally have a higher class status than jobs which don't.
Of course education has other benefits and I don't want anyone to think I'm against education. I think the college experience can have value for a lot of people over and above its career enhancement potential. But an expensive four year liberal arts education shouldn't be a requirement to be hired for a lot of jobs when doing those jobs doesn't really require that education.
Cutting Higher Ed
I'm not actually a tremendous fan of the fact that 4-year colleges are the basic means for people to achieve some level of upward mobility, but given current expectations by employers they still are. I don't know if my new Republican will succeed in slashing funding as much as he dreams of, but if he does he will put college education out of reach for a lot of people.
Peacocks
They pretend to care about deficits, which nobody actually does, but offer up no solutions. I suppose I'd be mildly happier if they at least pretended to care about jobs, too, but that's not cool in the Village.
Nobody Ever Listens To Us
The twitter tells me Juan Williams has a column in the Hill calling for the defunding of NPR. Consider how how many years this man received a paycheck from them, nominally playing the liberal while being O'Reilly's buddy at night. We suggested there was a problem here. Oh well.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Free War
It isn't polite to point out that wars cost money, or at least it hasn't been since Kerry voted for the 87 billion dollars before he voted against it (or vice versa can't remember), but we spend more in Afghanistan in two months than their annual GDP. I realize money "in Afghanistan" isn't all literally spent in Afghanistan, but even so I'm not even sure how this is mathematically possible. In any case, when we're willing to spend that much money, either to help poor people abroad or our jobless people here, there are surely better ways to spend it.
Have Fun
I guess there's some schadenfreude in watching them deal with the mess we tried to warn them about.
You Forgot Eritrea
It was just a few days ago that some Balloon Juice commenter was insisting over and over again that dirty fucking hippies were stupid because all that was going to happen was that the Arab League would start enforcing a no fly zone.
Oh well.
At least there won't be ground troops. Maybe just a few advisers. Oh, and we'll probably have to be there for training, because we've gotten pretty good at it after a collective 17 years of that in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Oh well.
At least there won't be ground troops. Maybe just a few advisers. Oh, and we'll probably have to be there for training, because we've gotten pretty good at it after a collective 17 years of that in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Fortunately We'll Need Some New Freedom Bomb Manufacturers
Not sure where they're located, but all the lazy unemployed people should figure it out and apply.
The job, posted on Indeed.com, seemed promising - an opening in Texas for a quality engineer with experience in dimensional gauging and benchtop test equipment, offering up to $62,000 a year.
But the advertisement included a caveat: "Client will not consider/review anyone not currently employed regardless of the reason."
The World's Narcissistic Daddy
Even a blind squirrel...
The Very Serious People know we will never really leave Afghanistan. We will never really leave Iraq. There are still 47,000 US troops in Iraq. There are 100,000+ US troops in Afghanistan. And of course the contractors. Lots and lots of contractors.
The Very Serious People know we will never really leave Afghanistan. We will never really leave Iraq. There are still 47,000 US troops in Iraq. There are 100,000+ US troops in Afghanistan. And of course the contractors. Lots and lots of contractors.
Oh What A Lovely Little War
It's really quite amazing how exciting new wars are to our media. I guess old wars are "controversial" and therefore harder to cover. Also, too, dead people. New wars are just exciting missile launches and "bad guys."
A Giant Highway Interchange
I'm certainly on board with the idea that with minor tweaks lots of suburban locations can get a bit more town/urbanish, but it's really hard to envision anything like that for King of Prussia.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Summer Isn't The Only Season
Often when I talk about my various obsessions (parking, walkability, transit), someone chimes in about how the climate in city X is such that no sane person would ever consider walking anywhere nohow noway. And look, I get that heat is oppressive in some places in the summer, but in most of those places, the rest of the year it's pretty nice. That's why people moved there! 3 or so months of air conditioned lockdown, and then the rest of the year kinda nice and warm. Anyway, was responding to a random comment on the internet:
The internet tells me the average high temperature is below 90 for 9 months of the year. So, summer is hot, and there's some extra hot randomly in May and September, but it isn't an oven year around.
Dallas? Dallas? No one walks in Dallas. No one bikes. No one leaves air conditioning if humanly possible. It is a heat beyond yankee understanding. The moronic awning fines are beside the point. It is inimical to human existence. Think Wall-E with pickups. And I say this as someone who loves it.
The internet tells me the average high temperature is below 90 for 9 months of the year. So, summer is hot, and there's some extra hot randomly in May and September, but it isn't an oven year around.
A Reminder
Once you communicate the message that something needs to be done, something quickly becomes anything and everything.
Remember When There Was Going To Be A No Fly Zone
BREAKING NEWS 4:07 PM ET
U.S. Joins Airstrikes in Libya Against Qaddafi Forces
Fortunately our freedom bombs only land on the bad people.
I know it isn't polite to say, but each Tomahawk freedom bomb costs between $500K and $1milllion.
Maybe That's Kinda What America Thinks
I'm certainly not going to defend Glenn Beck, but I think this does kind of reflect a lot of the thinking out there. When there's a Problem somewhere out in the world, we kinda sorta hope that America is like Superman and can go take care of it, but we also suspect that we aren't actually an all-powerful force capable of handling just about any problem. So quickly we go from "do something" to "oh shit we're doing something."
Sadly, No
Ardmore's an inner ring suburb with an urbanish town center. I don't know if the original redevelopment plan were awesome, it's quite possible that they weren't for various reasons, but a lot of the opposition was basically due to the fact that it was 'too much,' as in adding too much density. And, no, turning the place into a giant parking lot isn't going to give anyone any more reason to show up. That's what malls are for.
Like many business owners in Ardmore, he believes that many of the town's ills could be cured with one thing: more parking.
"That," he said, "might be all we need."
We Only Have One Tool
We only need to compare the cost of our public response to numerous recent natural disasters to the likely cost of any military intervention to know what American elites think is important.
Obviously I don't know exactly what will happen in Libya and what our involvement will be, I just know that our recent history tells us that "our involvement" is the important part. Happy to be wrong.
Obviously I don't know exactly what will happen in Libya and what our involvement will be, I just know that our recent history tells us that "our involvement" is the important part. Happy to be wrong.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Not Over
Maybe if Lex Luthor teams up with Brainiac and Bizarro they can fix this.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It's not always easy to feel sorry for sunny Florida. But they just got hit with another blow.
On Thursday, the Census Bureau revealed that 18% -- or 1.6 million -- of the Sunshine State's homes are sitting vacant. That's a rise of more than 63% over the past 10 years.
Miserable Failures
I suppose the thing our elites overlords have going for them is that they all pretty much screwed the pooch so, you know, ha ha no one's really to blame bygones yadda yadda. But, yes, the Fed specifically deserves as much scorn as anybody can muster up. Their failures started years ago and continue through the very present. And this is after the press had dubbed Greenspan the Maestro and our financial/economic elites had decided that the Fed was basically infallible.
Our financial/economic elites are of course doing fine, which is why we have a big problem.
Our financial/economic elites are of course doing fine, which is why we have a big problem.
Afternoon Thread
Lovely day here in the urban hellhole, and can barely hear the gunfire. I have afternoon orchestra tickets, so slow blogging.
Scarlet "A"s Might Do The Trick
No I don't think that's what BoBo actually means. What conservatives like him do mean is that they want a social hierarchy with clearly laid out rules. If you behave "badly" then you go down a few rungs on the ladder. This system is enforced through the withdrawal of invitations to the right sort of dinner parties and other reduced opportunities for social and economic advancement. The fucking stuff is only applied to women, of course.
Inflation Is Enemy
A central bank whose primary concern is...fighting inflation... can't improve the unemployment situation by promising higher inflation because they prefer high unemployment to slightly higher inflation. And this is not a secret.
Loving Big Government
And turning the IRS into the uterus police.
Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. And one tax expert says that the measure could even lead to questions on tax forms: Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Thursday Night
Only a month or so until the 9th blogiversary. That always makes me feel older than the birthdays do.
#9yearsofthisshit
#9yearsofthisshit
Dems Did It Too
Yes, Republicans in the House are going to waste a lot of time passing things which almost certainly won't pass the Senate. I'm not saying that every House bill that died on the Senate steps when Pelosi was in charge was a purely cynical act, but some of them were.
I basically stopped paying attention to anything that happened in the House.
I basically stopped paying attention to anything that happened in the House.
Incredible Horror
A few people have written to say, essentially, that in the US the nuke plant saga in Japan is really obscuring the fact that even if there was no nuke plant saga in Japan, an incredibly horrible catastrophe has occurred. The human and economic costs are massive. And these people are right, so let's not obscure that fact, though I think it's in part due to the understandable issue that the rest of the tragedy is something we can comprehend, while the nuclear is both unfolding and uncertain, and also in the 'scary monster' unknown category. Like scary monsters it may not prove to be all that real, though we'll see..
Cars We Will Always Have With Us, But...
Even in especially hellish urban hellholes, there's a tendency to greatly overestimate needed parking for projects big and small. And, well, parking lots, especially unused ones, really suck.
Nudge
My guess is the Times thinks there are a significant number of people who are actually willing to pay for their online product, but who just need a wee bit of a nudge to reach for the credit card. They could be right!
Design Hell
Don't know why the outer background got so funky. I'm sure I'll figure it out sometime before Eschaton 3.0 goes online.
This
Greg Sargent:
I think Obama can be blamed, but so can members of Congress. So many of them signed up for the deficit peacock agenda. And when you give voters a choice between a Republican and a Republican...
Maybe it’s fair to blame Obama’s lack of leadership for the Dems’ failure to articulate a coherent alternative vision to the GOP’s austerity/cut-cut-cut frame. But at what point do Congressional Dems take some responsibility for their own internal bickering and their own perpetual willingness to lend rhetorial support to the GOP’s fiscal worldview?
I think Obama can be blamed, but so can members of Congress. So many of them signed up for the deficit peacock agenda. And when you give voters a choice between a Republican and a Republican...
Screwed In The Senate
I read a blog post somewhere making this point, but I'm a bit more distracted than usual and forgot where, so apologies for not linking. Anyway, I'm not one of those political bloggers who spends a lot of time staring at polling and all the various elections, but when I glance at the list of senate races in 2012 it's hard not to get that sinking feeling.
And 21-Year Old Prostitutes Have It Coming, Of Course
Democratic lawmakers are at least somewhat less likely to utter such repugnant things.
What's The Difference
I of course know that there is a difference between Republican rule and Democratic rule, but I think at this moment I would have the hardest time actually articulating what that difference actually is to a relatively non-engaged non-political person. The people in charge seem to be completely uninterested in highlighting those differences.
Morning Thread
by Molly Ivors
In which P.Z. Myers explains why Newt Gingrich is moral, and he isn't.
In which P.Z. Myers explains why Newt Gingrich is moral, and he isn't.
The Republicans support a version of marriage that rests on tradition, authority, and masculine dominance, and everything they do props up one leg of the tripod or the other. Public piety reinforces religious tradition; the insistence that there is one true form of marriage, between a man and a woman, which represents a legal and social commitment is part of the authoritarian impulse; and of course, if a man steps out of the matrimonial bounds, it's an expression of machismo and patriotism and entitlement.
.....
Now look at those dirty rotten hippies, like me. We say the ties between a couple should be made with respect and affection, not the strictures of law and precedent; letting gays marry, for instance, strengthens the public approval of our kinds of bond, while weakening the authoritarian bonds. Our ideal is a community of equals, while theirs is a hierarchy of power, a relic of Old Testament values in which marrying a woman was like buying a camel, a certification of ownership, and nothing must compromise the Big Man's possession of properties.
Over Overnight
As I said this is mostly a test run for the comments section. People seemed to hate Echo. Of course they hated Haloscan too. The comments section here has always been a bit like Times Square in that sense. In any case there's no way to really test something...without testing it... and I had to upgrade to blogger's new (well 4-5 years old) exciting template to get things to work. Dark Ages HTML I could blunder my way through, but XML or whatever the kids are calling it these days, is a bit harder to follow. Anyway, point is this is mostly a functionality test at the moment. We'll see what the hive mind likes or does not. Aesthetic tweaks can happen slowly as long as things are roughly working.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Chat Away
Playing around, mostly seeing if people hate this comment system more or less than the last one. New template needs some aesthetic improvements obviously. Can always revert back to Eschaton 2002 if necessary.
Shutdown
I don't know if it will happen, but I submit that the biggest barrier to a shutdown, or at least to an extended one, is that a shutdown means that congressional staffers don't get paid.
Red County Blues
Though I will admit that higher education cuts are somewhat surprising, given that they'll likely disproportionately impact rural counties... as in, the GOP base. Pitt and Temple are urban, but most of the rest of the state system of higher education (there's the actual SSHE and then the other beneficiaries, Pitt, Penn State, and Temple) are located in Pennsyltucky.
Surprise
Sorry, but you were living under a rock if you thought the modern GOP wasn't about destroying everything.
Sure he didn't campaign on cutting higher education spending, but he did campaign on... drastic spending cuts generally. You though you were immune?
Idiots.
On Tuesday morning, Zogby said a person would have had to been "living under a rock" to be surprised by the fact Gov. Tom Corbett's budget slashed spending and avoided tax increases. The Republican wants to cut state support for Penn State, Pitt, Lincoln and Temple universities in half, among other proposals.
"Gee, I followed the election pretty closely," said Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg. "I had conversations with the governor while he was on the campaign trail. I co-chair his education transition committee. I don't think I was living under a rock. But, in fact, the depth and disproportionate nature of these proposed cuts was both stunning and surprising to me."
Sure he didn't campaign on cutting higher education spending, but he did campaign on... drastic spending cuts generally. You though you were immune?
Idiots.
But Rail Is Better
It's certainly the case that intra-city bus travel has some dumb social stigmas which take away from its appeal, but it's also the case that generally rail in any form is just a more pleasant way to travel. Buses can be relatively unpleasant to ride in. Yes, there are the idealized BRT systems, which can have many of the benefits of rail, but the idealized BRT systems usually don't get built as while they tend to be cheaper than rail, they aren't all that much cheaper, and there are always way to chip away at the advantages to increase the cost savings. But, yes, rail is more about urban transformation than simply providing another way to get around. As long as that urban transformation is allowed to happen, then it is probably "worth it" in many places.
Damn Hippies
Will the consequences of their actions never end?
The Associated Press reported that Japanese officials denied all the water has drained and said the reactor, known as Unit 4, is stable.
Radiation at the Japanese site is fluctuating and at peak levels is life-threatening, Jaczko said.
The peak levels “would be lethal within a fairly short period of time,” he said. The pool at the plant’s Unit 3, which was in service, may be cracked and losing water, Jaczko said.
Complacency
I think one reason for complacency even among people who actually give a shit and no what should be done is that the political leadership has given into the austerians. They're happily offering cuts to the Republicans, at least they have been so far. There are only so many times this humble blogger, or the Nobel prize guy linked, can write "somebody should do something about jobs" when it's clear nobody is going to.
One Line For The Rich
Identity verification is basically useless as a security measure as would be any information used to create a "Trusted Traveller" program. There is of course no correlation between your likelihood of wanting to blow up a plane and the information in your tax return.
Travel industry analysts think the long-awaited report will continue the debate over screening procedures and add another element to it: Even a voluntary trusted-traveler approach would require passengers to provide credit information, tax returns and other personal data to verify that members pose little or no risk.
In return, they would be allowed to zip through security.
How To Destroy Your State
Relatively affordable public higher education is really a quality amenity for a state, and the way to provide the possibility for upward mobility. So, of course, my new Republican governor is going to destroy it.
Save The World
Thers:
This point isn't made often enough. Along with assorted other problematic aspects, military inventions cost a lot of fucking money. And if all the people who are gung ho for military interventions today wouldn't, on some other more peaceful day, contemplate instead spending $10 billion to do something like build sewer systems and water treatment plants somewhere, then it isn't unreasonable to conclude that they really like blowing things up and don't really care much about the helping people part.
And of course note how blithely the hawks blow off the price tag, which these same people don't for anything else. This leads me to suspect that whatever the agenda is, it ain't Freedom.
This point isn't made often enough. Along with assorted other problematic aspects, military inventions cost a lot of fucking money. And if all the people who are gung ho for military interventions today wouldn't, on some other more peaceful day, contemplate instead spending $10 billion to do something like build sewer systems and water treatment plants somewhere, then it isn't unreasonable to conclude that they really like blowing things up and don't really care much about the helping people part.
Doesn't Anybody Have A Geiger Counter
Maybe I'm just missing something, but I feel like their are knowable things which aren't really getting reported. Are radiation levels elevated in Tokyo, for example?
...I guess one can use the Google to answer such questions.
Still there seems to be a shortage of hard facts.
...I guess one can use the Google to answer such questions.
Many Tokyo residents are fleeing the city and heading south, while others are hoarding supplies and lining up for hours for gas amid fears that radiation from the troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant will reach the city.
Residents have so far been told that radiation of 10 times the normal level has been detected in Tokyo, 240 kilometres south of the plant, but levels are still safe and there is no reason to panic.
Still there seems to be a shortage of hard facts.
Threading
Sam Seder interviewed Yves Smith on The Majority Report, you might want to give it a listen.
Signed,
Not Atrios
Signed,
Not Atrios
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Clearly Alarmist Hippies Are To Blame
Oy.
Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, is holding a news conference that is being broadcast live on Japanese television. Mr. Edano said radiation readings started rising rapidly Wednesday morning outside the front gate of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. "All the workers there have suspended their operations. We have urged them to evacuate, and they have," he said, according to a translation by NHK television.
Quoting More Than I Should
Just to make sure people read it.
Fortunately, Bayh is too lazy to be the worst person in the world, but if he'd had a bit more energy...
But Bayh did not return to Indiana to teach. He did not, as he said he was thinking of doing, join a foundation. Rather, he went to the massive law firm McGuire Woods. And who does McGuire Woods work for? “Principal clients served from our Washington office include national energy companies, foreign countries, international manufacturing companies, trade associations and local and national businesses,” reads the company’s Web site. He followed that up by signing on as a senior adviser to Apollo Management Group, a giant public-equity firm. And, finally, this week, he joined Fox News as a contributor. It’s as if he’s systematically ticking off every poison he identified in the body politic and rushing to dump more of it into the water supply.
The “corrosive system of campaign financing” that Bayh considered such a threat? He’s being paid by both McGuire Woods and Apollo Global Management to act as a corroding agent on their behalf. The “strident partisanship” and “unyielding ideology” he complained was ruining the Senate? At Fox News, he’ll be right there on set while it gets cooked up. His warning that “what is required from members of Congress and the public alike is a new spirit of devotion to the national welfare beyond party or self-interest” sounds, in retrospect, like a joke. Evan Bayh doing performance art as Evan Bayh. Exactly which of these new positions would Bayh say is against his self-interest, or in promotion of the general welfare?
I should say, for the record, that I got in touch with McGuire Woods to give Bayh an opportunity to comment, or offer an alternative interpretation of his career decisions. I didn’t hear from them, but I got a call back from a PR person at Fox News. “I’m going to decline the interview for Mr. Bayh,” the flack said. And I guess I’m not surprised: It’s one thing to take the positions Bayh took without much of a record on them. It’s a whole other to try to sustain them when his paychecks are being signed by people who profit from the very forces he lamented.
In our last interview, Bayh complained of the poor opinion the public had of him and his colleagues. “They look at us like we’re worse than used-car salesmen.” Yes. They do. And this is why.
Fortunately, Bayh is too lazy to be the worst person in the world, but if he'd had a bit more energy...
Nobody Cares
Once Dems bought into the austerity/cuts frame, the debate was over. Nobody actually cares about the deficit, they never did, so they only question is who takes responsibility for the cuts. Republicans want to be responsible for cutting in the abstract, and the White House has made that easy for them. Specific cuts, on the other hand, actually make for sad voters so it's no surprise that aside from trivial in $ terms funding cuts they've got nothin'.
Empowering Your Enemies
I've really lost interest in defending organizations that are uninterested in defending themselves.
Aside from the dishonesty, O'Keefe's basic schtick is to exploit the fact that when confronted with crazy assholes, most people rationally humor them.
Aside from the dishonesty, O'Keefe's basic schtick is to exploit the fact that when confronted with crazy assholes, most people rationally humor them.
SFPark
For nerds like me, this is very interesting. And I will say that despite my long stated hatred of cars and parking, I do think 2 hour parking limits are really dumb. I get the policy of goal of keeping commuters off of on street parking, but people should have enough time to go see a movie or have a long meal without worrying about re-feeding the meter and/or moving the car.
Who Killed The Electric Car
There might be perfectly good reasons, but 110 years later I don't know why electric car manufacturers haven't gone the swappable battery route.
Gun Nut Dreams
I haven't known a lot of gun nuts in my life - and by gun nut I don't mean anyone who owns or enjoys shooting guns, but people with a bit of an obsession who regularly carry - but every one I knew quite clearly had a well-established fantasy of killing people.
We Haven't Built One In Forty Years
That's something I keep hearing, and also something I know to be false because I, you know, grew up near a nuclear power plant as it was being built and when it went online. I think I had field trip there and they had a cute cartoon atom. Anyway, according to the wikipedia, construction started on the Limerick nuke plant in 1974 - 37 years ago, not 40 - and it came online in 1986, which my advanced math tells me was 25 years ago.