economics
mikethemadbiologist | March 18, 2010After finding this post about income inequality and social problems, I decided to check out the 'book version', The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better, by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. It has a lot to recommend it (if you want the short pdf version, it's available here). First, the evidence for a correlation across countries and within countries between income inequality and social misery is pretty overwhelming. Second, in the introduction, as opposed to an appendix nobody will read, Wilkinson and Pickett explain the basics of the…
razib | March 13, 2010This comment from Chris is interesting:
I would speculate that the the massive productivity gains were due to a massive resorting of American society along cognitive lines; from 1940 to 1970 a large number of high ability people who were previously locked into agriculture and industry were able to sort themselves into more innovative positions. This would lead to a massive burst of innovation, which led to increases in productivity, as previously unlocked talent was put to use.
From 1970 to 1990 this resorting was mostly winding down and productivity in the economy was heavily constrained by…
mikethemadbiologist | March 12, 2010Readers will know that one of my pet peeves that I inflict upon you, dear readers, is my dislike of misinterpreting data. In the healthcare debate, one of the key studies that many have relied on, including the Obama Administration, is the Darmouth Atlas of Health Care Studies. A major finding of the DAHCS is that there were tremendous regional differences in costs for various procedures. Some, including the Obama Administration, have argued that these regional differences mean that many doctors and hospitals overcharge and overtreat, and that massive savings could be realized if these…
mikethemadbiologist | March 11, 2010Brown University president Ruth Simmons has recently come under fire for serving on the board of Goldman Sachs. More than establishing any possible perfidy on the part of Simmons, this just shows how utterly useless boards of directors are. Other than hiring and firing the CEO (or, in the non-profit world, the executive director) and approving the overall activities at a very superficial level, they don't do much. They're certainly not going to exercise oversight or change the culture. Why? Because, even if they're motivated, they show up a couple of times a year and read a massaged…
emjohnson | March 11, 2010 Coca-Cola sucks India dry. Image: Carlos Latuff / Wikimedia CommonsThe marketing executive who came up with Coca-Cola's popular slogan in 1908 most likely never expected it would be taken so literally. However, a hundred years ago there probably weren't many who imagined a term like "water wars" could exist in a region that experiences annual monsoons.
On February 25 a complaint was filed in the New York Supreme Court against the The Coca-Cola Company alleging that they knew about and sought to cover up human rights abuses in Guatemala. While that trial gets started,…
mikethemadbiologist | March 9, 2010I knew when I posted about deficits I would catch some grief (you should see my email. Actually, you probably shouldn't. And why do I get many more emails than comments?). Before I get to addressing some of the comments, I want to bring up why I discuss this stuff (other than I find it interesting):
Context.
I think it's safe to say that most people around these here ScienceBlogs care about scientific research funding and science education funding (both K-12 and collegiate education). But the ability to increase the resources for these areas--or even just prevent them from shrinking--…
mikethemadbiologist | March 7, 2010Well, I suppose the snarky response is that your household doesn't have direct control over multiple battle carrier groups. Joking aside, the fixation on reducing budgets is essentially the economic equivalent of flat-earthism. James Galbraith, in a must read piece, spells out why public deficits are necessary:
To put things crudely, there are two ways to get the increase in total spending that we call "economic growth." One way is for government to spend. The other is for banks to lend. Leaving aside short-term adjustments like increased net exports or financial innovation, that's…
razib | March 6, 2010Icelanders reject deal to repay British and Dutch:
The outcome of the referendum had not been in doubt since Iceland had recently been offered better repayment terms than those contained in the deal on which residents were voting.
Partial referendum results from around a third of the cast votes showed 93 percent opposed the deal and less than 2 percent supported it. The rest cast invalid votes.
But the rejection will still have major repercussions, keeping financial aid on hold and threatening to undermine the center-left government of Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir.
"This has no…
mikethemadbiologist | March 6, 2010One of the infuriating things about the collapse of Big Shitpile is that there hasn't seemed to be much you or I can do about it (and that wanker Bernanke is useless). Until now. Move Your Money has developed a nice online tool to find local banks and credit unions.
Recently, after using their tool, I moved much of my money to a local bank, Wainwright Bank. When I told them that I wanted to open a savings account, they started to tell me about ten dollar minimum deposits, as part of Wainwright's mission is to serve who often don't have access to banking services. Maybe it just was the…
mikethemadbiologist | March 5, 2010If those who are upset about runaway government spending were serious, they would look at defense spending, which has increased in nominal terms by 75% percent. Consider what even a small level of war department waste would buy for us:
With a price tag now approaching $330 million per plane and a total program cost of well over $65 billion, the C-17, produced by weapons-maker Boeing, has miraculously evaded every attempt to squash it. In fact, Congress even included $2.5 billion in the 2010 budget for ten C-17s that the Pentagon hadn't requested.
Keep in mind that $2.5 billion is a lot of…
emjohnson | March 3, 2010Yesterday the BBC aired an investigative report documenting how American "vultures," such as New York-based Eric Hermann at hedge fund FH International, bought up debt from Liberia for pennies on the dollar and are now forcing Liberia's impoverished government to pay in full. This is at the same time that Western governments have been erasing this odious debt from years past.
The effect of Hermann's financial maneuvers earns few applause in Liberia. In that African democracy, diplomat Winston Tubman tells us what he would say to vulture fund operators, "'Do you know you are causing babies to…
emjohnson | March 2, 2010In light of the recent discussion on animal testing and animal rights I thought a few additional points would be valuable. It is a fact that animal testing leads to some necessary medical advances that save lives. Anyone who would say differently doesn't have the slightest clue what they're talking about and should be dismissed out of hand. The question is an issue of how many, especially given the ethical concerns. It is also a fact that the vast majority of animal testing serves more peripheral goals, categorized as applied studies that include cosmetic, chemical and pharmaceutical…
razib | February 28, 2010And more productive. FiveThirtyEight has a nice meme-buster post, US Manufacturing Is Not Dead. This was known to me, but Tom Schaller has all the charts put together nice.
Here's industrial output:
The labor force engaged in producing durable goods:
And per hour productivity:
The manufacturing sector is still robust, it is simply manufacturing jobs which are not.
mikethemadbiologist | February 28, 2010Or as I like to say--people have to like this crap. Two events over the last month, the reappointment of Bernanke to Fed Chairman and some Senate Democrats' new-found opposition to using reconciliation to pass healthcare reform with a public option, highlight one reason why Democrats lose elections: rather than focusing on outcomes, they focus on the process, on the 'atmospherics.' Consider the reappointment of Bernanke. It's pretty clear that he's more concerned with keeping inflation ludicrously low, which will fail to combat massive unemployment--which is one of his legally mandated…
mikethemadbiologist | February 25, 2010...if you're not a tenure-track PhD (and that will be most of you. Sorry). I'll have more to say about ScienceBlogling DrugMonkey's training post tomorrow, but one of the disturbing things in the comments of his post was the high numbers of people who viewed PhD training only in light of producting more tenure-track faculty. Since that's something I've blogged about before, I was going to respond, but then science got in the way (stupid SCIENTISMZ!). Fortunately, two excellent pieces showed up discussing this topic (my timing is exquisite). Over at Scientific American, Beryl Lieff…
mikethemadbiologist | February 19, 2010Add this to the "People have to like this crap" file. Over at AMERICAblog, John Aravosis asks Cornell economist Steven Kyle to comment on this figure distributed by Organizing for America:
Kyle:
It is a good illustration of exactly what many of us economists have been saying - the stimulus was big enough to stop the job loss, but not big enough to put all those unemployed people back to work again. So, if we switch to "deficit reduction mode," as the President has said, and start cutting spending, there is a very real danger of slipping back into a recessionary dynamic (i.e., downward…
mikethemadbiologist | February 16, 2010In the political bloggysphere, there's been some discussion about former Congressman and Two Million Dollar Man Billy Tauzin losing his job as the top lobbyist for Big Pharma. I follow this stuff a lot more than most--my observation that much of what our great congressional solons do is geared towards their retirements, to me, seems so obvious that I'm surprised it received some minor circulation. But Tauzin's degeneracy is stunning (italics mine):
So in 2003 Mr. Tauzin, then chairman of the powerful energy and commerce committee, made a deal. Though still on a modest Congressional salary,…
emjohnson | February 13, 2010 Haitian girl wearing the Disney princess shirt made in her country. Image: BBC NewsInter Press Service has just begun a new series focusing on the development loans to Haiti and the strings attached that have effectively removed the Haitian government from managing their own affairs. I spoke with IPS reporter William Fisher last week and this morning appeared on WZBC in Boston to discuss this story. This is the little known history of Haiti and forms the backdrop to why the earthquake that hit this island nation has been so devastating.
According to Fisher's article:
It is an unusual…
stoat | February 12, 2010 Every cloud has a silver lining, and it looks like Zorita is jockeying for some of the silver: the Future of IPCC apparently is to morph into one of those nice International agencies which pay so well and are headquarted in rather nice cities, staffed by... well, clearly by the likes of independent-minded folk such as Eduardo. As he says so wisely As with finance, climate assessment is too important to be left in the hands of advocates, or other scum like the current IPCC authors: sweep them all away and leave it in the hands of people who are prepared to admit their errors... oh, wait.
And…
jstemwedel | February 11, 2010Following DrugMonkey's lead, I'm going to play along on the meme proposed by Female Science Professor:
What tradition or other general characteristic of academia would you like to see eliminated completely?
According to the rules, which I just invented, the things to be eliminated have to be of a general nature. So, for example, the answer "my department chair" or "my university's moronic president" are unacceptable unless you want to eliminate the general concept of department chairs or university presidents.
The candidates for disposal can be anything to do with academia, from the most…