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Open thread July 13, 2012

Dan Crawford | July 13, 2012 6:33 pm

Tags: open thread Comments (15) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
15 Comments
  • rjs says:
    July 13, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    FYI:
    i’ve posted inside job, charles ferguson’s documentary on the crisis, if anyone hasnt seen it (i hadnt)

    its the full length movie, HD on vimeo…

  • PJR says:
    July 13, 2012 at 8:49 pm

    If interested in party polarization, this article offers a good depiction of the data on how Congress has changed since the early 1970s: http://grist.org/politics/asymmetrical-polarization-the-lefts-gone-left-but-the-rights-gone-nuts/ The author, after presenting the data and others’ interpretations, provides this key paragraph:

    “Here’s the way I’d put it: Today, the national Democratic Party contains everything from the center-right to the far-left. Economically its proposals tend to be center to center-right. Socially, its proposals tend to be center to center-left. The national Republican Party, by contrast, has now been almost entirely absorbed by the far right. It rejects the basic social consensus among post-war democracies and seeks to return to a pre-New Deal form of governance. It is hostile to social and economic equality. It remains committed to fossil fuels and sprawl and opposed to all sustainable alternatives. And it has built an epistemological cocoon around itself within which loopy misinformation spreads unchecked. It has, in short, gone loony.”

    It’s unusual to see someone point out that the Dem leftward movement is on social, and NOT economic, issues. Is this partly a function of ideologically conservative economists doing a good job?

  • coberly says:
    July 13, 2012 at 9:59 pm

    nah, it’s part of “money talks.”

  • Anna Lee says:
    July 14, 2012 at 10:18 am

    PJR, That sounds like the Democratic party platform is “I’m sorry you don’t have a job and can’t feed your kids but I’m a fiscally responsible government person. No it’s not conservative economists, it’s what the American people think they like.

    I think the BP disaster told it all in terms of the free lunch contradiction. e.g. Why didn’t government experts have all the answers?

    I may think Republican policies say “kill granny” but my granny neighbor hears Republicans say Obama wants to kill granny.

  • Denis Drew says:
    July 14, 2012 at 11:14 am

    PART OF AN EMAIL I SENT TO THE CHICAGO CITY COUNCIL AND OTHERS YESTERDAY:

    100,000 gang bangers in Chicago — means 1 in 15 males — means 1 in 4 gang-age males (15 to 35, heavily weighted towards the young end) — means 1 in 2 minority, gang-age males? This is not going to turn around because the administration closes some liquor stores.

    Let’s try it again — same message as before: what the Chicago City Council is unlikely aware of – and nobody else in America seems to catch – is that, as per capita income doubled over the past two generations due to advancing technology and management skills, the federal minimum wage has sunk currently to $3.28/hr below its 1968 a high of $10.53/hr ($1.60/hr nominally) — had sunk almost in half before the “big” Democratic $2.10/hr raise in early 2007).

    In my reading of Venkatesh’s American Project the Taylor Homes became gang infested hell only as the minimum wage dipped below 63% of LBJ’s minimum ($5.15 nominally) in 2000).

    I am not expecting Chicago’s City council to straighten out what I call America’s “post apocalyptic” labor market. I’m just trying to point out the deep labor market sickness at the bottom of most of America’s worst troubles. Chicago’s Republi-crat mayor had a chance to do something about this on his last job but I’m afraid the average person’s paycheck is the last thing the current presidential administration ever thinks about.

  • Denis Drew says:
    July 14, 2012 at 11:17 am

    This comment has been removed by the author.

  • Denis Drew says:
    July 14, 2012 at 11:23 am

    ANOTHER EMAIL TO THE CHICAGO CITY COUNCIL YESTERDAY — IN REFERENCE TO AN ONGOING EFFORT TO RAISE THE TAXI METER RATE (currently $1.80 a mile):

    New York’s City’s Taxi & Limousine Commission voted this week to raise their taxi meter to $2.50 a mile.

    The New York fare was $2.80 a mile (60 cents adjusted) — after the last successful taxi strike in 1974; after replacing employee commission with private contractor leasing disappeared the union. By early 2006 the New York fare had dropped to $1.82 a mile ($1.50 adjusted) — whence New York raised it smeter to $2.43 a mile ($2.00 adjusted).

    Today’s Chicago taxi meter is a whole $1 a mile (adjusted) behind the New York taxi meter of 38 years ago — 2/3 increase in average American income later!

    Higher cost of living in New York? But, someone in your backseat 10 hours a day, every day. Chicago was busy only every other day when I began in the 1980s — before Chicago put on 40% more cabs — while building subways to both airports, opening up unlimited limos and putting on free trolleys between all the hot spots downtown — but allowing taxis only one 30 cent increase in the mile rate over a 16 year period (1981-1990-1997).

    http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=0.60&year1=1974&year2=2012

    http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1.50&year1=2004&year2=2012

    http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=2.00&year1=2004&year2=2012

  • Jack says:
    July 14, 2012 at 1:28 pm

    My god, I’d almost forgotten that today is Bastille Day, possibly the last significant political phenomenon in what we quaintly refer to as the western world. Republicanism, the small r variety, came to the fore and rjule by aristocracy was over turned. True enough that there were some regressions along the way, but the Kings of Europe saw the beginning of the end of their terms in office. It’s taken two hundred years, but we seem to be headed back in the wrong direction.
    Where is Necker when he’s needed most? That Robespierre et al took his place should be seen as a fore warning of the explosive effects of a crappy (ie, unbalanced, distorted, disproportional, etc.) economic process which rewards the very few at the expense of the very many.

  • PJR says:
    July 14, 2012 at 1:42 pm

    Anna Lee I agree with you and Coberly but also think that conservative economists are guilty of aiding and abetting the political shift that has been encouraging increasing inequality. Many and perhaps a majority of reasonably well-read, well-educated people–who vote and influence other voters–swallowed whole the thinking of conservative economists. I think it’s an obstacle to changing policy direction when economically literate people believe, for example, that Alan Simpson is a centrist.

  • coberly says:
    July 14, 2012 at 5:36 pm

    pjr

    “economically literate”

    even I believed the theory of comparative advantage in re free trade. because i was “economically literant,” meaning i took a course in econ 101 when i was still young and impressionable.

    sometimes it takes years of experience to overcome what you learned in college.

    what most of the “highly educated” never realized is that they have had years of expensive training in thinking like an elite. that used to be fine when “college men” were members of the elite and need to be cleaned up a little before being admitted to the club.

    now it just means you are a useful tool.

  • coberly says:
    July 14, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    i really do know how to spell… mostly… but there seems to be a problem in the typesetting machine.

  • Anna Lee says:
    July 15, 2012 at 1:30 pm

    PJR, Unfortunately I am not as literate as coberly on these matters, having not taken Econ 101. (And my spelling is worse but that’s another matter.)

    Let’s see if I can explain with a suppose (which for years I spelled as suspose because that was the way I pronounced it). Suppose the models all showed that the most efficient economy is serfdom and all economists agreed that the optimal was somewhere between serfdom and slavery. If you use your brain you will realize that the model is wrong Efficiency produced a result counter to the welfare of mankind.

    To give another non-economic example: Was the hastening of the end of WWII in favor of the “good-guys” worth the venture into atomic bombs. The reason I use the example is because it includes an inevitable. That being that man would gain knowledge before evolving the maturity to handle the knowledge.

  • coberly says:
    July 15, 2012 at 3:07 pm

    Anna Lee

    you see what being unliterate can do for you. I think I have an honorary degree around here somewhere that we can award you.

    I think even Jefferson suspected something like this. All in favor of educating the masses, as I think he was, he still felt that great knowledge on the part of the voters was not necessarily a good thing. Knowledge being hard to tell from propaganda. Better that the people vote their feelings than what they have been taught it economic wisdom.

  • Anna Lee says:
    July 15, 2012 at 4:51 pm

    coberly: “you see what being unliterate can do for you. I think I have an honorary degree around here somewhere that we can award you.”

    No thanks. Then someone would need to deliterate me and, quite frankly, that doesn’t sound like fun.

    Yea, Jefferson, that guy from the Dead Founders Club.

  • coberly says:
    July 15, 2012 at 6:20 pm

    oh heck Anna, i thought you were doing a good job of overcoming your education.

    Aaron Burr doesn’t really count as a founder. But among the founders he was the one true believer in women’s rights. In fact he liked women. Jefferson ran him out of the country.

    So one needs to be careful about building statues of the mind to the Founders. on the other hand, they do deserve some credit from, you know, founding.

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