Rich and Strange Aeons

Dang, I stopped following my blogs RSS for not quite two months. Some partial catchup, in reverse temporal order:

structural unemployment bullshit
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/structural-humbug/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/is-there-any-point-to-economic-analysis/
inflation hawk sexism, Yellen
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/the-she-devil-of-constitution-avenue/
Obama inflation hawk
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/fear-of-froth/
slow lane travel
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/life-in-the-slow-lane-trivial/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/friday-night-music-sprawl-again/
centrism meaingless
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/things-fell-apart/
high inflation vanishing from the world
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/the-death-of-high-inflation/
urban sprawl, Atlanta vs. Boston
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/atl-v-bos/
urban sprawl and social mobility
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/did-sprawl-kill-horatio-alger/
urban sprawl, Pittsburgh, and Detroit
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/a-tale-of-two-rust-belt-cities/
America more homogenous, doing less shipping
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/america-is-flat/
France not collapsing
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/les-not-so-miserables/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/more-on-not-so-miserable-france/

Finnish maternity box all Finnish mothers can get http://updatednews.ca/2013/06/03/why-finnish-babies-moslty-sleep-in-cardboard-boxes/

Boston's role in gay liberation. First gay representative elected here. Origin of GLAD, but also NAMBLA. http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/06/01/how-boston-powered-gay-rights-movement/wEsPZOdHhByHpjeXrJ6GbN/story.html

Yglesias on the space we lavish on inefficient cars http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/06/04/overallocation_of_urban_space_to_cars.html

inverse relation between trust and small business levels http://www.slate.com/articles/business/small_business/2012/07/the_small_business_problem_why_greece_italy_and_spain_have_too_many_small_firms_.html

Suicide by euro http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/the-triumph-of-peter-kenen-the-revenge-of-robert-mundell/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/the-macroeconomics-of-european-disunion/

How Fox News controls its message http://www.salon.com/2013/05/29/i_was_a_liberal_mole_at_fox_news_from_bill_oreilly_to_roger_ailes_heres_all_the_inside_dope/

carbon pricing around the world http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/04/congress-hates-carbon-pricing-the-rest-of-the-world-doesnt/

economics of ticket scalping http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/magazine/the-secret-science-of-scalping-tickets.html?_r=0

Paleo diet/lifestyle myths http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/?p=3098 and http://discovermagazine.com/2013/april/17-paleomythic-how-people-really-lived-during-the-stone-age

How long each Doctor lasted http://www.wonderfulbook.co.uk/docdurations2.png
Moffat bingo http://www.impossiblepodcasts.com/2011/08/doctor-who-moffat-bingo-play-along-at.html

world improvement charts, with snark http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/24/these-31-charts-will-destroy-your-faith-in-humanity/

Partisans can be more accurate when paid to do so http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/03/if-you-pay-them-money-partisans-will-tell-you-the-truth/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein

Early Social Security not necessarily racist by intention http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/03/a-second-look-at-social-securitys-racist-origins/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein

Obamacare premium effects http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/03/the-six-ways-obamacare-changes-insurance-premiums/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein

I've been trying to reset my sleep schedule to something more in tune with society. So far I'm just massively jet lagged without the fun of having gone anywhere.

Snooze buttons are bad for you or at least can be, especially if you actually fall asleep you again; sleep has phases, and you can fall into a deeper phase than you were initially. This might also explain something I found during my orals prep: for two weeks my body refused to sleep more than 3 hours a night, and I was tired all the time, but trundled through my studied. The day of my exam I set my alarm, got woken up after three hours, and felt like nauseous crap. There's a difference between three hours because stupid body wakes up and three hours because alarm.

Another column on how teens naturally sleep at 11pm for 9 hours despite US insanity of having high schooler start earlier than elementary school.

***

NY Times takes on the Senate, the least democratic legislature in the developed world. 66:1 ratio in power between WY and CA. Why do the 500,000 people of Wyoming deserve more power (and federal money) than the 500,000 people of Fresno?

***

Cosmic ray bit flips a growing problem?

Cracked on gun myths or weird facts: gun ads are weird, there's no typical mass shooter, making suicide harder does work to reduce suicides, there's weird gun/god association, violence is down, guns get collected like expensive Barbie dolls, maybe all the gun porn and violent games reduce overall violence while increasing mass shootings. Maybe.

***

social mobility of food services, and contribution of liquor to urban vitality
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/27/food_service_sector_should_be_taken_seriously.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/small_business/2013/03/liquor_license_moratoriums_nimby_idiots_are_strangling_great_neighborhoods.html

Las Vegas female bartenders. Another profession gets sexualized and off-limited for the non-young.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/03/las_vegas_bartender_went_from_a_male_to_a_female_job.html

***

Transit has big benefits. Even if a small %age of trips is via transit, those will be disproportionately trips that otherwise would have been on congested roads, so the benefit is larger than one might expect. I always said drivers should welcome transit subsidies as reducing the competition for road and parking...

Productivity minimum wage would be $22/hour. Inflation-linked would be over $10.50

Annals of a banana republic:
Texas under Perry:cut school budgets, give corporate welfare, get campaign donations
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/us/winners-and-losers-in-texas.html?hp&_r=1&
bright note: Daimler says it avoids incentives out of school budgets
"our workers send their kids there"


Cambodia propaganda state via karaoke and comedians. Sounds like something out of Transhuman Space Broken Dreams
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/song-and-dance-hun-sens-other-power-play/?hp

MLK day poem
http://squid314.livejournal.com/353114.html

what's good for American Airline isn't good for their execs
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/18/amr_corp_s_creditors_should_listen_to_the_airline_s_unions.html

government can't save
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/17/government_can_t_really_save_it_can_only_invest.html


Several from the Economist:

Indian genes in Australia; stone tool upgrade
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21569688-genetic-evidence-suggests-four-millennia-ago-group-adventurous-indians?fsrc=rss|sct

soot pollution worse than thought
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21569686-soot-even-worse-climate-was-previously-thought-new-black

American embassy reported on Beijing pollution
http://www.economist.com/news/china/21569743-measures-air-pollution-go-scale-public-impatience-rises-something-air

Austrialia had 40 degree national average temperature , high of 50
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21569440-uncomfortable-time-australians-especially-climate-change-sceptics-up-eleven

global warming governance: geonengineering, migration
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/12/anthropocene

safe asset shortage
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/12/finance

China nuclear power
http://www.economist.com/news/china/21569774-china-wants-more-nuclear-plants-anyone-else-will-it-build-them-safely-back-front

four winged protobird
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21565922-why-microraptor-became-extinct-four-wings-good-two-wings-better

http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=cu&v=67
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GDP-Caribbean.png (my friends say that's 1990 PPP dollars)

GDP/capita PPP
Country 1999 2000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Cuba 1,700 1,700 2,300 2,900 3,000 3,500 4,000 11,000 9,500 9,700 9,900

Tripling in one year? WTF. Some change in calculation? And I can't find anyone talking about it. GDP/capita nominal is $5000 now, up from $2500 earlier in the 2000s, or so says my memory though I'm not sure what source I used.

By Donald Shoup. I haven't read it, but I've seen some reviews:

High Cost of Free Parking reviews
parking subsidy
http://www.examiner.com/review/the-high-cost-of-free-parking-book-review
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.html

"For instance, after including construction and land costs, he measures
the value of a Los Angeles parking space at over $31,000"
"Yet 99 percent of all automobile trips in the United States end in a
free parking space, rather than a parking space with a market price. In
his book, Professor Shoup estimated that the value of the free-parking
subsidy to cars was at least $127 billion in 2002, and possibly much
more. "

And this one is a 2005 essay by Shoup himself:

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-high-cost-of-free-parking-2630493.php

"Paving an entire state for a parking lot sounds outrageous. But because
there are at least three parking spaces for each of the 230 million
vehicles in the United States, the total space devoted to parking in
America amounts to an area about the size of Connecticut. "

"Studies of cruising in downtowns have found that up to 74 percent of
traffic was searching for parking, and the average time to find a curb
space ranged up to 14 minutes. "

"Most cities require commercial buildings to provide a parking lot
larger than the floor area, and for restaurants the parking lots are
often at least three times the size of the dining area. "

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-07-09/yumiko-kawahara-madoka-magica-win-sense-of-gender-awards

Airline passes http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/05/business/la-fi-0506-golden-ticket-20120506

Proving you're gay to Turkey's military http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17474967

Bonobos, language, and lexigrams http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/apes-with-apps/0

Israel claims it's not an occupying power http://mondoweiss.net/2012/07/israeli-govt-study-declares-west-bank-not-occupied-earth-flat.html

eurocrisis: Denmark into negative rates, apparently being considered even safer than Germany http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/paying-the-danegeld/
high real tax rates on the poor: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/whose-incentives/

Interesting sounding novel on robot consciousness; http://io9.com/5907775/the-most-messed-up-book-about-robot-consciousness-ever

What would a near-lightspeed baseball be like? http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

So, the top lesson I got out of the Small Change book is how unstable and fluid money has been over time. Like, I get the impression that if money is stable over 30 years it's doing well. Or 60, anyway. An exaggeration? Maybe, but not a huge one. History seems full of shortage of small change, debasements, recoinages, shifts in silver and gold values and use, experiments with copper tokens, siege moneys of leather or other material, private tokens... plus of course a diversity of minted coins from lots of little kingdoms, and physical diversity even within a denomination due to wear and tear on coins. (So a coin might be 10% or more underweight, just from abrasion over 30 years. That's a lot of lost silver.)

( Insert coin to read more )

The Conclusion?

Given how much things have changed, I suppose we could be a bit more humble, rather than assuming the current regime is the apotheosis of financial economics. ('We' = economists or lay followers, who assume floating exchange rates are great and gold standard advocacy a sign of crazy.) Maybe capital controls will become the next big thing. Maybe quantum computers and high end replicators will shred both electronic banking (due to cracking encryption) and paper money (easy counterfeiting) and we'll have to go back to commodity coins. Maybe central banks will have their independence revoked due to insufficient attention to full employment.

OTOH, there have been advances in theory, about the nature and effect of money; we live in the century of Keynes, Friedman, and Mundell, themselves standing on centuries of painfully learned lessons (still being learned.) And, there's a weak direction in history: token or fiat money keeps coming up again and again, not just due to sovereign greed but often due to a need for 'money' of whatever kind... even stamped leather strips. If you can prevent counterfeiting and keeping from overprinting, it works great. Well, until your central banks become so allergic to overprinting that they refuse to print enough, as in Japan, the EU, and US...

I saw this book (or books, volumes on micro and macro) in the bookstore, and decided to check it out (literally; go library! Though I had to be tricky and lucky with call number to find the second volume, which wasn't coming on a simple title search). For me it was mostly light entertainment; I already knew most of the material, though I did get a couple things out of it. And if you've ever taken a good introductory class in micro and macro, from a teacher not biased too far to the right, it probably taught you a lot more. But if you want to learn or go over the basic concepts in a light fashion, I can recommend these books, both in material and position. It's what I think of as mainstream economics, meaning *not* conservative/libertarian laissez faire but enlightened mixed economies, both market friendly and open to market failures.

The order of content might be unusual; both books build up from simple cases. The micro book starts with the assumption of optimizing individuals, and talks about the decision theory of one individual, then game theory and the interaction of a small number of individuals, and only then about markets and the ideal interaction of $BIGNUM individuals. And it quickly sets up the big question: "Under what circumstances does individual optimization lead to outcomes that are good for the group as a whole?" And it talks about the benefits of trade and comparative advantage and how supply and demand curves work, but also the pitfalls of adverse selection, the prisoners dilemma, asymmetric information. It notes the limitations of economic Pareto efficiency, being necessary but far from sufficient for good outcomes. Competitive markets are awesome, but markets aren't always competitive. How taxes end up getting distributed among buyers and sellers (it largely doesn't matter who you put a sales or payroll tax on; elasticity will pass the burden around.)

Things I learned about:
* Hotelling's Law and why businesses often cluster, like hot dog stands in the middle of a beach rather than spaced out. The book actually just mentioned it in passing, leaving me to think about it then look it up.
* How driving can be a prisoner's dilemma. I sort of knew this, but gained new clarity. Given traffic mixed between cars and buses (or streetcars), driving will always be a dominant strategy as far as speed goes, always faster than the buses. But if everyone drives, you get rush hour congestion. So cars can invade a high quality bus or streetcar system due to individual preferences yet still lead to a worse outcome arguably worth suppression.
* Auction types and how they're equivalent. Ascending auctions and sealed-bid 2nd price auctions both encourage one to bid one's true value, but will lead to the winner paying only as much as the second highest bid; descending auction and sealed-bid 1st price auctions lead to the top bid being paid, but also to that bid being lower than the winner's true value. Which to run? For the auctioneer it often doesn't matter, but I'd guess the first is psychologically less annoying for the bidders.

The second book also builds up. One country, two trading countries, the world. Here, there are two big goals: to explain how economies grow, and why they collapse, with the holy grail of sustained growth without crashing. Again, it's mainstream (or mid-century mainstream, anyway), combining classical views over the long term (creative destruction! trade is just like advancing technology! jobs get made despite massive changes in the labor force!) with Keynesian views over the short term (trade and tech make winners and losers! high unemployment can be sustained for silly and fixable reasons!) It also goes over basics like trade (again), GDP, role of government, money (and currency unions), financial system instability.

It's been noted, perhaps by both Krugman and Mankiw, that the issues where just about all economists agree are often the ones on which they're least listened to. Invoking a favored economist in a political fight? Cool. Listening to a consensus against rent control, minimum wage laws (as opposed to other means of helping the poor), and trade barriers? Uncool. The chapter on sustainability is blase about copper (prices go up, new sources or new substitutes get found, markets are good at this) but alarmed about global warming (seriously guys, market failure, like overfishing!) with a typical economist answer of a carbon tax (help the market do its job properly.)

I used to think that the deregulation of the US airlines was one of the successes of deregulation, cutting service quality but at least getting prices down. Looks like I was wrong! It's failing at that and killing cities too.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2012/features/terminal_sickness035756.php

Longish article. The industry has had trouble staying profitable. Services are being cut to bigger and bigger cities, like Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh, and where they aren't fares are monopolistic and high.

At first, the program—which was, naturally, embraced by many free market economists and the incoming Reagan administration—seemed to pay off. To be sure, many communities instantly lost air service, and the industry rapidly restructured into the hub-and-spoke system that still exists today, leading to the elimination of many direct flights. But the early years of the new regime also saw a burst of competition and price cutting in the airline industry.

What both policymakers and the public generally missed, however, was that any positive effects that occurred would be temporary, and that many of them would have occurred without deregulation. The price of energy, for example, cratered in the mid-1980s, making it possible to cut fares and even expand service on many short hauls. But that wasn’t an effect of deregulation; it was the result of a temporary world oil glut. Indeed, after adjusting for changes in energy prices, a 1990 study by the Economic Policy Institute concluded that airline fares fell more rapidly in the ten years before 1978 than they did during the subsequent decade.

Except for a period after 9/11, when airlines deeply discounted fares to attract panicked customers, real air prices have fallen more slowly since the elimination of the CAB than before. This contrast becomes even starker if one considers the continuous decline in service quality, with more overbooked planes flying to fewer places, long waits in hub airports, the lost ability to make last-minute changes in itineraries without paying exorbitant fares, and the slow strangulation of heartland cities that don’t happen to be hubs.


Despite the lack of explicit roads or railroads, the high costs of getting a plane into the air, and of running airports and traffic control, make flight a natural network monopoly like other forms of transportation and utilities, one which left to its own devices will shed marginal communities until it's restricted to the most profitable runs between giant cities.

It has amused me to realize that many libertarians probably picture a Jeffersonian yeoman idyll but their policies would actually lead to teeming megacities and wealthy estates. Perhaps they envision being on the estates.