Asking good questions is half the battle in advancing knowledge, and a clever and timely piece by Andreas Georgiadis and Alan Manning of the London School of Economics does just that. The post looks into why rising income inequality isn’t strongly correlated in democracies with more concerted efforts at redistribution. After all, as wealth becomes […]
Read more...A refreshing article in the Financial Times by Samuel Brittan reminds us that some celebrated economists envisioned continuing progress as leading not to ever-escalating levels of consumption, but to a society where improving productivity and technology would provide higher quality goods and more leisure. The French hew to that ideal (as Paul Krugman has pointed […]
Read more...John Hockenberry, former Dateline correspondent, describes in the MIT Technology Review how the networks’ preoccupation with hanging on to their viewers has gotten in the way of reporting news. News programs, at least as exemplified by NBC, where Hockenberry once worked, go to considerable lengths to find affirming emotional narratives and avoid upsetting or challenging […]
Read more...An article in Asia Times, “Shopping ‘zombies’ offer US hope,” supplies middling analysis (the author believes the depth of the subprime mess has been dimensioned, which means the bad news has already been reflected in prices. That’s a long winded way of saying that now is a time to buy. That perspective is not shared […]
Read more...The Privacy & Human Rights Report examines privacy policies and practices in 70 countries. Produced annually since 1997, this is far and away the most comprehensive survey of this sort, running to 1,100 pages with over 6,000 footnotes. Summary of key findings: The 2007 rankings indicate an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, […]
Read more...A 2002 article by Michael Prowse in the Financial Times addressed the question, “Is Inequality Good for You?” Normally, discussion of that topic involves issues of equity and efficiency. Those of a liberal bent contend that unequal societies undermine the legitimacy of authority. Those on the right argue that people are unequal, therefore results will […]
Read more...Yesterday, I took advantage of this (hopefully) quiet week to share some things I have come across that affected how I view the world. I can’t recommend strongly enough that you view the four-part 2002 BBC documentary, The Century of the Self. Creator Adam Curtis said, “This series is about how those in power have […]
Read more...Ooof, talk about dispelling the illusion that anyone will take care of the aged. There has been ample comment about the need to reform Social Security. However, the real problem on the retirement entitlements front is Meidcare. Paul Krugman and Dean Baker, among others, have pointed out at length that alarming increases forecast for Medicare […]
Read more...Ben Stein is up to his old tricks. Here he gave the impression of being done for the year, having penned an article of a classic end of year type, “what I should do better next year.” But he snuck another piece in this week, “Tattered Standard of Duty on Wall Street.” The article claims […]
Read more...Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ highly regarded economics editor, looks at a fundamental and troubling issue in his latest article, “The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy.” From the Industrial Revolution onward, the world has enjoyed economic growth, producing rising living standards and making possible an extension of democracy (Wolf argues that the […]
Read more...Yesterday I posted a lead from a reader complaining about a holiday party that Freddie Mac hosted, the objetcion being it was inappropriately splashy (the reader used, and I repeated, the overwrought “decadent”) given that Freddie is losing quite a lot of money these days ($2 billion last quarter, almost certainly the same this quarter, […]
Read more...Cultural myths die hard. Even though a study in Science earlier this year found that men and women uttered nearly the same number of words in a day, yet women are widely perceived to be more chatty. My pet theory is that men see themselves as talking about things that are necessary and important, like […]
Read more...New York Times writer David Leonhardt, in “When Trust in an Expert Is Unwise,” cites a small scale study of car mechanics that suggests that so-called experts often aren’t very skilled, and also too often prescribe inappropriate and costly remedies to simple problems. Leonhardt suggests that the study’s findings can be generalized to fields like […]
Read more...The article below, from the 12 Angry Men Blog, mourns the dumbing down of home chemistry kits. One has to wonder at these heavy-handed efforts to contain threats, particularly in a society that lacks gun controls. Are we next going to make styrofoam a controlled substance, since mixed with gas, it produces a decent napalm […]
Read more...This article by George Monbiot, “Libertarians are the True Social Parasites,” is priceless. It illustrates the sort of behavior discussed in longer form in Dean Baker’s book, The Conservative Nanny State, namely, of diehard critics of government intervention who nevertheless want a handout when their enterprise goes bad. Note I refrained from including the extensive […]
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