Bob,
I’ve always liked the analogy, that expecting all economists to be rich traders is similar to expecting all physisists to be pool sharks. Sure, at some level the physisist has all the tools to be a great pool player (they know the exact angles required to hit every ball into the one they want to sink, but being able to strike the cue with the correct force vector is a very different skill). To say nothing of the mind games that separate a pool shark from a good pool player.

My favorite wikipedia entry so far:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis

Trivers is brilliant.

However, there is some obvious irony in that video due his wandering into politics. For example, he buys the left’s narrative of Israel and the U.S. about as uncritically as possible. ZERO nuance, ZERO qualifications, and ZERO acknowledgement of counter-examples or indication that there is another narrative. Fascinating. It’s like watching someone give a brilliant lecture on logical fallacies but then unintentionally finishing his talk with a bunch of arguments that contain every fallacy he/she just spoke about.

Vaguely re #11 – There seem to be two issues about health care reform that people talk about (not counting teabaggers, insurance lobbyists and such).

Issue One is health care costs and their growth. And this is important issue that will eventually need to be resolved.

Issue Two is actually being able to get health care, which current system doesn’t guarantee between rescissions, pre-existing conditions, and lack of adequate subsidies, and mandates.

So people like you and Robin talk mostly only about costs, and people like most health care reform supporters talk mostly about universal coverage.

The thing is – cost control without universal coverage is not terribly useful. People will keep dying due to lack of health care, people will keep being abused by insurance companies, will keep wrong jobs to get healthcare, and so on. Serious cost controls in current environment are very likely to reduce access even more.

Going for universal coverage first, and hopefully in a way that doesn’t make dealing with costs issue too much harder later, seems like getting priorities much more straight. Problem of people dying gets converted to much easier problem of budget deficits.

Due to budget constraints, there will be constant pressure to reduce costs, no matter what lobbyists do. The government will find ways to cut costs, because it simply won’t be able to run huge deficits, and dealing with lobbyists is much easier than dealing with angry taxpayers. It worked quite well in all other OECD countries.

As usual, the Klein discussion says Obama isn’t dealing with the cost issue, because he is dictating that everyone be in the game whether individual or corporation by government mandates which are taxes, and so that only increases the costs, so what we need is the free market where profit drives things and costs are controlled by excluding the expensive people from the game. Then anyone who provide health care to the people thrown out of the game is a tax and spend liberal who won’t let the free market work as it should to keep costs down.

The NY Times story http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/lacking-insurance-hospitalized-children-more-likely-to-die/?ref=research reports children without insurance coverage are 60% more likely to die when they arrive at a hospital, and they die in half the time of the insured – half a day instead of a full day of the public or privately insured – and for about a quarter the cost. (If they survive the first day, the outcomes and costs of the insured and uninsured are the same). Malthus would approve, I think, seeing that as the way god intended – those deserving survive as they are the fittest, and those who lacking means are clearly undeserving are the unfit more likely to die.

Of course, liberals have messed with the natural order by providing Medicaid to the unfit who, deserving less are poor, and thus should be among the uninsured who are 60% more likely to naturally selected out in their first day in the hospital.

I find the chart on visits interesting as I have $5000 deducible insurance which requires I use the insurer’s network to get bills credited toward the $5000 if I end up needing the insurance, and I’m billed twice what the chart shows, which after it pays through the insurer is reduced so that I pay the provider the figure in the chart. So, the price for those uninsured are even higher than in the charts, unless one is bankrupt, in which case you get the public plan – the public fights to not pay for your bills that you can’t possibly pay.

The fiction is the prospect of everyone not being in the the same public health pool, with the only issue being how unequal can the costs be allocated and how much profit is extracted in the process of cost shifting and how much employment is increased by introducing inefficiency. For those providing care, increasing employment and profit are virtues as long as the public can be forced to pay for them, and divide and conquer has worked really well for the past three decades in doubling the cost of health care beyond what it should be.

can anyone explain what roubini means when he says traders are “borrowing at negative 20% rates”

I think he means that they are making 20% by shorting the declining dollar. This is not risk-free by any means. The problem Roubini is concerned about, as I understand it, is that when the dollar decline stops, and it will, traders will be forced to sell off assets to cover dollar short positions. He fears that, for reasons he cites, we are building yet another asset bubble.

How much innovation in medicine occurs outside the U.S.? None?

RE Roubini:

1) A carry trade normally means the money you make on the interest rate spread between currencies, right? So why does Roubini include capital gains into the mix and refer to it as an annualized interest rate? This is bizarre.

2) Isn’t the decline in the dollar DUE TO re-investment in international assets, not the CAUSE of it?

3) Roubini’s reason why the dollar must eventually reverse and cause panic covering: “because the dollar cannot go to zero”. Let’s take this mesmerizing reasoning at its undeserved face value a moment: he is still wrong. The dollar can decline at an annual rate of 20% from here to eternity. Does this man have a real degree?

@ Michael G. Heller:

First, they do discuss these cross-cultural studies. Spatial tasks, ultimatum games, etc. are all there.

Second, although I completely agree that behaviour responds significantly to impersonal formal institutional incentives, there is nonetheless the question of how exactly such institutions and incentives influence behaviour, not to mention the question of where they come from in the first place and how they change.

In any event, I’m not sure it’s really counterintuitive. People in different places are different in many ways. But drawing attention to this fact is a useful thing to do.

funny seeing something as far-left leaning as the london review of books being linked to here. that being said, john lanchester’s prose is always a good read

To be more clear, the US is the first adopter of essentially all the new expensive technologies that save us from dying prematurely, save us from needless maiming, and save us from unnecessary pain.

Single payer means price controls, and price controls mean less innovation. Single payer is acutely unhealthy.