1. In 1935, Treasury was kicked off the Federal Reserve Board for being too political.
2. Interesting "philosophy and macro" blog.
3. Trying to sell doughnuts to the Chinese; T-Bills are easier.
4. U.S. spending on health R&D, compared to other countries.
5. New headphones that respond to eye movements.
6. Woman leaves 2,000 living descendants; a great story.
My wife’s grandmother is still alive — she has 4 living descendants. If her other grandmother were alive, it’d rise to 12. If my grandparents were still with us, my mother’s parents would have 10; my father’s would have 11.
2,000 is a lot. A ton, in fact.
Donuts in China aren’t really recent (at least in Shanghai). Mr. Donut had a shop open in Shanghai on Huai Hai Ave. near Xiang Yang road back in 2000/2001. Lots of smaller shops opened up beginning at least by 2004 selling Chinese versions. Just basic confectionary/cake shops. One ‘Chinese’ version had something translated as ‘pork floss’ stuck on top. It was thinly shredded dried pork, reminiscent of bundles of dental floss. yummm.
Regarding government spending R&D vs other countries, perhaps it’s because the US has such excellent private institutions in non-health areas compared to other countries. I.e. the US doesn’t have to spend a lot on on public computer tech R&D because of places like silicon valley.
They make an odd conclusion:
“It appears that to some degree, we have gambled our economy on the success of life sciences innovation.”
First, what’s wrong with a little comparative advantage? And is 02% of GDP a huge gamble anyway? I hope not. As with healthcare, we spend more because we can. What would they we spend our surplus GDP on?
Second, everyone knows that the problem with research is that everyone and their brother can just copy you, so, at least it is better for everyone to focus on something different and then just copy everyone else’s successes. I’m okay with the rest of the world following in our wake in medical research, but the healthcare reformers presumably are not.
Third, we haven’t really “bet” anything because that is government R&D. We aren’t investing in medical technology to corner the market, we are doing it because we want the questions answered. I’m sure there is plenty of other R&D in the private sector.
Before returning to do medical research I worked for a consumer product company that made, we’ll call it product X. I was discussing academia versus industry with a fellow student and he retorted “well, has there been any technological progress made in product X?” I was dumbfounded. Only a quintupling or quadrupling in longevity, quality and value in our lifetimes for a proven product nearly everyone has used for 100 years and a technology that was already pretty mature 80 years ago. Other than that, I guess not.
My great grandmother who passed away in 1982 had, I think, 13 children that reached adulthood, and all of them had children, too, though not that number. I would estimate that she has at least 500 descendents by now since my generation in that tree already has grandchildren of their own- the lady’s great, great, great grandchildren.
But 2000? Wow!
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