Wednesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Do broken homes produce more cautious investors?

2. John Cochrane on Jeff Clemens on the minimum wage.

3. Baseball pitch velocity.

4. Soviet whale quotas.

5. Australian podcast with me.  AEI Pethokoukis podcast with me.

6. Yancey Strickler on the dark forest theory of the internet.

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EdR

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Hi, mouse!

EdR

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That's not me! Lol!

I think you have a real problem there - I am living rent free in your head. Maybe you should get some counseling.

EdR

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Stop impersonating me, you sneaky little mouse! I see what you are doing. TDS has you increasingly insane with your trolling. MAGA!

Thiago Ribeiro

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So this is it. Americans are reduced to war within themselves. No wonder they have become an unpleasant people. Such is life in Trump's America.

Thiago Ribeiro

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That is the impersonator.

free projects

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Hi, all is going nicely here and ofcourse every
one is sharing information, that's really good, keep up writing.

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Dick the Butcher

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1. But what does it say about Hillary?
2. I can't stand Hillary.
3. I'm glad Hillary lost the election.
4. Hillary is such a mean-spirited woman.
5. Australia isn't far away enough from Hillary.
6. Lock her up!

Dick the Butcher

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Funny

If I were advising President Donald J. Trump, I would (take a page from the Dem play book) have AG Barr appoint a special prosecutor to go after Joe Biden and his 35 years of corrupt activities.

1 - Typically cautious buyers and suppressed prices. Desirable neighborhoods normally do not have many empty/foreclosure houses.

2. As usual, The Grumpy guy is interesting.

3. Larger men (no women, genderism), better training methods. Tommy John surgery and low pitch counts. The off-speed, cutter, and deep slider are necessary to "enhance" velocity.

4. Another greatest enviro crime was Rachel Carson's shoddy scholarship: millions of "surplus" black and brown people died. Margaret Sanger would be proud. Do-Gooders Doing Damage Never Pay A Price.

5. Related: Australian stock market soars to 11 year high on unexpected conservative election win. FYI: econ PhD candidates - generally, rising stock indices are good things.

The Empathy Deficit: They lose elections because the intellectuals, activists and media pundits who present the most visible face of post-modern leftism are the same people that openly attack the livelihoods, values and cultural tastes of working and middle-class voters.

6. Social media is a social disease. There is no policeman, or even a neighbor, to see the crap one does on the net.

You're Welcome!

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clockwork_prior

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6. 'In response to the ads, the tracking, the trolling, the hype, and other predatory behaviors, we’re retreating to our dark forests of the internet, and away from the mainstream.

This very piece is an example of this. This theory was first shared on a private channel sent to 500 people who I know or who have explicitly chosen to receive it. '

I'm guessing that the idea of e-mail has become virtually extinct, much like news groups. Or else the rise of social media has led to a certain sort of amnesia, even among those who really should remember the past better.

As reflected by this perspective - 'You could argue that these decisions removed me from the arena.' A perspective that still accepts the idea of the centrality of exactly what he has rejected, as seen here - 'I silenced my voice on the platforms where the conversation was happening.'

This is illusion, and an apparently unbreakable one - sitting in front of a screen typing or posting pictures is not conversation in a meaningful sense.

And there is a certain grandiosity involved in the idea that the entire world cares about the fact that 'Milestones for me and my family were left unshared.'

The Internet is certainly a major force in modern life - just not the all consuming one that so many people seem to believe it is.

'This is the Bowling Alley Theory of the Internet: that people are online purely to meet each other, and in the long run the venues where we congregate are an unimportant background compared to the interactions themselves.'

Um, no. The reasons that people are on the Internet are extremely varied. And the belief that only when one is part of a larger whole is one complete or somehow involved in a grand project making bowling alleys safe for humanity is an even more disturbing delusion.

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Mulp

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2. Retailers clearly prefer customers who earn and spend very little money, because...

Government will borrow from central banks money created out of thin air and give it to workers so workers can pay high rentts to emplooyers paying wages too low to buy all that is produced at high profit?

Call the debt funded welfare a tax cut named EITC to trick conservatives into enthusiastically embracing a welfare state.

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rayward

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3. Most MLB teams have as many pitchers on the roster as all other positions combined. Should MLB put a limit on the number of pitchers? I wouldn't favor it, but it's better than moving the pitcher's mound two feet back, which MLB is considering. As for hitting, the emphasis on "launch angle" seems misplaced. It's not the angle at launch that creates the long ball, but the rise. In golf, the average player tries to swing up to help lift the ball, only to see the ball sink not lift. The accomplished player knows that to make the golf ball go up, the player must swing down on the ball to give it lift, lift that results from backspin. Swinging up puts topspin on the ball, causing it to sink not rise. The same is true in baseball. MLB teams with the highest batting average have the best hitting coaches. It seems unlikely, but most hitting coaches know little about, you know, hitting. What I ingrained in the boys I taught was the line drive: don't have the mental image of lifting the ball, but rather hitting a line drive. To hit a line drive requires the hitter to stay "on top" of the ball, putting backspin on it, causing the ball to rise. Anyway, that's my free advice to MLB batting instructors. For what it's worth, which is nothing. Play ball!

Anonymous

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You're right it is worth nothing. By the way MLB had already limited the number of pitchers to 13. And went should the be as many pitchers add position players? They can't pitch every day. By the way try to hit a home run with rise on a 5 degree launch angle. Good luck.

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ChrisA

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1. Classic p-hacking. They tested a whole bunch of potential correlations and then breathlessly reported the only ones that were significant (lower risk portfolios). Theory suggests that evolution will work very very hard to remove any long lasting impacts on psychology. This is at the root of Judith Rich Harris (RIP) nurture vs nature analysis. Parents just don't have an impact on their kids personalities, because if at any point they did evolution would quickly level the playing field.
2. I am sure Tyler purposely put this after number 1. The lesson of this is that empirical data on minimum wage restrictions is full of confounds and can be tortured to prove any case, so you should rely on simple theory: raise the price of something, and all things being equal demand will fall. I hate the minimum wage stuff because it is all about disadvantaging the worse off to benefit the middle. It's something like Trump would have come up with.
3. At the root of this debate is whether baseball is a sport or a branch of the entertainment business. If a sport, then leave the game to adapt as it eventually will, to fast balls.
4. Great example of why environmentalists should be rampant capitalists. Not only is the theory sound, empirically the more capitalist a country the better the environment is managed in that country. CO2 emissions reductions are already falling rapidly in capitalist countries for instance, but rising in more statist ones.
5. Will listen later when I am on the plane.
6. I think he is misusing the analogy when he talks about people moving to protected forums. The dark forest is not the safe place, it is the dangerous place. The proper analogy is that people are moving from the dark forest to castles perhaps. In any event 4Chan is still around.

Captain Slime

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Yeah, it's really annoying that he gets the "dark forest" metaphor wrong. But it doesn't work the other way either. The "dangerous place" is anything but deathly quiet. In fact it's full of idiots yelling at the top of their lungs.

I for one will welcome our new grue overlords.

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ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

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6. Yeah. Well. Obviously.

The dark forest is a good metaphor, and these pages, with impersonation, trolls, tourette's victims and self-styled censors are a good example.

A good piece.

I think the safer places should have been given a different name to extend the metaphor. Cosy cabins in the dark forest, perhaps. Or friendly taverns, if that isn't too LOTR.

Still, we know safe spaces have their own sorts of risks

Censor?

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Is it really though, if you post 30 times a day?

ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

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Sometimes they know how to push the right buttons to get a thread deleted. Not for starting content, but for their additions.

I'll put "chaff," the strategy of confusing an issue with extraneous arguments, in a different category. It's more an attempt to muffle than trigger deletion.

The Lack of Self Awareness

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I'll put "chaff," the strategy of confusing an issue with extraneous arguments, in a different category. It's more an attempt to muffle than trigger deletion.

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rayward

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2. Fair discussion of the issue by Cochrane. My problem with the left is they offer simple solutions, like raising the minimum wage, for complex problems (listed by Cochrane). My problem with the right is they offer simple solutions, like cutting taxes for the job creators, for complex problems (excessive inequality, stagnant wages, pathology, etc.). As I lean slightly to the left, I am more disappointed in the left with their simple solutions. But all is not lost: Cowen selected items 2. and 3. because they reflect the same inadequacy, simple solutions for complex problems, the problem in MLB being that hitters can't, you know, hit. Alas, I suppose it's the human condition to seek simple solutions to complex problems.

rayward

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I believe it was Tommy Smothers who said poor people are poor because they don't have enough money.

dearieme

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I used to think that. I was wrong.

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Anonymous

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They are incredibly good at hitting

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Anonymous

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1. We've had some discussions recently about which kids throughout the extended family have essentially no worries, no fear. When you see it break both way between siblings, it makes you think it is random variation. I mean maybe in bad times the median moves, but the variation seems high. I guess I could be an armchair evolutionary psychologist and say families benefit from a few no-fear members?

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Thiago Ribeiro

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#6 Cry baby. As President Capitain Bolsonaro pointed out, internet allowed the people to defeat mainatream media and special interests.

EdR

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+1

True. The internet can be liberating and is an expression of free speech and free thought.

One big problem is the concentration of the many conversations into a few spaces - Facebook and it's subsidiaries, Twitter - and search dominated by Google.

Google could do some incredible damaging by tweaking it's search algorithm to favor specific political viewpoints. I think Google has the most power, and power corrupts.

Thiago Ribeiro

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Sad.

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Anonymous

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2. The worst thing you can do in a minimum wage discussion is set up a false dichotomy between none and one that is too high.

We've had a minimum wage since 1938. The world is hella better than 1938. (The working poor now get to enjoy luxuries like flush toilets.)

The question now is about level. Or it should properly be, when ideology is shut out of it.

(And sure, it is possible to pair a lower MW with an EITC, but I worry that too many like that because it just goes on the debt, and nobody pays.)

Slocum

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"We've had a minimum wage since 1938. The world is hella better than 1938. (The working poor now get to enjoy luxuries like flush toilets.)"

A didn't cause either B or C.

Anonymous

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Even if it was loosely Wagner’s Law (more mandated spending in a richer society), that might be fine. But there is the possibility that some level of minimum aids capitalism by fueling broad consumption. Something between zero and too much.

Anonymous

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The whole reason the minimum wage appears to "work" is that it's largely non- binding. Therefore we know in the absence of the minimum wage basically nothing would change.

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mobile

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Innumerate Soviet economic planners shamelessly violated the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling through 1966. The world is hella better than 1966. (Like, there are iPhones and stuff now).

You ideologues are not focusing on the correct question, which is what should be the correct level of international treaty violation by salty Soviets with a quota to fill, damnit.

Viking

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Innumerate Siviet planners probably could have come up with the new green deal!

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ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

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4. These scientists all suffer Whaling Derangement Syndrome.

RatInPutinsMaze

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Exactly! The World Socialists would never have Lied or committed any kind of crime.

ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

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That's the gag, son. You call the people with the receipts deranged, with an exclamation point if you like, and go on about your business.

Actually

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Receipts for whale products ?

ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ

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The article was all about the paper trail, records of populations and harvests. There were possibly inflated production stats, but there were scientists on board who kept independent records.

What?

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?

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chuck martel

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3. Pathetic attempt. Numero uno, why should pitch velocity even be measured in miles per hour? MPH became popular with the advent of the automobile, which travels miles in hours. Baseball pitches travel in feet per second, a much better and more accurate description.

Second, the batters themselves have been at the root of the pitching problem by reacting to the fact that player income is heavily weighted to those that hit long fly balls, ie. home runs. Singles hitters are doomed to be underpaid defensive specialists or utility players.
This leads to the fans themselves and their worship of the long fly ball over any other aspect of the game. Base running, defensive prowess, good infield and outfield throws are way down the list. As far as game length is concerned, long fly ball fans are free to arrive at any time and leave whenever they wish. If they want to see long fly balls perhaps a major league for slow-pitch softball might fill the bill.

chuck martel

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Take a look at any picture of the stands at a ballgame from the 20s and 30s. The place is filled with dark suits and hats. No kids, no women. MLB decided to expand its fan base by making it a "family" sport. Women went along with the gag and now spend the interminable hours ordering from Victoria's Secret on their magic phones. Kids love the idea of making pop cough up big bucks for over priced ice cream and hot dogs. Neither of them understands the nuances of a relatively simple game.

And if baseball games drag on forever, where's the criticism of NFL football, where there are minutes of action interspersed with hours of players standing around?

The best change that baseball could make is to regulate the diameter of bats, just as they decide how big a baseball should be. Bat handles have become extremely small to enable hitters to whip the bat through the strike zone with great bat head velocity. Handles with a larger diameter would slow down bat speed and lead to fewer strikeouts and more singles and doubles.

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OldCurmudgeon

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>Baseball pitches travel in feet per second, a much better

Wrong. The better designed units are selected such that the most commonly used values are either 0-10 or 0-100. Those ranges are easier for humans to manage mentally. 90 mpg == 132 f/s

This, btw, is one reason why the metric system sucks w.r.t. human factors.

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Axa

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#6: I'm part of a private whatsapp ground among friends. There's the freedom to say and share any stupid thing. The greatest risk is that your wife/girlfriend finds out about this idiotic conversation. I remember my father taking me to the barber shop, to the car mechanic or drinking with his friends and it's not that different from the 2019 whatsapp group: a group of men fooling around, but 24/7 ;)

What I don't understand is why younger guys are so fascinated by "spaces where depressurized conversation is possible". Guys complain that political correctness has gone wild. On the other hand, there are things I'd never say if a friend's wife is present. Am I a hypocrite or just a guy that has some self-control to avoid saying nasty things to people who won't find it fun?

Dinwar

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I think there's some legitimacy to the desire for a place to chat without it being (in some cases literally) a federal crime. People need to vent, there are inside jokes that sound horrible to outsiders, and some friends engage in counter-signaling; in any of these cases, speaking out on most online forums is asking to have your life destroyed.

In the past, people had a reasonable idea of what sort of behavior was expected of them in various places. In some places you could let your hair down, so to speak; in others you were more restrained. No one would confuse how one spoke in a locker room with how one would behave in a board room. Now? The social norms shift--often after the fact. There's no way to know what the criteria will be tomorrow, or who will jump out of the woodwork to get you fired if not jailed if you said the wrong thing.

What we're seeing is an attempt to re-establish some solid rules of decorum online. In closed groups you don't have to assume that everything you say can and will eventually be used against you.

And that's the (positive) point

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Anytime something new arises there's a period of adjustment and friction as we adapt to new norms. But adapt we do, and it's fine. Internet norms are evolving, privacy norms are evolving, #MeToo norms are evolving.

It will all be fine.

Dinwar

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It seems to me that a discussion of what the norms were, what they are moving towards, and why is a worthwhile one. "It will all be fine" comes off as dismissive.

Didn't mean to be

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I was just emphasizing that it will all work out. Seems to me the discussions of norms are happening every day, online, like here, or on TV, or in print.

#MeToo is the perfect example. Stuff that used to be ok/tolerated before simply isn't anymore, and it's hard to miss that the times have changed. Some folks are being ripped for doing stuff long ago that used to be ok, that's the adjustment/friction I mentioned. It's a phase as we move to a new equilibrium.

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Anonymous

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3. So they need to move the pitcher's mound back a few yards. (Or meters, for Chuck.)

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Slocum

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#2. Minimum wages are not a major problem when, as now, they vary regionally and are set close local market clearing wages. At these levels, they have little effect one way or another. But a uniform, national $15/hr (as is endorsed by basically every Democratic hopeful) would be a very different thing. A full-time worker at $15/hr earns $31K per year. This is greater than the median household income in some poor (but low-cost-of-living) rural counties. Like the children in Lake Wobegone, this would be an attempt to force everybody's wages to be above average. It would be an economic disaster in places where the market-clearing wage for low-skill workers is nowhere near $15/hr.

chuck martel

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Minimum wage laws are an infringement on the freedom of voluntary contract. No one anywhere should be in favor of such a thing.

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Anonymous

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It's a safe thing for them to say. The president doesn't set the minimum wage (and should not set things like tariffs either).

Still I can see a path to risk. You need that Democrat to win, and to flip the Senate, and then have full party unity on an actual $15, rather than some kind of $15(*).

A long shot.

* - fine print tbd

Slocum

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At this point, full-party unity on $15 is as much a given among dems as support for roe v wade (even if some have private doubts, none can risk opposing publicly). So if dems won both the presidency and senate, I don't think a national $15/hr minimum would be a long-shot at all.

Anonymous

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Didn't Democrats in California in fact produce a $15 plan with a lot of fine print?

This general idea that you seek an optimum, and give yourself options to adjust, should be applauded. It is evidence-based policy rather than a sudden or brutal mandate.

Slocum

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AFAIK, they really didn't leave much wiggle room CA will have $15 statewide in 3 1/2 years and peg it increase by CPI thereafter. And, for restaurants, tips don't count.

RatInPutinsMaze

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To be fair, CA has a median wage of $19.67 (2016). So assuming normal inflation, one would expect a wage of around $22 by 2022. A $15 per hour minimum wage is not going to cause a significant amount of unemployment in most of the state.

Light manufacturing will continue to move out, but that has been exiting from CA for 10+ years at this point. I work with a Fortune 50 company that's in the process of closing their facility in LA and moving the lines to existing facilities in other states over the next couple of years. The combination of high utilities, high wages, high cost of living, high taxes are too big a barrier for any company that can just produce a product in another state and ship it.

Related:
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-manufacturing-20150120-story.html

However, to the larger point, while a relative high wage state like CA (8th out of 50) can absorb a $15 per hour minimum wage, it would cause significant disruption among many other states.

https://www.governing.com/gov-data/wage-average-median-pay-data-for-states.html

Slocum

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"To be fair, CA has a median wage of $19.67 (2016)"

How meaningful is the statewide median? The wealthiest county in California (Marin) has about 3x the per-capita income of the poorest (Imperial). A uniform $15/hr minimum will definitely not have uniform effects across the state.

RatInPutinsMaze

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That's a fair point and it will certainly have a negative effect on parts of the state. But I'll guarantee you that the Left wing economists will have a slew of state wide studies that concentrate on the overall statewide effect, which should be relatively insignificant.

Furthermore, you have to keep in mind, CA has the largest illegal immigrant population of any state (2.2 m out of 40 m) Many of those will be paid under the table and their wages probably won't go up as much as the legal populations wages.

Slocum

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Well, and though they can never say so, urban progressive politicians may not mind screwing over lower-wage, lower-cost-of-living rural and exurban areas that contain a preponderance of Republican voters anyway.

Brian Donohue

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Like Mississippi and Puerto Rico?

RatInPutinsMaze

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No, they'll put an exemption in for Puerto Rico, just like the current one.

"Puerto Rico: Employers covered by the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) are subject to the Federal minimum wage of $7.25. Employers not covered by the FLSA will be subject to a minimum wage that is at least 70 percent of the Federal minimum wage or the applicable mandatory decree rate of $5.08, whichever is higher. The Secretary of Labor and Human Resources may authorize a rate based on a lower percentage for any employer who can show that implementation of the 70 percent rate would substantially curtail employment in that business."

But Mississippi, yeah, they'll screw Mississippi. Higher unemployment in a reliably Republican voting state combined with curbing the disparity in effective wages between higher wage blue states and lower wage red states is a Win/Win for Democrats.

Same principle as the SALT deduction cap

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And just as toxic.

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chuck martel

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White House interns and their congressional counterparts are unpaid.

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RatInPutinsMaze

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The median hour wage for the state of Mississippi is $14.22 per hour. A $15 per hour minimum wage would devastate a lot of low skilled workers.

On the other hand, the Left could then point to the Evil's of capitalism as the culprit.

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Chuck Kotlarz

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2. Gone are the old school economists who could explain trickle-down economics with the laxative curve.

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Terry richards

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The problem with the minimum wage is that it is telling the firm how to define their capital-labor stock. The problem with that dictate is that the government can not possibly know whether a restaurant needs a low MP dishwasher paid 15 dollars an hour or whether it needs to spend more on the dish machine. But because it is a government dictate, there are now distortions in how business are set up.
Maybe too much is now flowing to low mp labor when, who knows?

The EITC doesn’t have these issues. It is an after market tax funded redistribution aimed at helping the working poor. It makes no assumptions about the capital labor stock within business...

Anonymous

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Isn't the EITC a subsidy distorting the capital-labor stock?

Actually

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No. There’s a somewhat sloppy argument to make about how it depresses wage increases for current workers due to LFPR increasing (EITC puts the wage over reservation wage for some), but meh.

Anonymous

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You don't think the EITC increases labor supply at a given wage?

mobile

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It either increases from an income effect or decreases from a substitution effect.

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Chuck Kotlarz

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Mr. Richards, non-living wages perhaps create distortions in how people live.

derek

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The real minimum wage is 0.

Jonfraz

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No doubt you'd be happy to repeal that pesky 13th Anendment too.
The minimum sustainable price of any good, including labor, is the minimum cost of its production. That is not 0$ for labor. Any more than it is for food, gasoline or anything else that is not a freebie from Ma Nature.

Anonymous

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How much do you pay your wife?

Half

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Just like everyone else.

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RatInPutinsMaze

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"The EITC doesn’t have these issues. "

The EITC is a much better solution. Though I think it should be funded with a FICA tax and broadly targeted. IE 2% FICA tax and all workers get a $1 per hour increase.

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dearieme

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#2: magnificent whataboutery.

'Let us line up a list of economic circumstances and government policies that are potentially hurting disadvantaged Americans'

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RatInPutinsMaze

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"6. Yancey Strickler on the dark forest theory of the internet."

"In his sci-fi trilogy The Three Body Problem, author Liu Cixin presents the dark forest theory of the universe. ...Imagine a dark forest at night. It’s deathly quiet. Nothing moves. Nothing stirs. This could lead one to assume that the forest is devoid of life."

I think Liu Cixin is over rated and this is a classic example. Forests are not "deathly quiet" at night. Has the author ever been in the forest at night?

Granted, in winter with snow fall on the ground, a forest seems much quieter, but I don't think that's what they meant by a "dark forest".

EdR

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I thought the same thing. I live in a forest, and it is not quiet at night.

That said, the universe is either awfully quiet or we can't hear - I am not sure which.

Jonfraz

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We can "hear" some things and the universe is not at all quiet: there's all sorts of EM radiation banging around in it. What we may be bad at doing is extracting information from what we hear.

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Anonymous

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The book where he got this from certainly does not make the assertion that forests are quiet at night

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Nh

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1. Someone should tell the researchers about endogenous selection bias

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Hazel Meade

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6. I think maybe we're only just discovering what 327 million people really means. On the internet you have this vast view of the whole of society, and out there, there be dragons. It's kind of like in the Odyssey where Odysseus travels around randomly encountering all sorts of weirdos in their weird lands: the lotus eaters, cannibals, cyclopses. On the internet, you suddenly have all these weirdos from other parts of society right in your face. Groups whose existence was formerly obscured by the portrayal of society in mainstream television and movies. In reality all of these people have always been there, we just weren't aware of them. Now we are better able to see a comprehensive view of just how vast and diverse a society of 327 million people really it.

ChrisA

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Good point Hazel. Hell is other people.

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Excellent post

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I award you 17 internet points

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EricP

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People need to get out more. Too many clueless libs and cons push the same useless policies because they have never met or even seen a huge swath of their own society. This is why Trump got elected.

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Crikey

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5. Australian podcast? I'd just like to say that I live in an Australian capital and it has now been almost 18 months since internet speeds that made listening to podcasts practical became available.

The future is here, it's just very uneven.

Anyway, I'm not going to listen to it. You gotta do text if you want attention here. Gotta stand by my slow bandwidth peeps. Solidarity!

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