Category: History
The African cake that cries when you eat it
The Boston Globe on Cowen on food
Cowen’s book offers more than ethnic-dining tips, however; it situates them in a broad historical context. Many of today’s mainstream foodies, Cowen argues, have the history of American food all backwards. They assume that American food is so terrible and unhealthy because of agribusiness: We eat terribly, the thinking goes, because our food is frozen, packaged, and trucked over vast distances before we eat it. Cowen has an entirely different explanation for the mediocrity of American food. As he sees it, American food was ruined by a series of entirely contingent historical events — Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the rise of TV — which effectively ruined the restaurant industry. Those events were especially damaging, he argues, because immigration was so severely restricted during much of the 20th century. Immigrants were the people who can do the most interesting things with the cheap food on offer in the United States; without them, American food became boring and bland.
Now that immigration is on the rise again, America is a food paradise: the extended food supply chain created by American agribusiness means that food is plentiful and cheap, while our vibrant immigrant communities take that cheap food and make it awesome in a million different ways. (Barbecue is an example of a home-grown food culture which acts, in many respects, like an immigrant one.) The essence of American food, Cowen argues, is that it’s inexpensive, innovative, and various. To eat well in America, you have to embrace its unique history, and start from the fact that “the United States is a country where the human beings are extremely creative but the tomatoes are not extraordinarily fresh.” If you’re obsessed with the farmer’s market, you’ve got American food wrong; instead, think of America as a hotbed of “food innovation,” where the best food is getting made at strip malls and in food trucks. It’s an alternate vision of food in America.
That is Josh Rothman, there is more here. Here is a Q&A with me on food, and what is always in my cupboard: “Goya beans, cumin seed, dried ancho chilies.”
*Land of Promise*
The author is Michael Lind and the subtitle is An Economic History of the United States. I am just beginning to browse my copy, here is one bit:
In 1947, twice as many Americans worked in industrial-research centers as in 1940. Among the breakthroughs that resulted from wartime research, in addition to nuclear energy, were jet engines, radar, computers, synthetic rubber, and a range of new drugs: penicillin, synthetic quinine, and sulfa drugs.
A massive government R&D and production effort was devoted to penicillin. in 1928, Alexander Fleming had discovered that penicillin could kill bacteria. During World War II, the US government coordinated efforts by universities, the Department of Agriculture, and nearly two dozen pharmaceutical companies to devise technologies for the mass production of the drug.
*Bad Religion*
The author is Ross Douthat and the subtitle is How We Became a Nation of Heretics. It is a very good and very serious book arguing that America needs better religious thinking and practice, excerpt:
The entire media-entertainment complex, meanwhile, was almost shamelessly pro-Catholic. If a stranger to American life had only the movies, television, and popular journalism from which to draw inferences, he probably would have concluded that midcentury America was a Catholic-majority country — its military populated by the sturdy Irishmen of The Fighting 69th (1948) and The Fighting Sullivans (1944); its children educated and its orphans rescued by the heroic priests and nuns celebrated in Boys Town (1938), The Bells of Saint Mary’s (1945), and Fighting Father Dunne (1948); its civic life dominated by urban potentates like Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York and Denis Dougherty of Philadelphia; its everyday life infused with Catholic kitsch, from the 1950s hit single “Our Lady of Fatima” to the “win one for the Gipper” cult of Notre Dame football.
My main question is what could have become of most organized religion in an era of newly found television penetration — a competing source of ideas about right and wrong — and the birth control pill and sexual liberation of women? Not to mention gay rights. The recent evolution of American religion may not be optimal, but it is endogenous to some fairly fundamental forces. Non-religious thinking seems to offer especially high returns to successful people these days, and while American religion certainly has survived that impact (unlike in the UK?), what is left will seem quite alienating to much of the intelligentsia, Ross included.
For most mainstream religions, for most urban and suburban intellectuals circa 2012, it is hard to live a religiously observant life during the ages of say 17-25. American religion is left with late convert intellectuals and proponents of various enthusiasms, all filtered through the lens of America’s rural-tinged mass culture. Where is the indigenous and recent highbrow Christian culture of the United States?
Ross’s close comes off as voluntarist (“That quest begins with a single step…”), but in an economic model which change might nudge the United States back toward a more intellectual Christianity? Your suggestions are welcome.
Debtor’s Prison for Failure to Pay for Your Own Trial
Debtor’s prisons are supposed to be illegal in the United States but today poor people who fail to pay even small criminal justice fees are routinely being imprisoned. The problem has gotten worse recently because strapped states have dramatically increased the number of criminal justice fees. In Pennsylvania, for example, the criminal court charges for police transport, sheriff costs, state court costs, postage, and “judgment.” Many of these charges are not for any direct costs imposed by the criminal but have been added as revenue enhancers. A $5 fee, for example, supports the County Probation Officers’ Firearms Training Fund, an $8 fee supports the Judicial Computer Project, a $250 fee goes to the DNA Detection Fund. Convicted criminals may face dozens of fees (not including fines and restitution) totaling a substantial burden for people of limited means. Fees do not end outside the courtroom. Jailed criminals can be charged for room and board and for telephone use, haircuts, drug tests, transportation, booking, and medical co-pays. In Arizona, visitors to a prison are now charged a $25 maintenance fee. In PA in order to get parole there is a mandatory charge of $60. While on parole, defendants may be further assessed counseling, testing and other fees. Interest builds unpaid fees larger and larger. In Washington state unpaid legal debt accrues at an interest rate of 12%. As a result, the median person convicted in WA sees their criminal justice debt grow larger over time.
Many states are now even charging the accused to apply for and use a public defender! As a result, some defendants are discouraged from exercising their rights to an attorney.
Most outrageously, in some states public defender, pre-trial jail and other court fees can be assessed on individuals even when they are not convicted of any crime. Failure to pay criminal justice fees can result in revocation of an individual’s drivers license, arrest and imprisonment. Individuals with revoked licenses who drive (say to work to earn money to pay their fees) and are apprehended can be further fined and imprisoned. Unpaid criminal justice debt also results in damaged credit reports and reduced housing and employment prospects. Furthermore, failure to pay fees can mean a violation of probation and parole terms which makes an individual ineligible for Federal programs such as food stamps, Temporary Assistance to Needy Family funds and Social Security Income for the elderly and disabled.
It’s difficult to argue against criminal justice fees for those who can pay, but for those who cannot– and most criminal defendants are poor–such fees can be a personal and public policy disaster. Criminal justice debt drags people further away from reintegration with civil society. A person’s life can spiral out of their control when interest, late fees, revocation of a driver’s license and ineligibility for public assistance, mean that unpaid criminal justice debt snowballs. You can’t get blood from a stone but if you try, you can break the stone.
Optimal punishment is swift and sure but also has a defined endpoint. As with bankruptcy, punishment must end, leaving both hope and opportunity. We used to release criminals without a nickel or a nail but with an understanding that their debt to society had been paid. Today, we release criminals with a ball of debt that chains them to the criminal justice system and which can pull them back into prison long after their sentences have been served. Releasing people with little hope or opportunity for reintegration with civil society is good for neither the releasees nor society.
The economics of Robert Caro
The two Bobs, Gottlieb and Caro, have an odd editorial relationship, almost as contentious as it is mutually admiring. They still debate, for example, or pretend to, how many words Gottlieb cut from “The Power Broker.” It was 350,000 — or the equivalent of two or three full-size books — and Caro still regrets nearly every one. “There were things cut out of ‘The Power Broker’ that should not have been cut out,” he said to me sadly one day, showing me his personal copy of the book, dog-eared and broken-backed, filled with underlining and corrections written in between the lines. Caro is a little like Balzac, who kept fussing over his books even after they were published.
Can they not publish a “Director’s Cut” eBook? The Power Broker, by the way, is in my view one of the best non-fiction books ever, so read it if you don’t already know it.
The article, from the NYT Sunday Magazine, is interesting throughout. Note I have provided the “Single Page” link, I believe this helps you get through your quota of ten clicks at less expense.
China estimate of the day
Another study, by Andrew Batson and Janet Zhang at GK Dragonomics, a Beijing-based research firm, finds that China still has less than one-quarter as much capital per person as America had achieved in 1930, when it was at roughly the same level of development as China today.
Here is more, and I thank David Levey for the pointer. The post as a whole considers whether China is overinvesting and concludes maybe not. Here are further debates on how China is doing.
Mysteries of growth
Matt writes:
To me the most pointed contrast is between the Soviet Bloc and pre-reform China. Why was East Germany so much poorer than West Germany? That’s easy—Communism! And that’s why North Korea is poorer than South Korea. It’s also why Taiwan is richer than China. But Communism hardly explains why the Soviet Union was always much richer than China. But it was a lot richer despite broadly similar political systems and ideological commitments, and the human suffering involved in the PRC’s failure to implement Communism as successfully as the USSR was enormous.
I would say this: Stalin favored industrialization (albeit of a strange sort) more than did the Chinese communists, China had a more damaging heritage of conquest and civil war, Russia was far more urbanized, Russia had greater access to European ideas (some of them bad of course), and the Russian experience of nation-building was mostly behind them, whereas China is still going through this process. For Russia/Soviet Union, the major structures of 20th century European growth were largely in place, though “liberal institutions” were rejected. Russia had an advanced European educational system in place, albeit not for everyone. If you look at the economic history of the more Asiatic “Stans,” which of course were part of the Soviet Union communist experience, the importance of already-industrializing and European connections looks all the more stronger. The relative prosperity of Estonia also bears out this thesis, though it would be interesting to ponder Kaliningrad/Königsberg in this regard.
The Fortune 500 of 1812
Indian education under the British empire
It turns out it was worse than I had thought. I’ve been reading some papers by Latika Chaudhary on this topic, and I learned that educational expenditures in India, under the British empire, never exceeded one percent of gdp. To put that in perspective, for 1860-1912 in per capita terms the independent “Princely states” were spending about twice as much on education as India under the British. Mexico and Brazil, hardly marvels of successful education, were spending about five times as much. Other parts of the British empire, again per capita, were spending about eighteen times as much.
Obviously, there is a “small number of British just couldn’t reach those hundreds of millions of Indians in the countryside” effect going on here. Still, from what I am seeing education simply was not much of a priority. There was some ruling, some building of infrastructure, and some resource extraction going on. Education ended up as a side show, and ultimately the gears of empire were attuned toward self-maintenance and that meant only a minimal emphasis on education.
Primary schools were especially weak, as was education for girls, no surprise on either count. In per capita terms, spending on education in Bombay was ten times higher than in Orissa.
Revised TFP growth for Singapore looks much better
From Chang-Tai Hsieh, plucked out of the 2002 AER, via @dtimesd:
This paper presents dual estimates of total factor productivity growth (TFPG) for East Asian countries. While the dual estimates of TFPG for Korea and Hong Kong are similar to the primal estimates, they exceed the primal estimates by 1 percent a year for Taiwan and by more than 2 percent for Singapore. The reason for the large discrepancy for Singapore is because the return to capital has remained constant, despite the high rate of capital accumulation indicated by Singapore’s national accounts. This discrepancy is not explained by financial market controls, capital income taxes, risk premium changes, and public investment subsidies.
The initial context is given here. Via Dave Backus, here is another relevant paper.
Addendum: Scott Sumner adds comment.
What happened to Alywn Young’s Hong Kong vs. Singapore contrast?
From 1992, the paper is here (note by the way an interesting written comment from Paul Krugman at the end). The basic story was that Hong Kong and Singapore had obtained their prosperity by two different paths. Hong Kong had made real productivity gains, but Singapore grew just by throwing more factors of production at the problem of economic growth, including a massive dose of savings and investment, including foreign investment. The share of investment in Singapore’s gdp rose from 9% in 1960 to 43% in 1984, while Hong Kong’s remained roughly steady at about 20%. If you back this out from national income statistics, you can measure that Singapore had very low levels of total factor productivity growth.
But should we believe that story, which by now is twenty years old? After all, these days, Singapore is extremely interested in cutting-edge science and on the frontier in the biosciences and with satellite launches, among other areas. Hong Kong has done fine, but as a finance center and entrepot for the China trade. Not many people look to them as ideas leaders. Maybe both countries somehow turned on the proverbial dime, but I don’t believe the initial Young result for a few reasons:
1. Ever since Michael Mandel, I am skeptical about backing out productivity claims from “value-added” data for extremely open economies. The quality of the data do not support extremely strong claims, and Krugman stresses this point in his comment. By the way, in the Singapore data TFP growth is negative in some sub-periods; see pp.24-5, can you believe -8% for 1970-1990? I take this as indicative of problems in the data and I am not persuaded by Young’s suggestion that it results from cyclical factors.
2. There is much talk about Singapore bringing in so much capital, and they did. But getting all that capital is not as simple as throwing a switch. Presumably the capital — especially the foreign capital — comes in part because investors expect a favorable productivity environment, if only prospectively.
3. Sometimes capital can “carry” or “contain” TFP growth; imagine spending money on a new industrial robot.
4. Some of the measured “TFP growth” may in fact reflect underpriced labor, including underpriced labor migrating from the PRC into Hong Kong. Those workers turned out to be more productive than people were expecting, which creates an apparent TFP residual, and migration of this nature played a larger role in the Hong Kong economy than in Singapore.
5. Young’s measures make him sound skeptical about the future (post-1992) course of economic growth in Singapore, and this has hardly been borne out by the facts. I wouldn’t call this an explicit or formal prediction of his theory but read the paper and the pessimism seeps through, albeit subtly. Is this passage (p.32) prescient or a sign of a mistaken assessment?:
Although I have presented evidence earlier, on the remarkable rate of structural transformation of the Singaporean economy, I feel that the words of Goh Keng Swee, Singapore’s Minister of Finance, in March 1970 are equally compelling: “. .. the electronics components we make in Singapore require less skill than that required by barbers or cooks, involving mostly repetitive manual operations.” By 1983 Singapore was the world’s largest exporter of disk drives. By the late 1980s, Singapore was one of Asia’s leading financial centers. As of today, the Singaporean government is targeting biotechnology and, no doubt, with its deep pockets, will achieve “success” in this sector. One cannot help but sense that this is industrial targeting taken to excess.
To flesh out this history, note two further points:
1. Young is long renowned for the care and quality of his empirical work. He is the sort of researcher who might obsess for six months over a footnote. That is one reason why he has not produced a greater number of papers.
2. This line of research (there are other papers here) was immediately hailed as successful upon its appearance. I read it too at the time and simply assumed it was likely to be true. Even Krugman, despite his insightful worries in his comment, ended up endorsing the Singapore result as true (that link is also an excellent essay for background on this entire set of ideas and debates).
The funny thing is, Young’s hypothesis still could be true. It hasn’t been refuted.
But if you ask me — I don’t believe it, not any more. I take this to be a cautionary tale of how difficult it can be to establish firm knowledge through economics.
*Mirror, Mirror* (paging Leo Strauss)
Not often does Hollywood put out movies romanticizing tyrannicide and the assassination of foreign leaders of friendly countries, in this case India. Julia Roberts is the wicked Queen, witch, and false pretender, but actually the stand-in for Indira Gandhi, with an uncanny resemblance of look and dress in the final scene (I wonder if anyone told her?). This movie presents a romanticized and idealized version of how her assassination should have proceeded and should have been processed, namely in a triumphal manner with no reprisals but rather celebration and joyous union and love. As the plot proceeds, you will find all sorts of markers of Sikh theology, including numerous references to daggers, hair, mirrors, water, immersions, submersions, bodily penetrations, transformations, the temple at Amritsar, dwarves who enlarge themselves, and the notion of woman as princess, among many others; director Tarsem Singh knows this material better than I do (read up on Sikh theology before you go, if you haven’t already). The silly critics complained that the plot didn’t make sense, but from the half dozen or so reviews I read they didn’t even begin to understand the movie.
Without wishing to take sides on either the politics or the religion, I found this a daring and remarkable film. The sad thing is that no one is paying attention.
The movie’s trailer is here.
Matthew Bishop’s new book
With Michael Green, In Gold We Trust: The Future of Money in an Age of Uncertainty, Kindle Single. Here is a short video about the book.
From the authors:
It provides a lively analysis of the big economic questions currently facing America, such as the danger to the dollar posed by gridlock in DC, especially over deficit reduction, the euro crisis, the growing risk of inflation and the changing attitude of China towards America. We argue that the renaissance of gold, plus the development of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, reflect weaknesses in the technology of money that we all need to take seriously and try to fix.
*The Clash of Economic Ideas*
In 1958, on his first visit to India, the Hungarian-British development economist Peter Bauer was eager to meet the Indian economist B.R. Shenoy. Bauer knew the name from a “Note of Dissent on the Memorandum of the Economists’ Panel,” which Shenoy had written criticizing India’s Second five-Year Plan. In 1955 the Indian government had recruited twenty-one senior Indian economists for the Panel of Economists, chaired by the minister of finance, to review the plan. Twenty of the economists had signed a memorandum endorsing the plan. Professor Shenoy was the lone dissenter Shenoy’s “Note of Dissent” was an annoyance to members of the Indian Planning Commission; to Prime Minister Nehru, who had initiated the planning effort; to Nehru’s adviser P.C. Mahalanobis, who had drafted the plan; and even to international aid officials, who overwhelmingly supported the planning effort. Shenoy had become persona non grata in official economic policy-making circles.
Yet Shenoy turned out largely to be right.
That is from the forthcoming excellent book by Lawrence H. White, Amazon link here. The book is not mostly about India, but it is about the role of economic ideas in shaping economic outcomes. The chapter on India is my favorite, however, and it is perhaps the very best place to start to understand the failures of India’s planning period.
White also points our attention to Milton Friedman’s 1955 Memorandum to the Indian Government, which is I believe not well known, not even among Friedman fans.