Category: Uncategorized
“Are we seeing the beginning of the end of work?”
That is a request from Hoover. Catherine Rampell writes:
In February, for example, just 64.2 percent of adults were either in a job or actively looking for one, representing the lowest participation rate in 25 years.
At the same link you will see evidence that the number is likely to decline. Some women are less eager to work, some men are quitting the search for work, and there is a general aging of the population. Fewer students work while they are in school. Here are further links to future projections.
That’s hardly the end of work but one thing dramatic recessions can do is to reveal new pieces of information. By overturning the table, we (sometimes) see which pieces of the puzzle did not fit in the first place. One result of this recession is that we will revise downwards our estimate of the labor force participation rate, both current and future.
A few questions are:
1. What is the political economy of a world where so few people work?
2. What kind of low-rent areas will evolve to accommodate some of these people?
3. Will we in fact move to some form of a guaranteed annual income?
Note that the answer to #2 will affect the feasibility of #3. And our current notion of “protecting all the old people” against major health care catastrophes may someday be seen as an anachronism. The more progress medicine makes, the harder this will be to achieve and afford. Feasible future equilibria all seem to involve death panels, which actually may make #3 seem more attractive, relatively speaking, than spending so much money on Medicare. Rationally or not, once the moral principle is admitted of not giving everyone absolute protection against every extreme health care event, this may encourage a shift toward cash transfers.
Markets in everything
Muammar Qaddafi of Libya, the king of Bahrain and the emir of Kuwait are offering one-off handouts to stop people demonstrating. These are princely, worth $4,000 per person in Kuwait and $2,500 per family in Bahrain.
The full article, about political pork in the Arabic countries, is here. For the pointer I thank Maximiliano Levin.
Who predicts well?
…what separated those with modest but significant predictive ability from the utterly hopeless was their style of thinking. Experts who had one big idea they were certain would reveal what was to come were handily beaten by those who used diverse information and analytical models, were comfortable with complexity and uncertainty and kept their confidence in check.
That is from Tetlock and Gardner, here is more. On that general, theme, here is Dan Gardner’s new book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions are Next to Worthless, and You Can do Better.
*The Great Stagnation* debate with Rob Atkinson
You can watch it here, MP3 version here. By the way, Rob’s group, ITIF, has put out this working paper on the economic benefits of information technology, and this working paper on whether productivity growth still benefits average Americans.
Assorted links
Assorted links
1. Ronald Bailey on TGS at Reason.
2. Attitudes about inequality.
3. Robin Hanson and Karl Smith on Bloggingheads, on AI and robots.
4. Complete Wittgenstein, on the web.
Request for requests
I invite you to offer requests for topic coverage and questions…Comments are open.
Assorted links
1. What is the UK doing to spur growth?
2. NYT symposium on inequality.
3. Thresholds and military spending.
4. Obamacare update.
5. The culture that is Japan, baseball highlight reel.
6. Baggage-free travel, he forgot the Kindle and iPad.
7. Of Gods and Men and Even the Rain are two of the best movies I’ve seen in years.
8. Brookings Papers goes open access, including forty years of excellent archives.
Japan fact of the day
…99.9% of Japanese who passed away in fiscal 2009 were cremated, according to the country’s health ministry.
This may not be possible for some of the recent victims of the tsunami, due to lack of kerosene (for burning) and dry ice (for preservation). The story is here.
Assorted links
1. New blog from the New York Fed. And a new blog comparing China to India.
3. Japan explains its nuclear problems to children (video).
4. Where are the robots in Japan’s nuclear crisis?
5. Good Josh Marshall post on Libya.
6. Markets in everything: “One of Taiwan’s top Japanese restaurants is offering diners the use of a radiation gauge before they eat in case of any nerves in the wake of Japan’s nuclear disaster.” And here are hoof shoes.
7. Right now, only Canadians need this. Soon many more millions will want it.
U.S. press coverage of foreign crises
Here is a well-known but now somewhat dated (1991) paper by Zaller and Chiu. It suggests two regularities:
1. U.S. press coverage tends to take its positions from the range of views which exist within government (“indexing”).
2. When a foreign conflict goes well, the U.S. press becomes more hawkish; when the conflict goes less well, the press becomes more dovish. The press swing in opinion is stronger than the swing of opinion from official sources.
Here is an empirical paper, applying this framework to the Libya crisis of 1985-1986. Here is a general look at the indexing hypothesis, again dated and pre-blogosphere. Here is a 2008 paper, showing greater influence for media, relative to the distribution of opinion within government.
Assorted links
The 1923 Great Kanto earthquake
Every now and then, there is some evidence for the moral progress of mankind. Looking back in time, Wikipedia reports:
One particularly pernicious rumor was that Koreans were taking advantage of the disaster, committing arson and robbery, and were in possession of bombs. In the aftermath of the quake, mass murder of Koreans by brutal mobs occurred in urban Tokyo and Yokohama, fueled by rumors of rebellion and sabotage. About 6,600 Koreans were murdered. Some newspapers reported the rumors as fact, which led to the most deadly rumor of all: that the Koreans were poisoning wells. The numerous fires and cloudy well water, a little-known effect of a large quake, all seemed to confirm the rumors of the panic-stricken survivors who were living amidst the rubble. Vigilante groups set up roadblocks in cities, towns and villages across the region. Because people with Korean accents pronounced “G” or “J” in the beginning of words differently, 円 銭 (jū-go-en, go-jū-sen) and がぎぐげご (gagigugego) were used as a shibboleth. Anyone who failed to pronounce them properly was deemed Korean. Some were told to leave, but many were beaten or killed. Moreover, anyone mistakenly identified as Korean, such as Chinese, Okinawans, and Japanese speakers of some regional dialects, suffered the same fate. About 700 Chinese, mostly from Wenzhou were killed.
On modern-day Japan, Edward Hugh has an excellent post.
Assorted links
1. Gary Becker’s entire Human Capital class on YouTube.
2. No gains from trade, the worst date ever? (with lots of euphemisms, I love Date Lab).
How to arbitrage the salad bar?
Nate Silver has a tip, based obviously on the assumption of additive separability of utility:
4. Go crazy on toppings. Check out how high the prices for walnuts, almonds, gorgonzola crumbles and croutons are in the graphic above. Much to its credit, Whole Foods doesn’t stock the best salad topping of all — bacon bits, obviously — in its salad bar. Why? Because it costs a whopping $21.28 per pound. With any luck your local salad-bar merchant isn’t quite as savvy.
I don’t want free toppings! And you have to pay me to eat bacon bits.