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.”
*Odd Couple*
The author is Michael Huberman and the subtitle is International Trade and Labor Standards in History. Here is the blurb from Leandro Prados de La Escosura:
In this path-breaking volume, Michael Huberman persuasively argues that the past informs the present. Huberman shows that a historical perspective does not sustain the impossibility trilemma, the popular claim that democracy, national sovereignty and globalization are inherently incompatible. Globalization and the emergence of the welfare state — which is at the roots of the modern democratic state — went hand-in-hand, increasing well-being and declining inequality over the long-run.
Another piece of the puzzle concerning India’s economic slowdown
Could the Indian slowdown be the most important (but still somewhat neglected) story in the world right now? Vikas Bajaj reports:
…the country cannot get enough fuel — principally coal — to run the plants. Clumsy policies, poor management and environmental concerns have hampered the country’s efforts to dig up fuel fast enough to keep up with its growing need for power.
A complex system of subsidies and price controls has limited investment, particularly in resources like coal and natural gas. It has also created anomalies, like retail electricity prices that are lower than the cost of producing power, which lead to big losses at state-owned utilities. An unsettled debate about how much of its forests India should turn over to mining has also limited coal production.
The power sector’s problems have substantially contributed to a second year of slowing economic growth in India, to an estimated 7 percent this year, from nearly 10 percent in 2010. Businesses report that more frequent blackouts have forced them to lower production and spend significantly more on diesel fuel to run backup generators.
…In the last year, the nation’s power problem has grown acute, with the gap between demand and supply jumping to 10.2 percent last month, from 7.7 percent a year earlier. In some states like Andhra Pradesh, where Nellore is, and in neighboring Tamil Nadu, blackouts have become so common that many factories report getting more electricity from diesel generators than they do from the power grid, at a cost that is roughly three times higher.
Assorted links
2. Game show based on game theory (video).
3. Legal troubles at Great Wall, the Chinese supermarket featured in An Economist Gets Lunch.
State-contingent insurance markets in everything
Fortunately, when you purchase a low-powered car from Young Marmalade, the free installation of a black box can cut your insurance premiums into half. By monitoring the driving behaviour such as acceleration, braking, what time of the day the car was driven and at what speed, Young Marmalade provides affordable telematic insurance premiums.
It’s simple. The black box data is used to calculate premiums, if the car was driven well, the lower the premiums will be and vice-versa.
According to MD Crispin Moger, “A young male driver who has Intelligent Marmalade in his car will pay on average £2,601/year for comprehensive insurance, while a young woman will pay £1,642/year. If the black box detects a bad driver, initial premiums will be subjected to a £250 and £500 increase or Young Marmalade will cancel the policy.”
Here is more, and for the pointer I thank KM.
Assorted links
1. I want to praise Robin Hanson, yet I also want him to become more trendy with the trendy people. Sometimes I think he already is trendy, yet he is certainly not shallow. What to do? Here is Robin’s CBA for uploads.
2. Will Disney manage to do away with lines?
3. The geographic flow of music: which cities lead in terms of listening habits? Oslo, for one, and Montreal, Atlanta for rap music.
4. Ask a Korean, on Korean food, from a self-proclaimed “Korean food Wahhabbist.”
Hypothesis, not a fact
Nonetheless you should take it very seriously:
In recent months, though, the third story about demographic change has gained ground. The only way to address it is with a model that compares the decline in labour participation against some kind of trend. Dean Maki of Barclays Capital is one economist who has done so. “Our analysis indicates that the single biggest factor dragging the labour force participation rate down has been the retirements of the baby-boomers,” he says.
Of a 2.8 percentage point fall in labour force participation since 2002, Mr Maki estimates that 1.6 points are due to demographics and only 0.9 points to the economic cycle. As the demographic decline will continue at 0.3-0.4 points a year, his calculations suggest all of the “cyclical” decline could be gone within a couple of years if only modest numbers return to work.
“To the extent this trend is not fully recognised by the Fed, it does raise the risk of greater wage and price inflation sooner than the Fed expects,” says Mr Maki. “The other implication for policy makers is that potential growth in GDP is a lot weaker – we’d put it no higher than 2 per cent – and so budget forecasts are for too rosy a picture.”
Others who have done similar work do not find such large declines. A recent Chicago Fed paper puts the demographic element at a quarter of the total drop and the Congressional Budget Office also projects a slower pace of demographic decline. Much depends on assumptions about whether more of the elderly will choose to work. But Mr Maki points to a sharp rise in workers receiving Social Security and to the numbers aged 55-plus who are not in the labour force and say they do not want a job.
David Greenlaw of Morgan Stanley adds another element: he estimates that 0.3 percentage points of the decline in participation is because unemployed workers have moved on to disability benefits. It is hard to become certified as disabled and, once on the benefit, few workers go back. “There has been a large increase in the number of long-term unemployed and many of these people will have a difficult time reattaching to the labour market,” says Mr Greenlaw. “It seems that many of them are shifting from unemployment benefits to disability insurance benefits.”
That is all from Robin Harding.
Outcome Unbiased Journals
Chris Said, a neuroscientist, prods the NIH to support outcome-unbiased journals:
The growing problems with scientific research are by now well known: Many results in the top journals are cherry picked, methodological weaknesses and other important caveats are often swept under the rug, and a large fraction of findings cannot be replicated. In some rare cases, there is even outright fraud. This waste of resources is unfair to the general public that pays for most of the research.
The Times article places the blame for this trend on the sharp competition for grant money and on the increasing pressure to publish in high impact journals. While both of these factors certainly play contributing roles…the cause is not simply that the competition is too steep. The cause is that the competition points scientists in the wrong direction.
…scientific journals favor surprising, interesting, and statistically significant experimental results. When journal editors give preferences to these types of results, it is obvious that more false positives will be published by simple selection effects, and it is obvious that unscrupulous scientists will manipulate their data to show these types of results. These manipulations include selection from multiple analyses, selection from multiple experiments (the “file drawer” problem), and the formulation of ‘a priori’ hypotheses after the results are known.
…the agencies should favor journals that devote special sections to replications, including failures to replicate. More directly, the agencies should devote more grant money to submissions that specifically propose replications….I would [also] like to see some preference given to fully “outcome-unbiased” journals that make decisions based on the quality of the experimental design and the importance of the scientific question, not the outcome of the experiment. This type of policy naturally eliminates the temptation to manipulate data towards desired outcomes.
*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.
Deregulate green carts!
Food trucks are not the only battle:
“Green carts are a quick and nimble approach that can get fresh food out there relatively quickly,” says Rick Luftglass, executive director of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, which has provided $2 million to support green carts in New York. “And because they are mobile, you can follow the need. If sales aren’t good on one block, you can move a few blocks away. It allows the market to build around the customers.”
…Generations of immigrants to New York got their start selling on the street. In the 19th century, the Lower East Side was full of pushcarts hawking pickles, flowers, buttons and hats. But today’s arrivals are limited by strict rules for sidewalk vending. There are multiyear waits to sell those New York hot dogs and a thriving black market for permits.
That is from the excellent Jane Black. Many green carts are starting to take food stamps.
Two tweets from Dani Rodrik
Josef Joffe is precisely wrong: Europe’s crisis IS about macroeconomics — not microeconomics: http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-16/germany-reformed-its-social-model-europe-can-too.html
I would say it is about the connection between microeconomics and macroeconomics. I understand full well that Sweden is doing fine (despite a very recent slowdown), but I do not get why so many Keynesian economists are so reluctant to condemn the legal and regulatory policies, and rent-seeking practices, of the eurozone periphery. Stronger nominal aggregate demand is called for but it cannot make everything there fine.
Unfortunately Argentina’s government has been giving unorthodox policy a bad name by associating thuggish behavior with it.
I would say this correlation is no accident, and that there are credibility reasons why many economically small countries are so reluctant to break with consensus approaches and international agreements. An Ireland trying to mimic Iceland would have had a very tough time of it, and it remains to be seen which country has the stronger long-run prospects. Moisés Naim put it well:
Argentina suffers from high inflation, slowing economic growth, ballooning subsidies, price controls, capital flight, decaying infrastructure and a less than welcoming environment for foreign investors.
Perhaps the good news is this:
It has had limited access to the international financial system since defaulting on its debts in 2001.
We should expect unorthodox approaches and thuggish behavior to be correlated, even if there is no causal connection between the two. If you then think of the choice variable as “political culture,” rather than “policy today,” that suggests unorthodox approaches are not nearly as good as they may seem upon first glance.
*The War of the Sexes*
By Paul Seabright, Amazon link here, it arrived yesterday on my doorstep and is due out April 29. The subtitle is How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present.
Paul is a splendid writer and thinker, and of course this is a topic of importance.
Assorted links
1. The decline of the New York Public Library?
2. Ungated Acemoglu paper on the future of the world and the rights revolution.
3. Elinor Ostrom makes Time’s 100 most influential list.
4. Class notes from a Peter Thiel lecture on business.
5. Arabic words to Bach’s religious music, a video, sung by Fadia el Hage.
*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.