Assorted links
1. What are the lessons of military schools?
2. Fancy Fast Food.
3. 61 [sic] essential reads of postmodern literature.
4. The fate of Massachusetts health care reform. Ezra Klein offers a different perspective. Lots is at stake here.
The Return of the Puppet Masters
In a post from a few years ago titled, Do you love cats?, I wrote this:
Toxoplasma gondii is a favorite parasite of evolutionary biologists because it has an incredible property. The parasite lives in the guts of cats where it sheds eggs in cat feces that are often eaten by rats. Now how to get back from the rat to the cat? Amazingly, Toxoplasma gondii infects the brains of rats making them change their behavior in a subtle way that increases the genetic fitness of the parasite. Toxoplasma makes the infected rats less scared of cats and so more likely to be eaten!
Now here is the kicker. Toxoplasma gondii also infects a lot of humans.
Now here is the latest research finding;
Toxoplasma gondii infects 20–60% of the population in most countries…We confirmed, using for the first time a prospective cohort study design, increased risk of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected subjects…Our results show that …subjects with high titers of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies had a probability of a traffic accident of about 16.7%, i.e. a more than six times higher rate than Toxoplasma-free… subjects.
People with RhD blood factor have some protection – see the article for more. No word yet on whether this increases the probability of being eaten by cats although I suppose it would have to.
Inequality and consistency
I agree with Will Wilkinson's point that real social inequality has (mostly) been falling for some time in the United States. Today many an upper middle class person is plausibly happier than many a billionaire. Yet most self-made billionaires work very hard to get to that position, which creates a possible tension between cardinal and "observed choice" or "ordinal" metrics of welfare. Why work so hard for so little? Presumably many of these billionaires really want to "be there," even if they are only marginally better off or in some cases worse off.
Here are a few possible implications, not all of which are (or can be) true:
1. Higher marginal tax rates aren't very unjust, because lower incomes don't make wealthy people much less worse off.
2. Higher marginal tax rates are very unjust, because they undo results that the wealthy have worked very hard for and cared very deeply about.
3. Work is fun for the (self-made) wealthy, so higher marginal tax rates won't much discourage their work effort.
4. Greater wealth is barely worth it for the wealthy, so higher marginal tax rates will very much discourage their work effort.
Will's paper convinces me that the distinction between ordinal and cardinal measures of human welfare is more important than ever. Conservatives often cite #2 and #4, or in other words they have an ordinal normative theory and a cardinal predictive theory. Liberals are more likely to cite #1 and #3, giving them a cardinal normative theory and an ordinal predictive theory. In neither case is there an outright contradiction, but arguably both groups end up holding an odd mix of positions.
It would be interesting to take each group aside and present them with the abstract questions of cardinal vs. ordinal understandings of well-being, yet without explaining to them the possible policy implications of their answers.
Fairhope, Alabama
Fairhope, Alabama,
is one of two single tax colonies remaining in the United States (the
other is in Arden, Delaware). The community was established in 1894 by
a group from Des Moines, Iowa, headed by Ernest B. Gaston, who wanted
to establish a colony based on the single tax theories of economist,
journalist and social reformer Henry George.
The
rent paid to the Single Tax Corporation by lessees includes an amount
due for state, county and local taxes, plus an administration fee to
operate the Single Tax Corporation office, plus a “demonstration fee”,
intended to demonstrate the usefulness of the single tax concept. Funds
from the demonstration fee are used to enhance the community by
supporting such things as the public parks, the public library, the
historical museum, etc.
Fairhope
is located on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay…About 4,500 acres of land in and around Fairhope is owned by
the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation. This includes the downtown area
and a little less than half of the remainder of the city.
The link is here. Here is Wikipedia on Fairhope. Fairhope never succeeded in being a formal single tax "colony," but here is a short history and they are arguably the "purest" remaining example of the Georgist idea. One public choice lesson in this history is that later economic pressures will overwhelm virtually any initial constitution. It is a pretty city to visit and they still have a plaque in honor of the single tax concept.
Via Kevin Vallier, here is a guidebook for Fairhope.
Favor
Here is the website for my new book, CreateYourOwnEconomy.org. If a few of you would take a look and click on it, that would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Assorted links
1. The courageous Bruce Bartlett, on taxes.
2. Harvard University Press will publish one thousand digital books.
3. Countercyclical assets: remaindered books.
Predictions about immigration and attractiveness
Sebastian Flyte, an unusual commentator, wrote:
A man's mate value is tied to status – if he
emigrates he throws away whatever mate value he built up in his life. A
girl's is tied to youth and beauty. These are carried with her luggage.
He has a point. Female migrants should on average be prettier, ceteris paribus, than those who stay in the old country. That means holding constant income, education, and some other variables. Female immigrants should find it easier to marry into the receiving country's population than do male immigrants. From a public choice point of view, the women in the country receiving the immigrants should be more suspicious of liberal immigration policies than should be the men in the receiving country. It is up for grabs whether male immigrants should be handsomer or uglier than average, relative to their home country populations, again holding constant some relevant variables.
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
Tyler blogged this earlier (of course!) but it's worth another post. Sum is a peculiar book, it's forty stories, each a page or two in length about a possible scenario for the afterlife. Some of the stories are like Zen koans, others have the flavor of O. Henry or Jeffrey Archer's A Twist in the Tale. Here's is one of the lighter pieces which features wry theological commentary, an astute understanding of human psychology and, as if that were not enough, an appreciation of free market economics. It's called Great Expectations.
Hat tip to Robin Hanson who lent me the book.
My favorite things Alabama
1. Popular music. Emmylou Harris is from Birmingham and I like her albums with Gram Parsons. "The New Soft Shoe" is an excellent song. While I appreciate Nat King Cole in the abstract I never choose to put it on. Lionel Richie has a nice voice but the sound is too bland for my taste.
2. Painter: The early Howard Finster is excellent, although he churned out weak material for a long time later on.
3. Jazz: Lionel Hampton is the obvious choice, but I will pick Sun Ra, who is a musical god of sorts for me. Jazz in Silhouette is the best place to start, although it does not communicate the overall diversity of his work. He remains an underrated musical figure.
4. Country music: Hank Williams. Even if you hate country music you should buy the two CDs of his collected works. I also love Shelby Lynne; start with I am Shelby Lynne.
5. Bluegrass: The Louvin Brothers. Tragic Songs of Life is one of my favorite albums as it has a deeply scary and tragic feel; again you can love it even if you hate country and bluegrass. Do you know the song "The Great Atomic Power"?
6. Writer: I can't make my way through To Kill a Mockingbird. Who else is there? Wasn't one of Charles Barkley's books funny? I've never finished a Tobias Wolff novel, too stilted. Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King were very good writers, though they don't quite fit the category. Same for James Agee. Truman Capote would be an easy pick except I don't enjoy his books. Zora Neale Hurston was born in the state though I am inclined to classify her under "Florida."
7. Quilters: From Gee's Bend, Alabama, there is an entire tradition. The traveling exhibits of these works are excellent.
8. Gospel: Blind Boys of Alabama. They transfer better to disc than do a lot of gospel groups.
9. Song, about: Don't go there.
10. Movie, shot in. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As for "Movie, set in" here is a worrying list. Maybe I'll go with Fried Green Tomatoes, although the book is supposed to be better and more open about the sexuality of the main characters.
The bottom line: There are some major stars here and I haven't even mentioned the famous athletes.
Markets in everything, human carpet edition
A man walks into a bar. He’s carrying a carpet under his arm. He wraps
himself in the carpet, lies on the floor, covers his face and waits for
people to step on him. A sign taped to the bar reads: “Step on carpet.”
People step on the carpet – dozens, in fact. The more people who
step on the carpet, particularly if they are women in heels, the
happier the man is. Some are timid, others are audacious. Some dance on
the man. Some step on him while ordering their drinks, completely
unaware that a live body is underfoot. Some just stand there, frozen,
looking totally freaked out.
Four hours later, the man slips
out from beneath his carpet, folds it up, tucks it under his arm and
heads home. “It was a nice party,” he says cheerily, as if he were
talking about something far more ordinary, like, say, a backyard
barbecue.
His standard rate is $200 "a session," he seems to enjoy the work, in some situations he values the situation as a fetish, he once had ten women stand on him, and the market structure appears to be one of duopoly. Here is more and I thank Jeffrey Valentine for the pointer.
Assorted links
1. The new Lars van Trier film is extreme.
2. John Nye: an economist walks into a bar, short podcast, direct link here.
3. There are seven years of health reform benefits, not ten.
4. Unusual hypotheses about John Milton.
5. Via Bamber, which is the most humane state? And would you rather lose the right to vote or the right to bear arms, state-by-state? Do note this is user-submitted data and not a random sample; here are more results.
WSJ article on the economics blogosphere
Here is the ungated link, it also covers MarginalRevolution and has a good picture of Alex. It seems silly to excerpt the discussion of MR because you are already here. But for a long time Alex and I had the plan to first write a blog and then write a textbook.
Internet celebrities (according to the WSJ)
Here's the WSJ article on economics blogs (subs.) and here is the list. I was pleased to see this shout-out to Marginal Revolution commentators. Keep up the good work!
One of the things that makes Marginal Revolution good is that where other economics blogs are plagued by rude comments (Greg Mankiw has shut down the comments section on his blog) commentators on Marginal Revolution are usually civil and often thought provoking.
Is suicide expensive?
Ezra Klein writes:
But it's expensive. With only Switzerland in the market, there's little
competition. And in addition to the 4,000 euros required for the
services of Dignitas, you also have to pay for your flight, and for
those of your loved ones.
Well, sort of. But if you already have $4,000, or can borrow $4,000 (don't tell them why you want the money), ex post it's actually not as expensive as it looks. Which may help explain why the demand is somewhat inelastic.
China markets in everything minus one
Al Roth has the scoop:
Those of you reading this will be glad to know
China bans electric shock therapy for internet addicts
"China
has outlawed the use of electric shock therapy to treat internet
addiction, after a scandal at a hospital in the Northern province of
Shandong."
"Internet addiction has become a growing problem in
China, where officials believe as many as four million people spend
more than six hours a day online.
Several clinics have sprung up, offering parents the chance to "cure" their children of the uncontrollable urge to blog…"