Results for “age of em” 17246 found
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.
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.
What does the Turing test really mean?
That is a new paper of mine, co-authored with Michelle Dawson. There is much more to Turing’s classic essay than meets the eye. The famous “test” is not a standard for distinguishing human from machine intelligence but rather one step in an argument showing that such a distinction is not as important as we might think. Turing cleverly shows why the supposed test is misleading and the real question is how to educate both children and machines, not how to distinguish them. The summary statement of our paper is as follows:
…a potent and indeed subversive perspective in the paper has been underemphasized. Some of the message of Turing’s paper is encouraging us to take a broader perspective on intelligence and some of his points are ethical in nature. Turing’s paper is about the possibility of unusual forms of intelligence, our inability to recognize those intelligences, and the limitations of indistinguishability as a standard for defining intelligence. “Inability to imitate does not rule out intelligence” is an alternative way of reading many parts of his argument. Turing was issuing the warning that we should not dismiss or persecute entities which we cannot easily categorize or understand.
If you read Turing’s essay closely, you will find many underrated passages of interest, especially when read in light of his homosexuality (and also possible autism). Here is the closing bit from our paper:
It is possible that Turing conceived of his imitation test precisely because he had so much difficulty “passing” and communicating himself. In social settings these facts were seen as disabilities but in the longer term they helped Turing produce this brilliant essay.
One brute fact is that a lot of human beings could not, themselves, pass a Turing test. Could you?
Addendum: Here is my previous post, Toward a Theory of Raivo Pommer-Eesti.
*Economist* forum on Justin Lin and banking in developing countries
Lin is chief economist at the World Bank. You will find the forum here and it includes responses by Antoinette Schoer, Ross Levine, Abhijit Banerjee, Luigi Zingales, Mark Thoma, and others. My comment is here. Excerpt:
I can't decide whether I agree with everything in this essay or disagree with everything in this essay.
I
see Mr Lin using the words “should”, “need to”, and phrases like “what
matter most” or “not the way to go”. But who or what is the active
agent here? The country’s home government? The World Bank? When it
comes to all these banking systems, are we simply rooting for
particular paths and outcomes–such as small and simple banks–or is Mr
Lin making policy recommendations about how to get there? We never
know.
Meanwhile, via Kottke, here is the World Cup Stacking Record (recommended).
Intrade vs. MSM: Sotomayor Nomination
What tells you more about the Sotomayor nomination, all of the chatter and debate in the MSM over her "controversial" remarks or the single number from intrade: bids at 98,5, i.e. an estimated probability of confirmation of 98.5% (as of July 14, 11:12 pm EST)?
Loyal-reader Jim Ward writes:
Do reporters and news Agencies even know to check the betting markets? Or do they just ignore it, because “X sure to happen, nothing to see” is not a story?
Or they don’t want to seem biased, and have to provide 2 sides to every story…Why not just throw Intrade odds into every story as an addendum?
I'm actually amazed at how far prediciton markets have come. In Entrepreneurial Economics I wrote:
…perhaps one day, instead of quoting an expert, the
New York Times editorial section will refer to the latest quote on "health
care plan A" available in the business pages.
At the time, I didn't think that day would be just a few years in the future. Admittedly, we are not quite there yet but during the last election it was common for media outlets to refer to the prediction markets. I think this trend will continue. Can futarchy be far behind?
Markets in everything; the culture that is Japanese
This year Japan has gone konkatsu-crazy, with the trend spawning countless magazine articles, a weekly TV drama and a best-selling book.
A Tokyo shrine now offers konkatsu prayer services, a Hokkaido baseball
team has set up special seats for those looking for mates, and a Tokyo
ward office arranges dating excursions to restaurants and aquariums.
A lingerie maker has even come up with a konkatsu bra with a ticking clock that can be stopped by inserting an engagement ring.
Here is much more. I thank KunLung Wu for the pointer.
The trip so far
Not everyone liked it when I suggested that vouchers have the potential to be "TARP for the elementary schools." With New York and Los Angeles in some disarray, Chicago is arguably North America's "coolest" city right now; the new contemporary wing of the Art Institute is the best "new U.S. museum" in many years. The Austrian-language dialogue in Brüno is the funniest part of the movie and enough to make it, despite its flaws, a comedy classic. I should not have told my Las Vegas cabbie (while he was driving) that the real estate market there will not recover for another twenty years. Lotus of Siam, in Las Vegas, is one of the best Thai restaurants in the United States. In case you had forgotten, here is how to order in a good ethnic restaurant. I haven't arrived in Mobile yet.
Kidney Donor Chains
Virginia Postrel has an excellent piece in the online Atlantic on the shortage of transplant organs, it includes a very good discussion of both the promise and limitations of kidney swaps and donor chains. Imagine that Mrs. Smith and Mr. Jones each need a kidney transplant. Mr. Smith is willing but due to an incompatible blood type unable to donate a kidney to his wife. Similarly, Mrs Jones is willing but unable to donate a kidney to her husband. In a kidney swap, Mr. Smith donates to Mr. Jones and Mrs. Jones donates to Mrs. Smith. Everyone is happy.
Donor chains extend this idea. We start with an altruistic donor willing to give to anyone – by careful arrangement it's then possible to produce many transplants. Recently, a single donor led to a chain of ten transplants!
Despite the promise of these techniques they are being underutilized. Amazingly, the National Kidney Registry, which coordinates swaps and chains, has donors who are waiting to give. A clear reminder that $500 bills aren't always picked up as quickly as we would like.
Even the maximal use of swaps and chains won't solve the crisis, however. For that we are going to need better incentives to encourage more donors.
Oil price speculation
There's lot of talk about curbing speculation in energy markets. Simon Johnson has an excellent post on this topic: He writes:
1) They are trying hard to talk up the market, with regard to global growth. At the same time, the hard data continue to disappoint. Naturally, this causes volatility in oil prices.
2) They claim to see no link between their failure to converge on
climate change/environmental policies and what happens to energy
prices. The extent to which industrialized countries’ effectively
control carbon emissions will have a big impact on the longer-run
demand for oil. Flip-flopping on this issue discourages investment in
the energy sector (regular and alternative), and thus directly and
indirectly contributes to oil price volatility.
3) The very cheap money policies of leading central banks, including
the Fed, the Bank of England and arguably also the European Central
Bank, lower the funding costs for big players who want to take large
positions in commodities markets. Essentially, we are providing the
credit that makes big speculative positions possible. Add to this mix
a “too big to fail” attitude and a “yes we can, recapitalize through
trading profits” deal with policymakers, and you see why major
financial firms are likely to place huge commodity bets in the months
ahead.
…The true speculators here are your elected representatives.
Vaticanomics
That's the clever title they gave my piece at the WSJ. It is a look at the recent papal encyclical, which is full of claims about economics. There is plenty there to object to, but I didn't think it nearly as "left-wing" as did many other market-oriented commentators. In fact I was surprised how positive or at least neutral it was about markets, once you cut through some of the rhetoric. It was pro-micro-credit, it repeatedly noted that globalization can have a positive side, and it stressed the idea that businesses are, in the right setting, capable of doing a lot of social good.
One excerpt:
We should probably not expect too much to come from the encyclical's call for more state power.
Most of the encyclical, appropriately, expresses a desire for
ethical conduct. The importance of ethics for civilization is obvious,
but of course good ethics, consistently applied, are hard to come by.
People are very good at ethical and psychological compartmentalization,
and so it is possible for them to offer the church nominal authority
over the ethical realm while continuing their dubious economic behavior.
Another:
Although it was just issued, the encyclical already feels dated.
Globalization is one of the main concerns in the document. Yet because
of the financial crisis, international trade has been falling apart.
The real worry is not how to manage the economic globalization we have
but how to stop the world's rapid deglobalization, which is at a pace
that matches the collapse of trade in the 1930s. For better or worse,
economic rather than ethical factors will determine the outcome here.
The end of my piece covers what the Encyclical should have discussed, namely the importance of the non-Christian nature of China and India and what that means for the future of the world.
The English-language text of the encyclical is here.
The Political Psychology of Stimulus
David Hirschleifer writes:
Regardless of who's right on the economics, clearly the ‘stimulus'
language captures the pro side perfectly, and the con side not at all.
Indeed, the term immunizes the mind to opposing evidence. After a cup
of stimulus from Starbucks, if I'm still drowsy, by definition I need
another jolt.
….Opponents have lots of metaphors they could choose from. Instead of
the image of rousing activity, there could be the economic ‘suppression
plan,' ‘deadweight package,' or ‘growth-retardant system.' For
alliteration, there's ‘prosperity Propofol.' To honor the frugality of
government, how about ‘resource-flush scheme,' ‘wealth dump,' or
‘porkapalooza'? As for mechanical metaphors, there's ‘recovery off
switch,' ‘opportunity crusher,' and ‘investment choke button.' For the
computer savvy, how about ‘stagnation drag and-drop-down device,' or
‘system freezer'.
In recognition of our gleaming new
infrastructure, there's the ‘road-to-Hell-paving project'. And to
celebrate the new Star Trek film, how about economic ‘stasis-field
mechanism', ‘enterprise eliminator,' 'job vaporizer,' or just plain
‘black hole'?
So, here's a political psychology question. Why did opponents gullibly
swallow the stimulus terminology, and thereby defeat? Any ideas?