Holiday Videos!

Deck the Halls with Macro Follies (with thanks to PB)




And...the REAL Santa Claus is the US Government!
 

Big Bang and Gifts

So, Ruth Kappes added this video to the thread on the question of gifts and voluntary exchange over at EE.  Thanks, Ruth, nicely connected!




And the points about money being better than gifts, and just going back and forth until someone dies.... what a happy thought!

Morals and Markets

Detecting the Trustworthiness of Novel Partners in Economic Exchange

David DeSteno et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming

Abstract:
Because trusting strangers can entail high risk, an ability to infer a potential partner's trustworthiness would be highly advantageous. To date, however, little evidence indicates that humans are able to accurately assess the cooperative intentions of novel partners by using nonverbal signals. In two studies involving human-human and human-robot interactions, we found that accuracy in judging the trustworthiness of novel partners is heightened through exposure to nonverbal cues and identified a specific set of cues that are predictive of economic behavior. Employing the precision offered by robotics technology to model and control humanlike movements, we demonstrated not only that experimental manipulation of the identified cues directly affects perceptions of trustworthiness and subsequent exchange behavior, but also that the human mind will utilize such cues to ascribe social intentions to technological entities.

An actual version of this experiment:  would YOU trust THIS man?

(The correct answer is "yes," btw.)

----------------------

Are social preferences related to market performance?

Andreas Leibbrandt
Experimental Economics, December 2012, Pages 589-603

Abstract:
This paper combines laboratory with field data from professional sellers to study whether social preferences are related to performance in open-air markets. The data show that sellers who are more pro-social in a laboratory experiment are also more successful in natural markets: They achieve higher prices for similar quality, have superior trade relations and better abilities to signal trustworthiness to buyers. These findings suggest that social preferences play a significant role for outcomes in natural markets.

(Interesting note for Mr. Overwater:  being pro-social is adaptive, even (especially) in a market setting.

Nod to Kevin Lewis
 

Matt Zwolinski on Social Justice

I really, really like Matt Zwolinski....

 

Men Have No Clue

Women are surprisingly (or maybe not) good at telling whether a particular man is likely to be unfaithful, just by looking at his face, or a picture of his face.

Men (quoting the study) "have no clue."

Sounds right.

Grand Game: Academic "Honor" Edition

**********************************

UPDATE:  Okay, so don't even read my post.  It is lame and ad hoc.  GR answers all the questions, way better than I did.  Just read what he said.  Seriously.

*********************************

So, this piece, based on this book, says that there is a giant conspiracy of "honor" in academic political science.

I'll admit that perhaps academic rank of PhD institution is more important than it "should" be (and I'm not sure what that means, but I'll admit it).  But if admissions processes are based on grades, recommendations, and GRE scores, and if the top ten PS departments* choose the 150 best applicants each year, wouldn't it be amazing if those departments did NOT dominate the job market?  Let's assume that the admissions criteria are only 50% predictive of later success.  Still, year after year, 75 of the best young political scientists in the country are going to the top ten departments. 

Sure, that means that there may be no value added in "top" PhD programs.  But if the admissions process selects based on traits that are actually correlated with ability, this is just sorting.   To put it another way, the admissions processes at top ten poli sci departments would have to be pretty dumb for anything other than dominance to occur.

Anyway, see if you agree with me, and pick out some of the logical howlers in this piece.

(*Based on this ranking, which the researchers used, Duke is 9th, so perhaps I'm just biased? Or drunk on all that "honor"?)

And, since @lordsutch linked it in the first place, apparently (?) approvingly...what say you, Lord Sutch?  You called it "in-breeding."  Why isn't it just probabilistic sorting?

Speed as Lower Transactions Cost

The speed of ships and shipping productivity in the age of sail

Klas Rönnbäck
European Review of Economic History, November 2012, Pages 469-489

Abstract:
A sample of vessels from the transatlantic slave trade is used as source for a quantitative analysis of the transit speed of ocean-going ships during the early modern period. In contrast to influential previous studies, the results show that the speed of ships in my sample increased significantly during this period, potentially contributing to increasing productivity of ocean shipping. The pattern is homogeneous geographically. This might have been one of the factors behind falling freight rates in the transatlantic trade, which in turn contributed to a process of market integration already during the early modern period.

MicroWork Development

From the HBR....

What’s the best way to help the world’s poor? The answer may not be giving them more aid. What people need to break the cycle of poverty is work. A small but growing industry known as “impact sourcing” is addressing that need head-on by hiring people at the bottom of the pyramid to perform digital tasks such as transcribing audio files and editing product databases. Essentially, it’s business process outsourcing aimed at boosting economic development.

Impact sourcing is not unlike microfinancing: It aspires to create meaningful work for and put money in the pockets of the people who need it most. And because it connects new workers—often those who’ve been marginalized, such as Muslim women in Calcutta—to the global supply chain and addresses real needs of first-world companies, it could quickly reach a large scale. In a study commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation last year, Monitor Group estimated that the market for impact sourcing was $4.5 billion in 2010 and would rise to $20 billion by 2015. It also predicted that employment in the industry would grow from 144,000 to 780,000 over the same period.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Bad Day

Some overlap, but some other good ones, here...

Hard to beat the Captain America one, or the steering wheel fail... That would be a bad feeling.

Minimum Wage

The Montana Department of Employment, Division of Labor Standards got an anonymous tip that a small rancher was not paying proper wages to his help.  They immediately sent an official  agent out to investigate him.

GOVT AGENT: I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them.

RANCHER: Well, there's my hired hand who's been with me for 3 years. I pay him $350 a week plus free room and board.

GOVT AGENT:  Well, those payments and conditions are within the law.  Anybody else work here?
 
RANCHER:  Well, I wasn't going to say.  But there's also a mentally challenged guy. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work on the ranch. He makes about $10 per week, sometimes less.  He pays his own room and board.  I do buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night so he can cope with life, but then sometimes he tries to make love to my wife.

GOVT AGENT:   Okay, yes, then THAT's the guy I heard about, and need to talk to -- the mentally challenged one.

RANCHER: That would be me.

Does Cheating Make You a Cheater?

When Cheating Would Make You a Cheater: Implicating the Self Prevents Unethical Behavior

Christopher Bryan, Gabrielle Adams & Benoît Monin
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming

Abstract:
In 3 experiments using 2 different paradigms, people were less likely to cheat for personal gain when a subtle change in phrasing framed such behavior as diagnostic of an undesirable identity. Participants were given the opportunity to claim money they were not entitled to at the experimenters' expense; instructions referred to cheating with either language that was designed to highlight the implications of cheating for the actor's identity (e.g., “Please don't be a cheater”) or language that focused on the action (e.g., “Please don't cheat”). Participants in the “cheating” condition claimed significantly more money than did participants in the “cheater” condition, who showed no evidence of having cheated at all. This difference occurred both in a face-to-face interaction (Experiment 1) and in a private online setting (Experiments 2 and 3). These results demonstrate the power of a subtle linguistic difference to prevent even private unethical behavior by invoking people's desire to maintain a self-image as good and honest.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Football: Stick a fork in it?

Earlier this year, LeBron and I wrote about the end of football in Grantland. We speculated that it could take 10-15 years before football was knocked off its perch as the number 1 US sport.

New findings from Boston University make our scenario even more likely. Researchers there have found 28 previously unreported cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in deceased football players:

Previously, CTE had been found in 18 of the 19 former NFL players whose brains were examined. The 15 new cases in the BU study mean that of the 34 brains of former NFL players that have been examined, 33 had the disease. Linemen made up 40 percent of those cases, supporting research that suggests repetitive head trauma occurring on every play — not concussions associated with violent collisions — may be the biggest risk. BU also reported CTE in four former NHL players.

So, CTE is more prevalent than we thought and may well not be fixable by focussing on concussion avoidance or treatment.

The "end of football" is very much in sight.

Attack of the clones

Anonyman sends this little gem.

A hat?  He had him made into a HAT?

Publishing as a Craft

My post the other day created some pushback.

A former student here at Duke sent this response, mostly in agreement with my claims (not that my claims were original, either, by the way!)

Hi Mike, I wanted to send a quick note to say I appreciated your post today about difficult letters of recommendation, and what it takes to succeed in academia. As someone who is basically a parishioner in the Church of Munger, all I can say is "amen." (Also, as you wrote a letter for me I am sure I am one of the people who gave you fits as someone with promise but nothing to show for it yet. I probably still am). 

Please feel free to post or distribute these comments as you fit. Let stress some other reasons why sending out a lot of work--especially early in your career--is important. Net present value is a compelling argument. But, assume that people only care about doing good work and not about future earnings or even getting tenure. Writing a lot may be even more important for reasons unrelated to salary and tenure. You don't grow as a scholar if you are not working (normal family vacations aside). 

Main points after the jump...

Read more »

Other People's Money, Spent for Other People

Email from W.H.:

Many times when people discuss Milton Friedman's fourth category of spending they do so in a mistaken vacuum. How so? They forget to point out HOW other people's money came to be. Stated alternatively, other people spending other people's money on other people, the discussion thereof, many, many times leaves out Friedman's first point: coercion.

Hence one ends with an isolated discussion of how Friedman's fourth category of spending points out the careless way or ineffective/inefficient way that occurs by other people [politico]spending other people's money [taxpayer] on other people [recipient class]. True enough but it decouples the coercion and only discusses the single phenomena without discussing [coupling] the ability of such a phenomena to emerge. Think about it, how many times have you heard the discussion, in isolation, of other people [cheese master] spending other people's cheese [cheese payer] on other people [cheese recipient class]??

Meanwhile, twenty six discussions later a separate subject is discussed regarding coercion of forcibly appropriating other people's money. Better yet, this discussion many times appears in isolation from Friedman's total discussion.

Nay, nay! One must correctly discuss both subjects as coercion must occur first and only then can one arrive at other people spending other people's money on other people.

Problem solved! Please go to 11:00 to 11:34 of the youtube link below and hear Friedman himself properly layout the discussion.

Here is the video...

Harvard Students Wear Ties

Not sure if this is a prank goof, or an actual goof.

I mean....well, here is an excerpt:   It started last October with a meal in Currier dining hall with a handful of friends who shared something in common: an affinity for kinky sex.

More than a year after the group first began informally meeting over meals to discuss issues and topics relating to kinky sex, Harvard College Munch has grown from seven to about 30 members and is one of 15 student organization that will be approved by the Committee on Student Life this Friday.

Michael, who was granted anonymity by The Crimson to protect his privacy, is the founder of Munch, an informal lunch or dinner meeting for people across the kink community.  For him, the recognition will provide a sense of ease for current and future members, knowing they are receiving institutional support.

“It’s a little hyperbolic for me to get teary-eyed and paternal about sophomores, but it’s really a joy to see the experience they will have now,” Michael said.  Michael said there are many benefits to being officially recognized on campus such as being able to poster for events and promote Munch’s presence.

“If you come to campus and you have the sexual interests we represent, you may not even suspect that such a group exists,” Michael said.  Munch is also now allowed to apply for DAPA food grants, making it easier to find a convenient time and location to meet, instead of gathering in small dining halls.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Electoral College

Richard Posner on why the Electoral College is worth keeping.  Excerpt:

There are five reasons for retaining the Electoral College despite its lack of democratic pedigree; all are practical reasons, not liberal or conservative reasons...[I]f the difference in the popular vote is small, then if the winner of the popular vote were deemed the winner of the presidential election, candidates would have an incentive to seek a recount in any state...[A] solid regional favorite, such as Romney was in the South, has no incentive to campaign heavily in those states...Voters in toss-up states...are likely to be the most thoughtful voters, on average (and for the further reason that they will have received the most information and attention from the candidates), and the most thoughtful voters should be the ones to decide the election...The Electoral College restores some of the weight in the political balance that large states (by population) lose by virtue of the mal-apportionment of the Senate decreed in the Constitution [because] winner-take-all makes a slight increase in the popular vote have a much bigger electoral-vote payoff in a large state than in a small one...The Electoral College avoids the problem of elections in which no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast.

ATSRTWT

Nod to Kevin Lewis

You Publish, or I'll Perish

Okay kids, sorry to harsh your mellow.  But I am sick and tired of writing letters of recommendation for promising young scholars who have given me nothing to work with.  I say that I will write the letter, and then I look at the CV and think.....FiretrUCK.  What am I going to do with this?

Academics is a simple business.  If you write every day, three pages or more, you will be successful.  You can be successful other ways, for sure (write one truly brilliant paper every other year, and publish it in Econometrica or AER).  But that's hard.  There is nothing hard about writing three pages per day, every day.  Except that apparently no one, NO ONE does it.

Some facts:

It takes two journal articles per year to get tenure.  Good journals.  Not great journals.  If you can publish in great journals you can get away with fewer publications.  But barring consistent genius, you should assume you need two journal articles per year to rest easy.

To do that, you have to have three papers out at journals at all times.  Four would be better, but never less than three.  Since your articles are going to get turned down 2/3 of the time, that means you need to have only two new papers per year (assuming that your portfolio of "work at journals" turns over once every six months, and each time one of the three gets accepted).  What I mean is that you only have a 1/3 success rate, and you get back two responses each year on your three articles.  Two of them get accepted, and you write two new ones.  You are writing the new ones while the ones out there are being considered by reviewers, for six months.

More after the jump ==>

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Is Divorce Unnecessary?

The LMM sends this, via email...

DIVORCE VS. MURDER

A nice, calm and respectable lady went into the pharmacy, walked up to the pharmacist, looked straight into his eyes, and said, 'I would like to buy some cyanide.' The pharmacist asked, 'Why in the world do you need cyanide?'

The lady replied, 'I need it to poison my husband.'

The pharmacist's eyes got big and he exclaimed, 'Lord have mercy! I can't give you cyanide to kill your husband. That's against the law! I'll lose my license! They'll throw both of us in jail! All kinds of bad things will happen. Absolutely not! You CANNOT have any cyanide!'
google-site-verification: google9319ed2385f9a38b.html
The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist's wife.

The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied, 'Well now, that's different. You didn't tell me you had a prescription."

Eddie Izzard: Death Star Canteen

A funny, angry transvestite...
With thanks to Angry Alex

Afghanistan or Oklahoma?

Elevator Prank

Sometimes I see pranks that would work on me.  The sort of stuff Ashton Kutcher did, in "Punk'd," for example.

But this?  I would be startled, for sure.  But I would laugh and say, "Now how did you get in here?"  Because otherwise it's an actual ghost.  And that seems unlikely.

Still, quite amusing to see the reactions.  And I'm afraid that if this happened to the LMM there would be loud noises...



With thanks to @BillLumaye

Wow! A Grand Game From Heaven!

I have always claimed that it is impossible to make a "national defense" argument for trade protection for U.S. sugar producers.  But this guy does just that.  And his argument....I pause with a sense of enormous respect for his courage.... his argument is that without trade protection for U.S. sugar producers, the price of sugar would be....too high!  Because there would be an OSEC (Organization of Sugar Exporting Countries, modeled after OPEC).  Seriously.  He says that.

You have got to read this for yourself.  A brilliant piece of work.  Grand Game, people!

A Conservative Case for Sugar Tariffs.

EYM and the Santiago Giants

The EYM is teaching down at UDD, in Santiago de Chile, or in Los Condes, actually.

He found a "gringo beisbol" team to play on, the Santiago Giants.

The EYM is the very dirty one, on the left.  Apparently they had fun, though there were tensions when they played the Venezuelan team.  Those Hugonos have little use for imperialist gringos.  And, yes, that is the foothills of the cordillera in the background.  Early summer down there, like late May here.  But those little hills still have snow.  Very, very pretty.

Your Thunder draft pick update

As part of the Harden trade, the Thunder received a protected first round pick from the Toronto Raptors. If it turns out to be one of the top 3 picks or worse than the 14th pick, the Thunder would have to wait at least another year to get the pick.

Obviously, the dream scenario would be for it to be the number 4 pick.

Right now, the Raptors are tied with Detroit for the second-worst record in the NBA with a .214 winning percentage. The Whizzers are winless, and Cleveland is 1/2 game better than Toronto (notice how all the truly pitiful teams are in the East).

Kyrie Irving's injury is a bit of a plus for the Thunder as it might help push Cleveland below Toronto.

Yes, I know that there is an element of randomness in the lottery, but it looks like, at this early point in the season, the Raptors might be too crappy for the Thunder to get their pick this year.

The Culture that is Football: Mutant Ninja Edition

"I was doing what I usually do, moseying to the locker room and meandering around. Naturally, I just wanted to step back, but I did the righteous thing and I stepped up. I caught him, I saved his life, I tapped into my inner superhero, which I do have. I'm usually a ninja, but my Spidey-senses told me he was going to take a fall, so I saved his life. He owes me his first-born or something. Actually I don't want that. Maybe a sandwich or something."


 ~Martellus Bennett describing his post-game heroics

Frampton comes full circle

Ex-UNC prof Paul Frampton has now been convicted of drug running in Argentina and sentenced to 4 years, 8 months.

Earlier KPC coverage of this story can be found here.

He claims he was scammed by a babe. But the prosecution says he texted said babe gems like: "I'm worried about the sniffer dogs".

Confirming my previous allegation that Frampton's drug of choice is LSD, he hopes to serve his time in a friend's apartment.

That's not how they roll, homie.

Looks Just Like Me!

Interesting.  Men fool themselves, because it's adaptive.  And it's not like the woman is going to say anything... "Yes, honey, he has your nose! And so did the mailman!"

Fathers See Stronger Family Resemblances than Non-Fathers in Unrelated Children’s Faces

Paola Bressan & Stefania Dal Pos
Archives of Sexual Behavior, December 2012, Pages 1423-1430

Abstract: Even after they have taken all reasonable measures to decrease the probability that their spouses cheat on them, men still face paternal uncertainty. Such uncertainty can lead to paternal disinvestment, which reduces the children’s probability to survive and reproduce, and thus the reproductive success of the fathers themselves. A theoretical model shows that, other things being equal, men who feel confident that they have fathered their spouses’ offspring tend to enjoy greater fitness (i.e., leave a larger number of surviving progeny) than men who do not. This implies that fathers should benefit from exaggerating paternal resemblance. We argue that the self-deceiving component of this bias could be concealed by generalizing this resemblance estimation boost to (1) family pairs other than father-child and (2) strangers. Here, we tested the prediction that fathers may see, in unrelated children’s faces, stronger family resemblances than non-fathers. In Study 1, 70 men and 70 women estimated facial resemblances between children paired, at three different ages (as infants, children, and adolescents), either to themselves or to their parents. In Study 2, 70 men and 70 women guessed the true parents of the same children among a set of adults. Men who were fathers reported stronger similarities between faces than non-fathers, mothers, and non-mothers did, but were no better at identifying childrens’ real parents. We suggest that, in fathers, processing of facial resemblances is biased in a manner that reflects their (adaptive) wishful thinking that fathers and children are related.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Linkulation!

1.  When motorboating turns deadly.  On the other hand, not such a bad way to go...

2.  Nail house.  Even I think this is a simple case of eminent domain, folks.  If we are going to ask the state to build roads, it has to be able to take property at gunpoint.  It's the nature of state provision.  If you don't want violence, don't choose the state.

3.  Twitter obits for Larry Hagman.

4.  Hector "Macho" Camacho died.

5.  Surprisingly honest whining from Gallup.  We all know that pollsters need to be able to lie and say the race is too close to call.  It's good for pollsters, 'cause they get paid.  And, it's good for democracy, because the lie increases turnout.  When rat bastards like Nate Silver break the gentleman's agreement and actually tell the truth, it's bad for business and bad for the country.  In short, analysts who tell the truth are "overfishing the commons," and need to be stopped.  Wow. Just...wow.

6.  Paul Cantor on the Elizabethan surveillance state.

7.  Peter Suderman's "17 Theses" on WalMart critics, storified by @lachlan .  Me gusta ...

Nod to Angry Alex, Chris A, and the EYM

The culture that is Japan

Ah Japan, the land where adult diaper sales now outpace baby diaper sales!

Hat tip to John Aziz.

But, Wait...

Human mortality improvement in evolutionary context

Oskar Burger, Annette Baudisch & James Vaupel
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 30 October 2012, Pages 18210-18214

Abstract:  Life expectancy is increasing in most countries and has exceeded 80 in several, as low-mortality nations continue to make progress in averting deaths. The health and economic implications of mortality reduction have been given substantial attention, but the observed malleability of human mortality has not been placed in a broad evolutionary context. We quantify the rate and amount of mortality reduction by comparing a variety of human populations to the evolved human mortality profile, here estimated as the average mortality pattern for ethnographically observed hunter-gatherers. We show that human mortality has decreased so substantially that the difference between hunter-gatherers and today’s lowest mortality populations is greater than the difference between hunter-gatherers and wild chimpanzees. The bulk of this mortality reduction has occurred since 1900 and has been experienced by only about 4 of the roughly 8,000 human generations that have ever lived. Moreover, mortality improvement in humans is on par with or greater than the reductions in mortality in other species achieved by laboratory selection experiments and endocrine pathway mutations. This observed plasticity in age-specific risk of death is at odds with conventional theories of aging.

I'm trying to think why age at mortality has anything to do with evolution.  Evoluntion involves mutations for variance, and then natural selection to "choose" among variants.  But, wait.... the only variations that matter are those that are relevant for the number, health, and fecundity of offspring.  How old (or how happy) you are when you die doesn't matter much.  And it doesn't matter at all if you if it doesn't increase the number of offspring (do 65 year old men really have children?  I know they could, but...), or the health of your offspring (do 80 year old women take care of great grandchildren?)  (more  after the jump...)

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How to ensure a happy thanksgiving

WKRP Turkey Drop

A remembrance of the WKRP "Turkeys Away" episode.  For T-giving, from KPC!

With thanks to @radleybalko ...

A youtube excerpt, about 13 mins.  A bit jumpy, but a great show.  And you get the punchline at the end:


Apparently some basis in reality, from Yellville, AR.  Also home of the "Miss Drumsticks" Beauty Pageant.

Create inclusive institutions and call me in a century!

Daron Acemoglu may well be the pre-eminent economist of our time.  Acemoglu and Johnson (along with other coauthors) have written massively cited and highly influential journal articles.

But their overarching theory in "Why Nations Fail" just won't wash, at least for prediction and policy.

Full disclosure: I have not read the entire book (give me a break here people, "reading the book" is a very over-rated strategy)!

But, I have read and taught their papers and followed the review and counterattack cycle that reached its peak this week with their diatribe against Jeff Sachs.

There are two basic problems for the relevance of their theory:

1. Mrs. Angus and I show that across countries from 1960 - 2000, "institutions" are converging, while output is diverging.

2. Institutions move slowly while in most of the world growth, even in the medium term, is volatile. See "The anatomy of start-stop growth" or "growth accelerations".

So, "inclusive institutions are necessary (and sufficient?) to sustain long run growth"is just not a very relevant or helpful statement for poor countries or policymakers over a 5 - 25 year horizon.

"Create some inclusive institutions and call me in a century", is not going to get you appointed as chief economist at any IFI anytime soon. Nor will it get you elected in a developing country.

Nor should it.

60 knots.... in a SAILboat

About 70mph, powered only by wind.


If you think it looks like it's flying...it can actually fly.  That's not so good.

Regulating Lobbyists? Maybe Not...

You Owe Me

Ulrike Malmendier, Klaus Schmidt

NBER Working Paper No. 18543
Issued in November 2012
NBER Program(s):   HC   HE   LS

In many cultures and industries gifts are given in order to influence the recipient, often at the expense of a third party. Examples include business gifts of firms and lobbyists. In a series of experiments, we show that, even without incentive or informational effects, small gifts strongly influence the recipient’s behavior in favor of the gift giver, in particular when a third party bears the cost. Subjects are well aware that the gift is given to influence their behavior but reciprocate nevertheless. Withholding the gift triggers a strong negative response. These findings are inconsistent with the most prominent models of social preferences. We propose an extension of existing theories to capture the observed behavior by endogenizing the “reference group” to whom social preferences are applied. We also show that disclosure and size limits are not effective in reducing the effect of gifts, consistent with our model. Financial incentives ameliorate the effect of the gift but backfire when available but not provided. 

Bret Stephens

I don't always agree with Bret Stephens.  But he nails so many things in this post...well, it's good.  That's what I'm sayin', it's good.  Excerpt:

Can we, as the GOP base, demand an IQ exam as well as a test of basic knowledge from our congressional and presidential candidates? This is not a flippant suggestion: There were at least five Senate seats in this election cycle that might have been occupied by a Republican come January had not the invincible stupidity of the candidate stood in the way.

On the subject of idiocy, can someone explain where’s the political gold in demonizing Latin American immigrants? California’s Prop 187, passed in 1994, helped destroy the GOP in a once-reliable state. Yet Republicans have been trying to replicate that fiasco on a national scale ever since.

If the argument is that illegal immigrants are overtaxing the welfare state, then that’s an argument for paring back the welfare state, not deporting 12 million people. If the argument is that these immigrants “steal” jobs, then that’s an argument by someone who either doesn’t understand the free market or aspires for his children to become busboys and chambermaids.

And if the argument is that these immigrants don’t share our values, then religiosity, hard work, personal stoicism and the sense of family obligation expressed through billions of dollars in remittances aren’t American values.

ATSRTWT

Why is there CORN in my Coke?

The lovely and talented Dr. Diana Thomas shares some extremely valuable info on sugar, and why there is corn in your co-cola.

Africa for Norway

We noted before that there were some problems in Norway.  The whole butter thing....it was terrible.

Now, though, help is on the way.  Via the EYM....Africa for Norway!  As the young man says, "Have you SEEN what is going on there?"  Pasty white herring eaters need our help!  Can't you give?

Endogeneity & Furiousity

This morning, Tim Harford tweeted me over to this post by Owen Barder, along with the message that it,  "should make me furious".

It didn't.

The post complains that, "we (the US) waste our food aid budget". It shows that, in 2010, We sent $5 million in official food aid to Cambodia, but $3.5 million of that was actually paid out to US shippers.

The implication is that we have a fixed food aid budget that is exogenous, and if we could just stop wasting it on shipping (by sourcing the food closer to Cambodia, for example) the aid would be more effective.

Another way to look at the situation though, is to realize that the food aid budget is actually endogenously created in the sausage factory that is Congress.

US shippers and farmers aren't going to lobby for a food aid budget if they don't benefit from it. If shippers and farmers don't lobby and give contributions then the food aid budget will be smaller.

How much smaller? That of course is an empirical question, but given that Cambodians don't vote or lobby (as far as I know at least), zero is not a crazy guess as to the size of the food aid budget without the support of US shippers and farmers.

After all, when you ask the American people where to cut the budget, their first instinctive thought is "foreign aid", which many on them imagine is a large chunk of US expenditures instead of the pittance that it is.

Why does the OECD allow these freight costs to be counted as "aid"? That is a separate question, but in the elaborate kabuki dance of special interest money, it appears to be necessary that money flows not be plainly labeled.

A budget item simply giving money to shippers and farmers is perceived as unlikely to survive, so we call it aid and our pals go along with it. Either because other countries are doing the same thing, or because the OECD knows that calling a spade a spade might end up reducing, rather than increasing the actual amount of aid that is delivered.

We all know that the most effective use of $5 million in aid money is to simply give the money to the people who need the aid. The best our political system can do is, from the $5 million, get $1.5 million in in-kind aid delivered. And then of course the political system of the receiving country takes over, so the amount that actually gets to the intended recipients is going to be a fraction of that measly $1.5 million.

Yet we as a people continue to demand that our political system run more and more of our economy.