May 08, 2008
Cap and Trade: what matters, and what doesn't
Kevin Drum says a cap and trade carbon reduction program is only 'real' if the allowances are auctioned to emitters, not given away. He's wrong, so much as I like thoughtful attention to global warming, I need to weigh in, especially given how completely lost his commenters appear to be on this issue. I desperately want to offer a pocket-sized...
April 01, 2008
Coins again
Because pennies and nickels now represent negative seignorage (the cost of the coins is greater than their face value) the bad design of US coin denominations is under discussion again. The US has the fewest coin denominations and the lowest-value smallest bill of any developed country known to me (for example; the smallest euro bill is €5 and there are...
March 09, 2008
Placebos, antidepressants, and government mendacity
Antidepressants seem to be only somewhat more effective against depression than placebos, and the finding has triggered a fair amount of discussion of health care costs (how much are we spending for drugs that don't work much better than sugar pills?) and of course lots of technical back and forth about the studies themselves. Am I ever not going to...
March 07, 2008
It's not just fossil fuels
Let's play a kids' riddle game. My short-term benefits on first use are positive, and can be obtained at very low up-front cost. In your social circle, I indicate coolness and status. Once you use me, you find that the (again, short-term) benefits of using are increasingly greater than not using, even if you start to wish you had never...
February 11, 2008
A really bad day for biofuels
This is a really big deal. (The original articles are here, behind the AAAS paywall.)There is now more than good reason to expect that no biofuel from seeds, possibly none (even cellulosic) grown on land that could grow food, will reduce global warming if substituted for petroleum products. The insight of the papers discussed in the article, and work by...
December 08, 2007
Price controls in the fun-house mirror
Tyler Cowen, a smart and creative economist especially dear to me because of his interest in the economics of the arts, occasionally falls into a state of self-hypnosis with his own chops, to the point that he’s invented a persona (Tyrone) to show off how deftly he can manipulate the left-wing arguments he usually knocks. Today the subject is rent...
December 07, 2007
Stupefying toys: it’s not the lead you need to worry about
Lead is really bad for you if you inhale or eat it, especially if you’re a kid wiring up neurons into the best possible brain, so toys that put it into kids are deplorable. But I think we’re missing something much more alarming about toys. Plato’s Socrates warned his students that they should be even more careful about what they...
August 02, 2007
Reflections on the I-35W bridge
The I-35W bridge was two arch-cantilever trusses, with smaller trusses parallel to the river supporting the roadway. Each of the main trusses rested on two concrete columns, one on each side of the river. The design highlights a characteristic design tradeoff: a truss like this is statically determinate, which means that the all the forces in every element can be...
July 13, 2007
Blasphemy
(A), government, is always incompetent and expensive, while (B), the private sector, is always capable and efficient. Contracting out for government services gets you at least part way from A to B. You can recite it to rosary beads, and engrave it over doorways. It's an eternal truth: simple and pure. Some people are nothing but troublemakers. A certain Radha...
June 17, 2007
Sunday dog blogging
No, absent a wave of reader demand, no pictures of my dogs. This is about off-leash dog parks. The issue is apparently a really trying one for parks departments in cities, with remarkably varied results. As a dog lover, I'm happy to meet and even be leapt upon by almost any canine, but not everyone is: indeed, some people are...
June 09, 2007
Silly season at the gas pump
Like most things, gasoline is bigger when warmer. Since the gas pump measures volume as you fill your car, you get less gasoline by weight, therefore less energy, when the gas is warm than when it's cold. So far so good, but here the failure of high school science and economics education starts to send the story into never-never land,...
April 23, 2007
Policy and murder
Mark is right to deplore Haley Barbour's savage idea that Mississippi (of all states) would benefit from cutting social services to its poorest people, and the deaths of innocents traceable to the policy are fairly charged to it. But it isn't murder, and I differ from his rhetoric. Many policy choices entail a gross cost in shortened lives, even shortened...
April 17, 2007
Biofuels and global warming
Global warming can only be arrested by putting less...a lot less...so called "greenhouse gases" (mostly CO2 from burning fossil fuels) into the air, taking CO2 already released out, or - a longshot and controversial approach - making the planet more reflective. (This post is one in an ongoing series you can review in the Energy and Environment thread.) Among the...
March 23, 2007
Global warming and the economy
As public and political opinion gets behind the idea that human activity is warming the planet by putting so-called "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere, we are, thankfully, starting to talk about what to do about it. This post is an effort to obstruct unrealistic and irresponsible hoping for "something to do that doesn't require any actual heavy lifting". What matters...
March 14, 2007
Separation of church and state
The final scene of Animal Farm really has legs. As it's replayed yet again with yet another cast, we see the features of the reactionary self-appointed gatekeepers of Christian doctrine blur into those of the reactionary self-appointed gatekeepers of Islam as they all collapse the idea of morality into suppressing sex by anyone not married to a person of the...
February 12, 2007
Dollar coin update
A new dollar coin will come out Thursday and disappear without a trace, for reasons I discussed at length here last fall. Until a few congressmen stop requiring the continued issue of one-cent coins and/or dollar bills, these babies don't have a chance. At least domestically; apparently the Sacagawea gold-colored dollar is a big hit (along with a batch of...
January 23, 2007
On Efficiency
Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute, who has given President Bush's alleged health care plan an "A+," criticizes my criticisms. I argued that the method of capping the deductibility of employer-based health coverage seemed like a lousy method of paying for tax credits for the uninsured (which are themselves a poor way to get people insured). In addition to setting...
January 03, 2007
Commercializing the public weal
The Port Authority is going to sell Geico a billboard squarely on top of the George Washington Bridge toll booths. Even more appalling, "Geico’s message will also be integrated into the Port Authority’s direct mailings and its Web site, and costumed gecko mascots will appear at Port Authority bus stations." Words fail me. This is the rotten fruit of having...
November 29, 2006
More about money
US paper currency, uniquely, does not differ by denomination in any way perceptible to the blind, and a district court judge says that's not fair. If the decision survives appeal, we will have to find a way to distinguish bills, perhaps by embossing, perhaps by shape, perhaps by size, which is what almost every other country does (but see my...
November 10, 2006
The Agenda, Part XXX
Steve's political argument on health care for kids is persuasive to me, and I'm glad he agrees on abortion reduction. But I'm wondering a little on CAFE standards and card-check. 1) Although I am not sure that Blue Dogs would go along with card check, I'm not sure they would oppose it, either. Although one idea of conservative/centrist Democrats is...
Four More for The Agenda
I agree with Steve's agenda and Mark's addendum. But I think that the Democrats can do more that can attract a broad base of Democratic support and put the party in a good position for 2008. I'd be interested to see what people think. 1) Raise the CAFE standards. This works as environmental policy and national security policy. 2) Abortion...
October 27, 2006
Who killed the firefighters?
Riverside County has put a $100,000 price on the heads of the arsonist[s] who got beered up and set a fire that has killed four or five firefighters (one is hanging by a thread in the hospital, badly burned) and is at 24,000 acres and growing. What they did is certainly murder and they should be prosecuted if we can...
October 13, 2006
Risk management
The students, including elementary school kids, in Burleson, Texas are getting fight-back training in case of armed classroom invasion. This follows an apparently serious suggestion from a Wisconsin solon that teachers all pack heat. Really, and really, respectively. Let's see, is there any way to see this as something other than mass child abuse for the comfort and posturing of...
October 09, 2006
The North Korean Nuke
The usual carping critics are assailing Bush and his foreign policy team for an enormous blunder on the occasion of North Korea's nuclear test. This is so unfair I have to protest. First, for such a regime to have this capability is completely contrary to the whole international affairs theory of our current leaders, so it's just rude and disrespectful...
October 05, 2006
Pushing a String
Reading this story about Harvard's ongoing struggles to decide what kind of learning - more precisely, learning about what - a degree should evidence, a bell went off in my head when I got here: "The recommendations also include ... retaining foreign language work." This phrase is ambiguous, to say the least; what I wonder is, will alums speak a...
September 28, 2006
Sunk costs and bad metaphors
It's always useful to have a clear understanding of the kind of problem before one, and misclassifications are especially common when we are desperate to be seen throwing the right kind of slogan at an issue in time for a news cycle or an election. For example, political habits of thought make a lot of conflicts look as though some...
July 30, 2006
Subsidies and green[er] fuels
I've published an exquisitely reasoned and balanced discussion - OK, a rant - on subsidies and by extension, minimum fuel content requirements and their whole inefficient, rent-peddling, heavy-handed, intrusive ilk, pant pant pant, in the SF Chronicle this morning. It pleads for a carbon charge: What we should be doing, instead of the current incredibly complex and ill-targeted package of...
July 20, 2006
What's a valley worth?
Many years ago, around the time William Mulholland proposed to "stop the waste" by damming Yosemite Valley into a reservoir, the city fathers of San Francisco did exactly that with the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which was a comparably beautiful place. It's now proposed to demolish the dam and "reclaim" the valley, and to do so while preserving a water supply...
July 14, 2006
Cellphones and driving
California is considering a ban on cell phone use while driving. Hands-free phones will still be permitted. The informal and published debate about this is interesting because of a seemingly desperate desire not to believe the well-established facts, which are (1) Using a cell phone while driving is about as impairing as being just at the legal alcohol limit; (2)...
March 29, 2006
Policy-wonk heaven, with clouds
Singapore has always been a public policy wonk's delight, a place where the implications of policy analysis and thinking outside the box can be put in place and tried out. It's famous for the (now-repealed) prohibition on sale of chewing gum and caning criminals, for suppressing The Economist, and for the ruling party's habit of controlling dissent by ruinous libel...
February 06, 2006
A Puritanical Musing
I have a hypothesis about the economic roots of cultural behavior. I cannot think of a society whose basic conventions and value system were formed or greatly altered in a context of extractive industry that wasn't seriously damaged by it, and in an enduring way. By extractive industry, I mean mining and cattle farming on virgin land, but not farming....
January 14, 2006
...in their shoes
Two recent entries from Mark here and here rang a bell for me: how many of us understand what we're really doing when we make consequential decisions for others? Teachers have all been students, though they haven't all been struggling students, and I've had a few who seemed to have no understanding of what it means not to understand. It...
January 13, 2006
Why Tom DeLay went off the rails
As is well-known, Tom DeLay burned out some critical neurons as an exterminator, driven over the edge by government safety regulations. I have a little more sympathy for his descent into darkness (this increment is added to a really small base) having come upon the following batch of paperwork, included with a new portable external DVD/CD drive: A 4"x5" "Quick...
January 05, 2006
State of the State: Arnold and California
Schwarzenegger's 2006 State of the State address began with a topical self-deprecating joke that he stepped on in delivery Now what a difference a year makes - a year ago USC and I were #1 - what happened? and continued with a genuinely disarming and admirable apology: I've thought a lot about the last year and the mistakes I made...
December 26, 2005
Paternalism at the Pound
We here at the RBC are generally opposed to good news or anything vaguely heart-warming, but I found this story, despite its happy theme, to be policy-relevant. The idea is that the DC humane society has set a goal of eliminating euthanasia for all adoptable animals in five years. This is interesting because the Washington humane society seems to be...
December 07, 2005
Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Recruit?
Just below, Mike O'Hare looks for insight on the case before the SC on withdrawal of federal funding for schools that don't permit military recruiters at their law schools. Mike admits to being perplexed, and asks Jonathan and me to help cure him. Sorry--I'm as perplexed as he is, for this is a genuinely problematic issue. Let me state my...
December 06, 2005
The King's Shilling
"When you take the King's shilling, you are the King's man" was the rule for British recruiters two hundred years ago. They would try to get lowlives and down-and-outs in bars to accept a shilling; it was regarded as a salary advance, so if you did, you were legally in the army. The Solomon Amendment just argued before the Supreme...
March 20, 2004
Taking the bottle away from dangerous drunks
When someone gets caught drinking and driving, the first response is to take away his license: his driving license, that is. Why not revoke his drinking license instead?
March 15, 2004
Violence-minimizing drug sentencing
We currently have half a million people, more or less, behind bars for drug dealing, an increase of something like twentyfold over the past two decades. Over that period, prices of heroin and cocaine have fallen by more than 80%. So, on the evidence, the idea that we can push drug prices up by putting more dealers in prison --...
March 14, 2004
Making on-the-job training pay
It is well established that the best "job training" takes place on the job. But it is also well known that young, low-skilled workers are highly mobile from firm to firm, giving their current employers next to no incentive to contribute to those workers' non-firm-specific human capital (which is economese for teaching them anything that would increase their value...
March 13, 2004
Why target countries rather than ruling parties?
When the action of a foreign government annoys or disadvantages us, we immediately think in terms of damaging the country involved in retaliation, rather than trying to weaken or displace the particular group of politicians who made the decision, or the party in power. This seems to me an error. In general, it ought to be easier and less costly...
