Potpourri
==> Commenter Keshav pointed to this 2013 Steve Landsburg post in which he anticipated the spirit of my recent FEE article. I definitely knew that Landsburg was the first person I had read making the point about minimum wage burdening a small group (employers) to achieve a social goal (helping unskilled workers) instead of society as a whole, but I had forgotten that he used analogies too. Good thing I don’t believe in intellectual property!
==> Rand Paul taps Mark Spitznagel to advise him.
==> Stephen Colbert apparently took over a local access cable show in Michigan. (I’m still open to the possibility that the whole thing was invented, but the guy at the link got over his initial incredulity.) At the 21:50 mark he brings on a local Michigander making a name for himself in the competitive world of music, Marshall Mathers. It is extremely clever, and Eminem does a good job playing the role.
==> A Forbes writer is happy about George Gilder’s new monograph on gold (which criticizes Milton Friedman along the way).
==> People love or hate his past activism, but I think Adam Kokesh’s new idea is great, assuming he assembles a good team of trainers. There are thousands of young people who recognize that the current system is broken but they don’t see any practical options.
Is This a Good Way to Help the Downtrodden?
My latest article at FEE poses some hypotheticals:
Or consider families who adopt children from war-torn regions. These actions, though seemingly noble, are clearly a drop in the bucket, with hundreds of thousands of orphans left behind. What if the government passed a law saying that US families were only allowed to adopt foreign children if they did so at least 15 kids at a time? Would activists agree that such a “pro-adoption” measure would increase the number of adoptions and be an unmitigated boon for foreign orphans?
Currently there are people who volunteer to teach adults how to read. But adult illiteracy is still a vexing problem in certain communities, so clearly these volunteer efforts have been inadequate to overcome the challenge. The obvious, pro-literacy way to fix things is to pass a law saying volunteers must give at least 15 hours of tutoring per week. If they are caught only teaching adults how to read for, say, 14 hours, then the volunteers will be heavily fined.
You see where I’m going with this?
Scott Sumner: “I’ll Be Making All the Ironic Jokes Around Here, Thanks”
Oh Scott, why do you vex me so? In the midst of an EconLog post, Scott had this throwaway line (in my bold):
I first got into blogging in 2009 out of frustration over Fed policy. The US obviously had a huge demand shortfall, and the Fed wasn’t doing enough to address the problem. Indeed I believe the Fed caused the huge demand shortfall.
So most people think I’m a demand-side economist. (Some even equate “demand-side” with “Keynesian,” which would make Milton Friedman roll over in his grave.)
Now follow me on this. In order for that parenthetical statement to make any sense whatsoever, surely both of the following statements must be true:
(1) Milton Friedman never said that his occasional focus on monetary aggregates could arguably qualify him as a Keynesian.
(2) Scott Sumner never referred to himself as a Keynesian.
And yet, Milton Friedman famously said there is a sense in which all (sic) economists were Keynesians because they rely on the Keynesian language and apparatus, and Scott once referred to himself as the last New Keynesian economist.
(That giant sucking sound you hear is the universe imploding.)
Chinese Stock Market Crashing
Details here. It’s down about 25% in the last two weeks, and 11% in the last two days.
Meanwhile, Scott Sumner is running victory laps, over those broken records who called it a “bubble” but didn’t give the precise timing. (See the P.P.S. in his post.)
Bias in the Published Estimates of Social Cost of Carbon
This is a bit technical, but if you care about the climate change policy debate, you should try to get through it. I made it as easy as possible.
Chris Tomlin Mellows Out With Live “Indescribable”
This is a big hit for this guy, but this live version is more mellow than his standard one.
Quick Comment on SSM and I’ll Move On
If you want to see my thoughts, see FB. I want to make one quick comment here, but first, watch Obama:
I am not shocked by libertarians saying, “On balance, I am glad this happened, though I totally understand people who are alarmed that consolidated federal power will end up destroying any prospects for liberty long-term in this country.”
But I DO have a problem with people–and yes I have specific people in mind, I’m not just throwing out strawmen–who would have, without irony, called Obama a war criminal on Thursday, on Friday gushing about how beautiful the White House rainbow light show was, and denouncing any opponents as cold-hearted bigots.
An Even More Damning Gruber Clip on State Exchanges
OK, this one is pretty clear. There is no ambiguity about a “federal backstop” and what that might mean. (Thanks to the honorable Keshav for passing this along, even though he disagrees with me.)
It is now pretty obvious to me that Gruber thought the bill would deny tax credits to people in states where exchanges were not set up. Now Gruber is just playing dumb, saying he must have been mistaken when speaking with such confidence. Well, he doesn’t sound like he’s ill-informed in this video. He sounds like he was part of the discussions (which we know he was, although everybody involved tried to deny it) and he is obviously very intelligent and a details kind of guy.
This bill was enormous. The fact that Matt Yglesias wasn’t talking about this particular aspect doesn’t really mean much to me. In my research (which you’ll see in my forthcoming book on U.S. health care, in the fall, co-authored with an ER doctor) I dug up all sorts of stuff that nobody has talked about.
UPDATE: Notice in the very beginning, Gruber says of this risk “the one folks aren’t talking about.” So for Gruber to now say, “Well geez, I must have been crazy back then, because nobody else was talking about this,” is kind of fishy. And gosh, I guess that’s the trouble Gruber when you admit to the world that you are willing to deceive people to push through your political agenda–now people have a hard time believing you.
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