The audacity of Chinese go to Africa to sell the goods in which it has comparative advantage and buy the goods for which Africans have for comparative advantage.

How could the Chinese not have learned the lesson of the NGOs that Africa is exempt from economics? How dare they prefer to enrich enterprising African partners rather than subsidize the poverty of the rest?
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 9:43 AM on July 20, 2008

Saying nothing about so limited a piece of work as this, let me just say that people as a mass are economically rational actors, and it makes perfect sense to apply rational economic behavior as an analytic of societal trends, particularly when mediated through political and judicial dispositions which respond very explicitly to economic pressures.

Were people as a mass not rational economic actors, we wouldn't have a functioning economy, to say the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:28 PM on June 29, 2008

freebird, are you saying that you have a math degree and have to resort to a calculator to determine 8x9 or 7x8? Or are you refering to some recondite sense of learning multiplication tables (like from 13 to 20 or something?)
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 10:17 AM on June 8, 2008

Don't write the epitaph for Labour yet.

Oil and housing are going to get worse before they get better -- and not all crises will redound to the Tories benefit. All those working class first-time Tory voters being quoted in person-on-the-street interviews may definitely reconsider if they start to feel themselves as personally vulnerable.

If Sarkozy, Berlusconi and Merckel are sucking wind abroad, or Boris Johnson within, people may think twice... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:17 AM on May 23, 2008

I hope the piece talked about the greatest problem of all: the popular consensus that home ownership was a good to be supported above all other things.

It was this, more than anything else, that prevented regulators from taking action against bad loan origination practices on the front end (100% LTV liar loans), and dubious investment decisions on the back end (permitting the agencies to rate AAA securities consisting of 100% LTV liar loans and permitting regulated... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:31 AM on May 12, 2008

Core vs. non-core in CPI has always made plenty of sense. Because sustained changes in food and energy costs should feed back into the prices on the core basket, core didn't so much ignore food and energy as mute their volatility.

If that correlation starts to break down -- and perhaps it could if dramatically higher energy and food suck all the demand away from the core basket -- then we'll have to think again.

However, it's important to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 11:17 AM on May 5, 2008

Craichead -- don't forget about the third category of Hyde Park people: people like me, who arrive sanctimonious liberals and depart hard-core conservatives!

However, even as a proud member of that category, I certainly think CeaseFire is a worthy experiment.

The fundamental problem of the ghetto is the ineffective teaching of norms of behavior. If ex-cons can effectively teach an important norm ("let the cops handle your... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:51 AM on May 4, 2008

I've never understood why people think Bush doesn't care about what people think about him. His record of getting and holding office, passing legislation, and confirming appointees suggests that he's quite focused on winning the approbation that matters. He doesn't have the willingness of several recent ex-Presidents to pretend to care about the opinion of people who staunchly dislike him, but what real difference does that make?

Bush's real problem... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 2:48 PM on May 2, 2008

I see it as an argument against the twin roots of virtually all political evil: sentimentality, and a willingness to indulge it.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 11:22 AM on April 29, 2008

I think it's an interesting article but wrong in its key assumption -- and hence in its conclusions.

He seems to view blogging or editing Wikipedia articles as a class change in activity of the participant from consuming television. I'd argue that they are firmly in the same overall category: self-amusement. A more active and cognitively-engaged form of amusement, but amusement none the less. In other words, from the standpoint of the participant... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:54 AM on April 27, 2008

It's not like money isn't already a critical motivation for education, it's just that it's always been long-term -- do well in school and you'll get into college and ultimately earn a better salary, etc.

I think this could be great, as other posters said, as a way to give people who are already tuned in to the value of school a way to reduce their part-time work hours and study more. But will it actually motivate people who aren't sensitive to the overwhelming... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:26 AM on April 22, 2008

Given that the principal use of small-quantities offenses is plea bargains with stupid (but dangerous) gang-bangers and minor-league dealers arrested with larger quantities, I wonder if this is going to have the desired effect. I don't see the dealers or gang-bangers being allowed free reign, so there will just end up being more trials and potentially longer sentences. I'm not sure justice is served by letting a few potheads avoid 6 months of club fed in exchange for putting a few people who... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:40 AM on April 21, 2008

The movie looks like a funhouse version of "Indoctrinate U" which is a real effort to demonstrate real bias in the academy.

However, it's rather hard to call Ben Stein a conservative these days, insofar as he is using his Sunday New York Times column week after week to campaign for higher taxes and higher regulations.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 2:49 PM on April 20, 2008

A crude (or crude-and-natural-gas) price crisis is more likely to lead to an expansion of coal-fired electric plants than it is to a wave of conservation -- not exactly what environmentalists are looking for.

It could pave the way to long-term carbon emission reduction -- increasing the use of coal would require conversion of large parts of our combustion-based infrastructure (gasoline and diesel engines, gas-fired heating, etc.) to a transmitted-electricity basis... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:41 AM on April 20, 2008

No one in the financial industry has been bailed out.

Bear Stearn's shareholders lost more than 90% of peak value of their stock a year ago. Many thousands of Bear Stearns employees will lose their jobs, and many of those who won't be out of work are still suffering the destruction of most of their net worth, given how long they were in the stock. Beyond Bear, shareholders of many mortgage originators have lost more than 90%, and tens of thousands of their employees... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:12 PM on April 17, 2008

Wondering why know one has mentioned that the strong inverse correlation between economic growth and education levels. Not only are all the (non-natural resource) growth rock-stars low education, when you confine your review to emerging markets, the worse-off ones are generally those with the relatively higher education levels (Mexico vs. India, for example).
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:24 AM on March 29, 2008

Copyrights will be extended again unless the Supreme Court changes its mind on the issue. It's a no- brainer that the political process will never let that amount of wealth be destroyed. What might be different the next time around is that Congress may decide to share the wealth -- imposing some pretty hefty taxes on royalties and revenue streams relating to the extended copyright period to compensate the public for their inchoate loss related to depriving the public domain.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:16 AM on March 29, 2008

The author projects a significant shift in housing preference from single-family residences to high-density urban living. This reduced demand, he supposes, will permit a lot of nice suburbs to slip into slum status as property owners have no choice but to rent out to poorer people.

The problem is that there really is no evidence of that shift in preference, or that such a shift would have the long-term effect he projects.

Sure, people say that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 8:41 AM on February 29, 2008

As little as I care for its editorial page, the NYT does a good job of keeping the news pages from blatant election manipulation. This is not to say that the news pages aren't horribly biased by Brooklyn-Montclair group-think or sucking up to the Manhattan financial and cultural elite, but neither is intentionally designed to elect Democrats.

For serious manipulation, you have to look at such things as the election-eve LA Times story in 2003 about... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 6:53 AM on February 21, 2008

Late to this thread but like Turtles I simply have had to banish "forte" (in the sense of a personal strength) from my spoken vocabulary. I absolutely refuse to pronounce it as it were from the Italian meaning loud when it is from the French meaning strength. But at the same time I can't let people assume I am the one who is mispronouncing.

What I can -- and do -- is allow myself the luxury of correcting someone else who misuses the word.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 8:19 AM on February 10, 2008

A sequential primary and caucus system will always have Iowa and New Hampshire first because by their respective laws they will always go first, even if that means Halloween of the prior year.

Human nature and media narrative gives the first states their disproportionate impact, and shapes the campaigns and candidates as much as the other way around. (Like him or not, Rudy Giuliani's campaign is quite radical in its insistence that someone with no appeal in Iowa or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 4:04 PM on January 2, 2008

Wood -- it can't rotate. As long as the state primaries and caucuses are used to select delegates Iowa and New Hampshire will go first by force of their own laws. 50% delegate penalties are about the only tool that the parties could use to try to force another result -- but of course that's not , because the (already tiny) number of delegates which Iowa and New Hampshire appoint are completely beside the point. (I believe that New Hampshire is already being penalized thus,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 8:00 PM on January 2, 2008

Mullacc -- thanks for that critically-important qualification. Discussions that compare the notional amount of derivatives contracts with some tangible non-notional economic figure are in trouble from the get-go.

To say that the derivatives market is larger, or even comparable in size to, the whole economy, or even the whole cash securities and loan market, is wrong by pretty much every meaning that one would set by such size comparisons.

This... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 3:46 PM on January 2, 2008

According to the article the AFL-CIO and other labor groups support the rule, as a means to preserve the benefits of younger workers. Hardly a right-wing conspiracy.

Anyway, people who think that corporations abandoning health plans will lead to wide-spread untreated illness or injury are wrong. It will lead to some form of government-provided or -organized universal health care.

Middle class voters vote themselves... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 3:58 AM on December 27, 2007

Eriko -- we would be out of Iraq if American voters opposed it even one-tenth as much as they support having healthcare for themselves and their families.

It's pretty hard to say that there is a coherent out-of-Iraq political movement among mainstream voters. It was just one of many things that drew votes to Democratic candidates in 2006, and probably not even the biggest of those things. It wasn't part of the official Democratic platform in 2006... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:53 AM on December 27, 2007

The central banks are all taking these kind of moves and it's possible that the Euro might take more of the hit than the USD in the next leg, given the lofty levels where it's been. The market started to take on the reality of that in the middle of last month -- when the Euro flirted with $1.50 -- and the Euro has now fallen by a meaningful amount. At this point, a $1.25 Euro looks at least as likely to me me as $1.60 Euro.

What may ultimately save... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:11 AM on December 14, 2007

What Thorzad said -- scavengers in Lagos are the beating heart of globalization. In a world with limited or no trade barriers, underemployed people are a richer natural resource than oil or copper or anything you could name. With a bit of reliable industrial infrastructure and reliable legal protections for property and contract, those scavengers can become an immense source of wealth, a meaningful portion of which will redound to their personal benefits (see the increased standards of living... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:10 AM on December 12, 2007

Suedehead, the patronizing (racist?) motivation you suggest for cross-cultural adoption can't drive more than a trivial percentage of adoptions. If there's a political component to some adoptions, it's far more likely to be the "it's a crowded world, why be selfish and perpetuate my own genes" type thing.

Cross-cultural/ractial adoptions are motivated by supply and demand: many more Western white people want to adopt young children then there are Western young... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 6:59 AM on December 12, 2007

The story fails to make one thing clear: are the DOJ agents in question admitting that they have no probable cause and getting warrants anyway, or is this a controversy over whether some judges are being overly liberal in how they interpret the facts adduced by the agents as evidence that they do have probable cause. The former would be pretty surprising, the latter is one of the most common controversies in all law enforcement.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 8:58 AM on November 23, 2007

Bush hasn't been a great economic President, but many of the things for which he blames Bush were (1) well underway before Bush took office and (2) nothing that Gore or Kerry proposed to change.

The declining savings rate that he hits upon started decades ago and simply reached continued its inevitable trend towards 0% under Bush. The three greatest culprits in the housing bubble were the creation of subprime mortgage securitization, the $250,000 capital gains... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 6:59 AM on November 18, 2007

Think twice about Australia and Canada. While not one-trick ponies, Australia and Canada have benefited so much from the late commodities surge that any kind of global economic slowdown will whipsaw them brutally. In late 2007, oil, iron ore and non-ferrous metals are nearly as detached from their fundamentals as US housing was in mid 2005. Arguments that oil "can't" go down are no more persuasive or correct than arguments that circa 1982 3-bedroom ranch in Phoenix... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:04 AM on November 18, 2007

A good point miss tea -- most species reach their population equilibrium and then maintain population in continual balance, while others achieve the balance over a slightly longer time-frame through a feast/famine (population boom/die-off) pattern.

Homo sapiens may have had the feast/famine trait package, but got so smart that they were able to reduce the famine periods to much shorter than the feast period: thus, explosive population growth.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:11 AM on November 17, 2007

The biggest beneficiary of this will obviously be certified organic dairies, as the Rendell administration has basically outlawed any economic benefit of intermediate steps.

Really, though, between this and Schumer killing the tax increase on carried interest of alternative asset managers, I'm wondering how much longer lefties can hold up the Democrats as a party of real change. We Republicans can be accused of cynicism in our appeal to Evangelicals -- but we're twice... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 8:37 AM on November 12, 2007

A brief perusal of the site didn't answer one question: does it actually work?

The politics is silly, of course, but hard to take too much umbrage if it yields better outcomes, in terms of basic numeracy for the left-gifted and more high school kids taking calculus and declaring quantitative majors in college.

Another concern is that this kind of unconventional instruction would only ever be tolerated in schools where parents have low levels of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:04 AM on November 9, 2007

"less gifted"!
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:05 AM on November 9, 2007

I have no opinion on the cricket articles. His economics articles are great!
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 12:05 PM on October 31, 2007

When no major candidate for President -- not even Barack Obama, who alone among them opposed the invasion in the first place -- will promise to withdraw the troops, it should probably be expected that the troops aren't going to be withdrawn.

It's not like there's any precedent for withdrawing troops: we never left Germany, we never left Japan, we never left Korea, we never left Kuwait, and we only left Vietnam under the (mistaken) impression that a peace had been... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 12:52 PM on October 30, 2007

Kwantsar, how impolite of you to introduce actual economics ... you might make people think, and can't have that.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 8:22 AM on October 29, 2007

Newspaper-television cross-ownership (which is the principal reform under consideration) actually serves whatever public interest remains in government control over the airwaves.

There are lots of metro markets where twin decreasing audiences (for over the air television and print newspapers) will soon start to strain the economics of robust newsrooms. A common newsroom and advertising sales effort (for the dual old-media product and a combined new-media product) can... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 8:30 AM on October 29, 2007

Liz Phair made one amazing record and at least one interesting record, and that's not bad.

Really, it's hard for anyone, once successful, to maintain the intensity required to make great rock records, to say the least of someone who grew up as rich and as pretty as Liz Phair did and had to invent her intensity as a dorm room project. Any 40 year old who is still bringing in a serious way is probably still mining their precious few years of teenage-early-20s poverty... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:54 PM on October 24, 2007

I'm always prepared to believe the worst about Democrats in Congress -- but I found the NYT piece to be ridiculously cynical. Isn't it possible that some Democrats think that extending the surveillance rules is actually the right thing to do? Not all politics is a conspiracy or tactical cowardice. Wasn't the whole point of running all those Iraq-tanned veterans on the Democratic line in 2006 to get a counterweight to Barbara Lee and Barney Frank?
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 8:27 AM on October 9, 2007

If we have to take Knocked Up seriously (do we?), I still think people are getting it wrong.

First, in the logic of the movie, Heigl ins't supposed some kind of uberfraulein. In important ways she's just as much a loser as the Seth Rogen character, if admittedly cuter. She's a grown-up crashing at her sister's house, with a completely insipid job (third-string E! teleprompter reader) where she is treated like a piece of meat by the executives (played... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:45 AM on October 7, 2007

Rail doesn't need help. Even in the US, most places where job and housing patterns are suitable to some form of rail, that form of rail is present, vital, popular, and subsidized by generous general-fund grants. There are far more unsuitable and grossly expensive projects (MARTA in Atlanta or the subway in LA) than there are unmet current opportunities for rail.

Given that rail sustains itself quite well (politically and otherwise) where there is demand, if you want... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 10:17 AM on October 2, 2007

The reason why Cheney isn't worried about the partisan result of bombing Iran is that any non-retaliatory bombing will be thoroughly bipartisan: approved by the Democratic leadership in Congress and approved by the leading Democratic Presidential candidates (or the nominee if it gets to that point).

Politics ultimately will always stop at the water's edge, which should be comforting for people regardless of their views on any particular military compaign.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 1:26 PM on October 1, 2007

The cop / fireman / nurse thing is a red herring. The article is about highly educated children of professionals taking $25,000 jobs with no benefits instead of going onto Wall Street while still trying to live in hip neighborhoods. Not exactly the option set or background or living preference of your typical cop, nurse or fireman. And those jobs pay a lot better than $25,000, and in the case of cops and firemen have great retirement and health care benefits too.

I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 4:00 AM on September 30, 2007

Water supply as a human right is a great way to substitute sentiment for economics. Water is a bought and paid for commodity like any other thing that is limited in supply and requires inputs of labor and equipment to produce and deliver.

When you look at places that have reliable and inexpensive water delivery systems, you'll find all different mixes of government and for-profit inputs, as well as differing levels of legal entitlement -- far too much diversity to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 7:54 AM on September 17, 2007

I'm sure Venkatesh does cover it, and I'm surprised that Reason of all publications would omit to mention it, but one key element in inner city informal economies is welfare fraud: preserving government benefits is a very salient motive for working and owning assets off the books.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:22 AM on September 15, 2007

80% or more of the African Americans in Congress would fit both the common definition of liberal and Evangelical Christian, except to the extent that one circularly defines "Evangelical" to exclude anyone with liberal beliefs on economics or foreign policy.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 8:54 AM on September 10, 2007

Kamanetz's "generation debt" stuff has been pretty thin, but this article contained some pretty good and thoughtful points: that there are many fields where an ambitious person can make money without a college degree and that masses of people undertake the unmitigated financial disaster of going to college and not graduating.

DU -- I think you're quite wrong. The 10% college educated society is going to be economically better off than the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 11:20 AM on August 29, 2007

I wonder how Lott explains the huge impact that marriage has on women's voting -- in 2004 making them almost twice as likely to vote for Bush, for example. You'd think that married women have a greater sympathy for big government -- kids or the immediate prospect thereof increasing the urgency of all kinds of requirements that the government does or could satisfy.
posted to MetaFilter by MattD at 5:11 PM on August 13, 2007