We're Poorer Today

Got my property tax assessment yesterday--down $70K. That's about a 25 percent drop. It reinforces my belief that, at least in my small part of the world, immigration had a positive effect on housing values. And the end of immigration, at least at past levels, because of the agitation against illegals and the collapse of the housing bubble is proof. So when I see that Prince William County is talking of a 28 percent increase in the property tax rate to compensate for their drop in values, I'm somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, PW is getting what they asked for--fewer immigrants, meaning more foreclosures, more empty houses, lower property values. On the other hand, it's a hell of a way to run a country.

Farm Bill Prospects

Politico has a good summary article on the farm bill, including the reasons for the direct payments and the possible jeopardy they now put the farm bill in. (Ironically, if the WTO hadn't forced us into direct payments, and the Republicans hadn't sold them as a free market transition, we would now have much freer agriculture under the provisions of the 1990 farm bill.)

They also have an elaborate list of possible bookmarks and sharing sites. One of these days I'm going to have to learn the process. (Or maybe I just give up and admit either life is speeding up or I'm slowing down.)

Psychology as a Science

Article in the New Yorker that's very interesting on the physiological basis for humans knowing numbers (size comparisons, arabic numerals, words). (The article is probably available only for a limited time.) A couple things of note:

• Chinese (Mandarin) has a better mapping of number words (i.e., seven, thirteen, twenty-five) to arabic numerals than does English (presumably instead of "thirteen", they say "one three") which is more efficient.
• there's at least one instance in which the hero of the piece (number researcher) made a valid prediction--he used computer chips to model how the mind operates with numbers. His modeling included a physical feature that was unknown, but was later discovered through advanced CAT scans.) The best test of a science is prediction, so psychology is getting better.
  

Bill Buckley--Post Obit Changes?

Buckley died and the obits are coming out:

The National Review defended the Vietnam War, opposed civil rights legislation and once declared that "the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail." Buckley also had little use for the music of the counterculture, once calling the Beatles "so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic."

That bit from the Washington Post describes good reasons to be against him. But I had a personal prejudice--he was a show-off, using words to impress and rub one's nose in one's ignorance. I give him that over time he even came to be friendly with Arthur Schlesinger and he opposed the John Birch Society. But IMHO he gave wealth a bad name.

[Update] It's interesting--I linked to the Post obit about an hour ago (12:30) and got the quote above. Left the post as a draft and went off to do some PC maintenance. Now, at 1:26 pm, the paragraph reads:

In its early years, National Review attacked any and all U.S. policies it perceived as concessions to communism, condemned what it called "the welfare state" and defended the South's resistance to racial integration. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the National Review was one of only a few to criticize President John F. Kennedy for his deal with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev not to invade Cuba in exchange for removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. [Actually, the "deal" was not announced then, its existence has since been established by historians, so Buckley's crew was accusing JFK of doing a deal and ahead of the curve. Had the deal been announced, JFK would have lost considerable support.]

I think the omissions of the quotes makes it less critical and the missile crisis bit gives NR a bit of credit for knowing what was happening. Wonder why the change?
(Suppose I should label this post: "unfunny" as I'm criticizing the dead.)

Whoever Said Conservatives Are Heartless

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution promise to quash the poor, but all in aid of a suffering conservative.

FSA Hopes Rise

Nothing makes a bigshot bureaucrat's heart sing like the prospect of another program to administer. From a discussion of the current status of farm bill:

“Another thing I have been talking about is that we ought to look at the ag disaster program in terms of paying something for this coverage. It will not be crop insurance, it will be a separate program in the Farm Service Agency (FSA). The days of just giving something away is over with. Producers will sign up for it if they want it; if not, they do not have to take the offer. But signup will involve some cost...that just makes sense. So we have some element of payment in it. Perhaps participants will give up some of their direct payments in exchange of getting a better safety net – not all of their direct payments, but some minimum level of coverage. They could buy up (to a higher level) of coverage under this program, but this is not crop insurance. It will not be actuarially sound. And, again, there would be a crop insurance requirement to be covered under the ag disaster aid plan. So this could actually be a pretty good safety net. And it could serve as a transition to another program in the future.” Peterson said, “The Bush administration originally pushed their GAP coverage, but I said, 'Look, this will not be crop insurance. It is not actuarially sound. It will be run by the FSA, so give it your best shot. What they did looks pretty good.”

Competition in Schools

I've always, being a good liberal, resisted the idea of school vouchers and charter schools--two ideas of libertarian conservatives who argue that introducing competition into the education system would improve it. Other than prejudice (and the fact I'm the child of a school board chair), I doubt its usefulness in the rural areas--there just aren't enough students for multiple systems to work. And I'm skeptical--is a parent going to risk her child's education by trying a new, untested charter system? Seems as if human inertia would work to preserve the existing systems. And the idea that charters might skim the cream has some force to me.

But pieces like Marc Fisher's post here make me doubt my position. The comments pro and con are interesting.

French Farmers Again

I'm not sure a British teacher of English to the French is an expert on French agriculture, but Dirk Beauregard reports French farmers are doing well. But he also says:

So, French farmers have never had it so good, however roughly 70% of the income of French farmers comes from European subsidies. In 2007, the nation’s farmers received 10 billion Euros in European money, from a total European agricultural subsidy budget of 41 billion Euros."

That's amazing and a far greater proportion than US farmers ever get from subsidies. Of course, it's the sort of factoid that could be retained in memory, even though it's not true, or a one-year phenomena. Not quite an urban legend, but the same sort of thing.

Cows as "Spimes"

Here via John Phipps. Here's an interesting talk by Bruce Sterling on "blobjects", spimes, and other entities.

And see this from the NO NAIS people (RFID chip that can be read at a distance, perhaps for bull riders).

And apropos of cows, here's a bit on the Taiwanese dairy industry.

Definition of a Farmer, En Francais

Dirk Beauregard posts on the definition of a french farmer. Contrary to the title, the post is in English. Some interesting statistics included as part of the definition--income from agricultural produce must be at least 25 percent of the value of the farm. (I wonder whether that works for the U.S.--let's say an acre of Iowa land produces 150 bushels times $3 = $450 but it's worth $4500??) Interesting issue for an economist.

The existence of an official definition fits the conception of France as a very bureaucratized country, but they have more agriculture in proportion than the U.S.

Closer to a bureaucrat's heart--the French ag ministry has 40,000 employees for maybe 400,000 official farmers. USDA has maybe 100,000 for 1-2 million farmers (depending on the definition). That's misleading, because each ministry would have different responsibilities, etc.

Also interesting--apparent French farmers are members of a corporation that provides social security and health insurance?