A Bit on Reston

Q: What is the biggest change you have seen in Reston during your time here?
A: Without question it would be the number of jobs.  In the beginning Reston was slated for one job per household, which would mean 22,000 jobs.  Now there are close to three jobs per household.

From an interview with a guy who's been in Reston longer than I.  Robert Simon thought Reston should be a place where people lived and worked, a source neither of jobs for outside commuters nor of commuters for outside jobs.  That vision was flawed, perhaps because he didn't allow for the impact of Dulles airport and the access road to the Beltway.  That allowed the development of the parallel toll road and made the area attractive for businesses with lots of air traffic. Another omission was the development of the military-industrial complex.  And finally, he missed the development of the government-contractor complex.  Both complexes meant big outfits developed which needed easy access to both federal offices mostly in DC and to the nation.  So jobs developed along the Dulles corridor.

Freudian Slips in Pledge to America

Brad DeLong quoting another site on the people pictured in the Republican Pledge to America. (The title of the post says it all.)

Urban Farming, Its Ironies

I don't know the history of the garden, but in Ben Affleck's The Town some key scenes take place in the Charlestown community garden (can't find a link to the garden on line, but Google gives some possibilities and the picture link shows it's rather lush.  Cynic that I am I'll be interested in the director's commentary on the garden.

The food movement loves to embrace urban farming.  That's fine, if there's a vacant lot, if you don't have park money the best use you can make of it is to open a community garden.  It's good for the community and good for the environment.

However, and you knew there was a however coming, the environmental benefits of the urban setting come from density.  New York City is one of the best places to live to have the smallest impact on the environment, simply because it's efficient to live and work in dense places.  (Recently there's been challenges to the benefits of telework because it might be more efficient to heat and light offices for 1,000 people than 1,000 homes each with its own officeworker working from home, even considering the costs of commuting.)

The market tells us it's not efficient to have permanent farms in the heart of the city.  I'm enough of a conservative to believe it.

The Limits of Planning: Reston and Jobs

"Q: What is the biggest change you have seen in Reston during your time here?
A: Without question it would be the number of jobs.  In the beginning Reston was slated for one job per household, which would mean 22,000 jobs.  Now there are close to three jobs per household."

From an interview with a guy who's been in Reston longer than I.  Robert Simon wanted Reston to be a place where you worked and lived, but you can see it's not the way it's developed. With the coming of Metro to Wiehle Avenue I suspect the jobs/household ratio will shift further.

Ezra Klein Is Right: No Government Waste

"There's no such thing as government waste." from a good post by Ezra Klein

The point is, of course, that while probably 70 percent of Americans think farm program payments are an example of waste, the nation through its elected representatives and senators has determined otherwise.  And that's just an example.  Personally I think there's lots of "waste" in DOD, but the nation doesn't agree with my wisdom.

Kudos for Sibelius

The NYTimes today had a chart grading the first 6 months of the PPACA healthcare reform.  Regardless of one's opinion of the act, it's worth noting and appreciating the fact that HHS has done a good job the first six months in getting regulations written and other practical steps needed to implement.  We all can agree if the act is poorly implemented it will be a bad thing.  Some of us think it will be a good thing if well implemented.

One item where the authors give poor marks is the effectiveness of state governments, though that seems to reflect the opposition of Republican governors to the act.  (Which leads me back to the theme of the weakness of the federal government.)

History and Food, a Dissenting View

John Phipps recommends this article by a historian who challenges some foodie myths; I concur. It's good, although she paints with too broad a brush.  It's true that the rural residents in past realms didn't eat well, just look at the diet of black Americans in the ante-bellum South.  "High on the hog" implies a "low on the hog". But it's true some areas in some times ate well.  Colonial Pennsylvanians were significantly taller on average than the British troops who opposed them in the Revolution.  That's nit-picking, though.  The article is worth reading by anyone interested in food.

What Costs the Most, Labor to Make a Car or Wheat to Make Bread

According to this: "First, labor only accounts for only about 7 percent of the cost of a car." Interview with Steven Rattner quoted at Ezra Klein.

That surprising fact reminds me of a similar observation:: "A $2.59 loaf of white bread contains 14 cents worth of wheat."  That won't prevent bakers from raising prices based on higher wheat prices.

I Tip Well, Because I Had Food Service Experience

As such, I fit the result of a study described here.

What are the proverbs about walking a mile in the other person's shoes?  Not that I ever got tips, but serving food in a college dormitory is an educational experience.

This Must Be Wrong, Though Tyler Cowan Cites It

Marginal revolution refers to this paper (it's not free, so I'm not getting it):

This paper investigates the institutional causes of China’s Great Famine. It presents two empirical findings: 1) in 1959, when the famine began, food production was almost three times more than population subsistence needs; and 2) regions with higher per capita food production that year suffered higher famine mortality rates, a surprising reversal of a typically negative correlation. A simple model based on historical institutional details shows that these patterns are consistent with the policy outcomes in a centrally planned economy in which the government is unable to easily collect and respond to new information in the presence of an aggregate shock to production.

I can't believe the first sentence: a country of some 500-600 million people had food sufficient for 1.5 billion? No way, no how. [Update: according to Wikipedia, food production in 59-60 was 70 percent of pre-famine levels.]