Sentence of Dec 13

"Fortunately for America, Alabama has a legendary good-government political culture that’s allowed it to climb to the top of so many social indicator league table"

From Matt Yglesias, commenting on the rise of Alabama politicians to power over finance.

NYTimes Mag and Zuckerberg

Virginia Heffernan writes about "The Social Network" and Mr. Zuckerberg in today's NY Times Magazine. A paragraph:

The real Mark Zuckerberg has taken measured issue with the way “The Social Network” portrays him. He has disputed, especially, the filmmakers’ suggestion that he built the site as a means to worldly ends. “They frame it as if the whole reason I invented Facebook was that I wanted to get girls or to get into some kind of social institution,” he told an audience at Stanford University in October. “They just can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.”

 I note the alternative motives here: sex or curiosity, not money.  The book, "The Facebook Effect", which I just finished, is consistent with the movie in this respect.  Zuckerberg is depicted almost as an artist with a pure vision of what Facebook could be, a vision which excludes lots of ads and commercialization and includes declining multiple opportunities to cash in for the big bucks.

So what's the role of money as an incentive?  I'd suggest it plays a role in some choices, like an initial choice of occupation.  I'm sure some people choose to work on Wall Street instead of Teach for America because of money. And many people who go into medicine may choose a specialty partially because of money. But I don't think money is that important in the big scheme of things.  So why worry about the impact of taxes on incentives for work? The best answer is because taxes can be changed but you can't change sex or curiosity.

White House Garden for Winger

Obamafoodorama has a post on the White House installing hoop houses for winter.  One of our fellow gardeners has something similar, though she's had problems with it withstanding wind.  Snow may be the big challenge, based on last year's experience.

How Far We've Progressed

A conjunction of two articles in today's NYTimes: one describing Nixon's views of Jews, and different ethnicities, the other describing a video used to raise money for the American Jewish World Service:

The film they commissioned, by the director Judd Apatow and the writer Jordan Rubin, is different from the standard nonprofit propaganda, different enough to have been watched nearly a million times since it made its debut a month and a half ago.
Mr. Apatow’s short film features a medley of Hollywood stars, Jew and gentile, making light of Jewish stereotypes, suggesting that donors “send a self-addressed stamped matzoh,” and generally having more fun at a religious group’s expense than their grandparents might think proper.

Regulating Eggs

Post has an article on the complexities of regulating eggs for salmonella.  Two bits illustrate the complexities:

[In the 1980's]For egg farmers, however, the problem was not so easily dismissed. Faced with bad publicity and multimillion-dollar liability claims, they voluntarily began testing for the bacteria, disinfecting henhouses, refrigerating eggs, removing manure and controlling rodents. But those farmers soon came to think that they were at an economic disadvantage against competitors who weren't spending money on prevention....

The fact that the egg industry was on board [with draft regulations] didn't sway Dudley [GWB's person for regulations in OMB]. "One needs to be skeptical when an industry seeks regulation, because it often confers competitive advantage. It could be over other companies or over international firms," she said. "And it often raises costs and it's consumers who get hurt."

 Basic fairness says everyone in a market should be competing on an equal basis.  The government should set the rules and let the competitors fight it out. Of course, that raises the issue of  who is in the market?  Should someone with a thousand hens be considered a competitor the same as someone with a million hens? How about the person with 20 hens who supplies neighbors?  I think that's basically what Dudley gets at when she speaks of "an industry". She's really talking about the big boys in an area who have the bucks to come to DC and hire lobbyists, etc. The economics of regulation sometimes, not always, create additional costs; costs which if you're big can be spread over many units of production but if you're small can be make or break.  (I'm thinking of shifting from milk cans to a bulk tank, which was a hot issue for dairies when I was 20 or so.)

So the tradeoff can be: draw the line in one place and you allow free-riders; draw the line in another place and you encourage concentration and kill the small producers.

Meat Consumption in the US

Freakonomics provides a graph showing the US consumption of beef, chicken, pork, and turkey since 1909.  They highlight the drop in beef and rise in chicken, suggesting that chicken is faster to prepare and the rise relates to the rise in female employment (as well as the health concerns of red meat versus white).

What I see is a steep rise in beef consumption from about 1953 to 1976 or so.  I guess that was a reflection of American prosperity, where eating steak was a sign one had arrived.  (Except for cube steak, which was sort of our staple steak when I was growing up.  Not sure you see much cube steak these days.)   I'm curious, though; the rise in female employment surely started earlier than 1975.

And So Much for the Minimum Wage

Apparently the recession and consequent loss of immigrants has enabled builders to cut the wages of their laborers down to the minimum wage. I wonder how aware of the minimum wage immigrants of any stripe are? And this seems to be an instance where wages are not "sticky", as the economists say.  Contrast the fate of civil service employees, or financial sector employees, whose wages haven't decreased at all in this recession.

On the Intrinsic Superiority of Market-Driven Organizations

See this post at Propublica, for a study comparing the death rates at dialysis clinics: profit versus nonprofits.

Anyone knowing my biases knows which group does better.

Pigford II Is Signed, And Breitbart Digs Away

I've been slow recently in following the Pigford II story.  Briefly, yesterday Obama signed the legislation.  It passed the House despite some speeches against it by Michelle Bachmann and Steve King. And it seems that Mr. Breitbart is promising revelations, including allegations that more than 50 percent of Pigford claims are fraudulent.

I'd comment today simply that any discussion needs to distinguish between Pigford I and Pigford II claims, A and B claims, claims which were filed and claims which were approved.

Earmarks and Congressional Clout

Steve Benen posted a discussion of earmarks, on which I commented.  David Farenthold had an article in the Post on the lame duck House members, who have now moved out of their fancy offices into temporary offices in the basement until the House adjourns.  I see these two paragraphs as relating to earmarks:

The departing members also remembered, fondly, their power to intercede for constituents. As lowly as a freshman is on Capitol Hill, he is a giant to a bureaucrat.
"I was surprised by the extent of power that I had," said Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao (R-La.). Cao recalled his ability to make Federal Emergency Management Agency officials help his constituents still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. "I can go into a federal agency, and people would jump."

The point being, even if earmarks are banned, a bureaucrat is still going to jump when a member of Congress contacts her. So my fear is we'll replace earmarks which are in writing and fairly transparent with less transparent meetings and letters, all of which arrive at understandings, a wink and a nod as it were. Things might be helped if Congress agreed to post all correspondence with the bureaucracy and list all meetings on their web sites.