US and India on Food

Ajay Shah's blog has a post discussing a new CPI (consumer price index) for India.  What's interesting is the weighting

Sub Group		New CPI
	Rural	Urban	All India	CPI IW
Food, beverages and tobacco	59.31	37.15	49.71	50.20
Fuel and Light	10.42	8.40	9.49	6.25
Clothing, bedding and footwear	5.36	3.91	4.73	13.28
Housing	0.00	22.53	9.77	5.33
Miscellaneous	24.91	28.00	26.31	24.94

Don't know what the weights are for the U.S. but wikipedia gives this: They are weighted this way: Housing: 41.4%, Food and Beverage: 17.4%, Transport: 17.0%, Medical Care: 6.9%, Other: 6.9%, Apparel: 6.0%, Entertainment: 4.4%

The Trump Game: "I Am So Proud of Myself Because..."

All you need to do to play the game is to complete the sentence made notorious by the Donald:

"I am so proud of myself because...."


Extra credit if you complete "I am so proud of myself because I've accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish...."

Why Do Things Go to Hell in High School

I've been distracted by a plumbing crisis, but I saw a favorable piece on Jeb Bush mention that Florida scores under him did great, except they fell off when tested in high school. Matt Yglesias has a piece on Milwaukee, comparing scores of different systems, but they all fall down in high school.  I suspect it's a tribute to one three-letter word: sex.

Bureaucrats and Experts

What's the difference between a bureaucrat and an expert?  Here's a NYTimes science essay in which a doctor compares his relationship with plumbers over a puzzling problem with his dishwasher to the relationship between patients who have their own theories of their illnesses and a doctor.  He ends:

When matters of personal health (or home appliances) are at stake, we want a lot more than expertise from our experts. The rational world suddenly loses its appeal; dull, steady scientific observation seems only dull and steady. We want some pixie dust, a little magic, an eccentric genius who can see through the usual mumbo-jumbo to the core of the problem (paging Dr. House).
But until our prince comes, we are left with the most basic, bare-bones determination: do we trust this guy or not? And this decision, rather than following along a perfectly manicured line of reasoning and evidence, relies on that least scientific of all human inclinations — the simple leap of faith.

 So what distinguishes a bureaucrat dealing with the public from a plumber dealing with a homeowner or a doctor dealing with a patient? I suspect in some cases, perhaps many, an FSA technician at the desk in a county office is seen as an "expert" by the farmer she's serving, rather than being viewed as a "bureaucrat".  One thing which strikes me is: in the doctor/patient, plumber/homeowner scenarios both parties share the same goal, curing the illness or fixing the appliance.  When the relationship is viewed as bureaucrat and customer/client there's little or no assumption of a shared goal.

The Ultimate in Customization of Farm Programs

The Rural Blog has a piece reporting a suggestion southern farmers will push for an individual option: the ability to choose between direct payments and the ACRE program.  I guess it's not the first time farmers have had a choice: the SURE program was also an option.  I understand the logic: northern farmers like crop insurance, southerners don't, so you make both sides happy by giving them a choice.  It's logical, but it's confusing to explain and hard to administer.  I hope someone is asking GAO to look at the tradeoffs of offering options.

Form and Reality: Binding Signatures and Notaries Public

Our legal system tends to operate on notarized signatures: you take a document to a notary public, present proof of identity, sign the document and the notary impresses her seal.  But these days it seems one could document a signing by technology:  use a video camera to record the proof of identity and the person signing. Of course, it's likely it will take a century or two to change the rules to use the new technology.

The Military Bureaucracy

The Project on Government Oversight cites a Sen. McCaskill oversight hearing with reference to "brass creep", then includes some stuff on the Air Force's bureaucracy:

• “In the last seven years alone, the service has shed nearly 43,000 airmen while adding 44 generals.”

I'm not sure USDA would do much better.

The Importance of Statistics

Via Marginal Revolution, a post which explains why the housing bubble never showed up in the cost of living index.

And Yglesias wonders whether finance really adds to the GDP.

 The bottom line to me: there's the set of activities which are paid for; the set of activities which are reflected in various indices, the set of activities which provide real value to people.  The three sets overlap, but don't coincide.

Food Movement Meets the Tea Party

Partly due to the rise of the tea party, there have been a number of laws passed and more bills proposed which have the effect of exempting a state from some sort of federal regulation, whether or immigration, health care, or whatever.  Now the food movement has gotten into the action, passing local ordinances exempting locally grown food from state and federal regulation, as in this  Maine case 

On the anniversary of the start of the Civil War, it's a good reminder that Americans have a deep rooted impulse to secede from government, whether the subject is slavery or food.

Surprising Sentence: Cell Phones

"Today, almost three-quarters of the world's people carry a wireless phone"  from a Wall Street Journal piece via Ann Althouse. 

The focus of the piece is on the ability of social scientists to study data associated with cell phones and smart phones, etc. and draw conclusions on politics, mental health, physical health, and lots of other stuff.. As one says: "a gods-eye view".