Trader Joe's Parking Lots

Via Marginal Revolution, a short piece on the economic logic of Trader Joe's tiny parking lots.  (We shop there occasionally.)   Bottom line: almost no one refuses to shop at Trader Joe's because they spend a little time finding a spot, or walking to the store from the adjacent street.

Court Gamesmanship

Having just seen my prediction for the Presidential elections go up in flames with Rubio's withdrawal, I forge ahead with commenting on the Supreme Court.

I seems to me that Obama has this strategy:
  

• taking the Senate Republicans at their word--they won't vote to confirm any appointee now.
• Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee and she's likely to beat Trump.
• if she beats Trump, there's some chance a nominee who's not a liberal icon and who's a little older will seem more palatable to the Republican Senate after election day.  That's particularly true if the new Senate has a Democratic majority.   

Paul Meringoff at  Powerline, a conservative with whom I almost always disagree, seems to support my theory, writing this morning: " Things might look different in September, if Hillary Clinton is 25 points ahead of Donald Trump in the polls and the Republicans are headed towards losing the Senate. In that event, Garland might look a lot better."

We Used to Call It Block-Busting: Same Tactics, Different Group

Back in the 1960's we used to call it "block-busting": real estate agents using the fear of blacks to get homeowners to sell out.  In our enlightened modern times, it's similar tactics, but now it's Orthodox Jews in the Toms River, New Jersey area.  See this Bloomberg  piece, hat tip Marginal Revolution.

The key difference is, of course, the aims of the group: blacks in the 60's wanted the American dream-- better homes and better schools and saw integration as a way of getting it; Orthodox in the 10's want the American dream--independence of outside control and see segregation as a way of getting it.

Unbelievable Fact in the Times

The NYTimes has a piece on who supports Trump, including this table:
"correlations are shown in red.

Variable	Correlation
White, no high school diploma	0.61
“Americans” Percent reporting ancestry as “American” on the census	0.57
Mobile homes Percent living in a mobile home	0.54
“Old economy” jobs Includes agriculture, construction, manufacturing, trade	0.50
History of voting for segregationists Support for George Wallace (1968)	0.47
Labor participation rate	–0.43
Born in United States	0.43
Evangelical Christians	0.42
History of voting for liberal Republicans Support for John B. Anderson (1980)	–0.42
White Anglo-Saxon Protestants Whites with European non-Catholic ancestry	–0.42"

If it's in the Times, it must be right, but I absolutely cannot believe the negative correlation between WASPS and Trump support, and I'm writing as a WASP myself. I suppose it's possible because I no longer understand statistics, but I still think it unlikely.

The Difference a Quarter Century Makes

I remember a group of us (middle managers from SCS, ASCS, and maybe other agencies) having an after-dinner conversation in roughly 1995.  I expressed some desire for better feedback on directives (I think), and Paul A. said it could be done with the Internet/World Wide Web (I'm not real sure of the dates or the innovation at issue but this is what makes most sense in retrospect.  I had some familiarity with the Internet, having been a Compuserve subscriber for several years and had heard about the web.

Anyhow, today I find these stats at the World Bank:

"Today, 95% of the global population have access to a digital signal, but 5% do not; 73% have mobile phones, but 27% do not; slightly less than half of all people (46%) have internet, but the majority do not; and only 19% of the world’s population has broadband. There also are persistent digital divides across gender, geography, age, and income dimensions within each country."

Congratualtions to FSA and RMA--Expansion of ACRSI

FSA issued its notice on the expansion of ACRSI to all counties.  This means producers can file acreage reports with their insurance provider or FSA.  It's a limited set of crops, though because the major field crops are covered it will handle most crop acreage, It's a goal it's taken 25 years to achieve. ( Since they've done pilot testing, I assume the new expansion will be successful so it's not premature to credit its success.)

I do have some comments, of course:

• I wonder about the experience in the pilots--were most reports filed with FSA or with the company--is there a structural bias to the system?  
• Did the pilot include surveys of producers using it?
• Will the savings of a more efficient system, besides benefiting producers, mean a reduction in funding for FSA operations or government support for insurance company administration?  
• How is the spot-checking of acreage reports affected?  If errors/fraud is discovered, what's the reporting process?

I'm sure there are answers to the questions and other questions I'm missing.  But the bottom line is I congratulate the FSA bureaucrats (and the RMA types) for the achievement.

Swedish Women: Smart and Sexy

Unleashing my male chauvinism--remember I grew up in the days of Ursula Andress 
(who is actually Swiss, but what's the difference, they both begin "Sw...."), I comment on a Tyler Cowen factoid--69 percent of Swedish college graduates are women.

Build a Wall?

GovExec has a piece on the nuts and bolts of building Trump's wall on the Mexican border.  Bottomline, Congress would have to pass an act authorizing the build, and overriding several laws which would stop the project, and provide for funding (can't rely on contractors buying the idea of Mexican funding--at the very least the government would have to guarantee payment).

The author outlines a number of reasons why professionals (engineers, architects, etc.) might shy away from such a project.

I recommend it, though I'm more cynical than the author: if the money is there, some professionals will work on the project.


However, floating around in my memory is the idea that a number of years ago, probably in the Bush administration but perhaps in the Clinton, we were going to fortify the border with high-tech tools, a project which may have failed.  Was Boeing involved as a contractor?

G Street Fabrics

This is old news, but G Street Fabrics filed for bankruptcy last summer and closed two of their three stores.  When I came to DC it had one store located of course on G street. They moved to the suburbs long ago.  I guess home sewing has declined--just like home cooking.  As women have moved into the paid workforce, they no longer have the time to serve as role models for daughters, much less sons.

Government Software Purchases

When I left FSA, COTS was a big thing (commercial off the shelf software).    I assume it's still a big thing.

GovExec has a piece on the UK experience in trying to rationalize government purchases of COTS.  (I remember in the early 1990's when they tried to standardize ASCS on Wordperfect, Paradox, and Lotus 1-2-3.  )

Why shouldn't the government save billions by standardizing on Libreoffice?