What to Do about Tragedies

Specifically, what can we do to reduce tragedies related to gun violence in public areas?  In wake of the Newton, CT extraordinarily tragic massacre.  The data is not comforting that anything can be done.  We can do symbolic things, but short of getting rid of all guns in America (an estimated 300 million of them), probably not much.

Our Ability to Rationalize

"...The smarter you are, the easier it is to fool yourself"

American Health Care versus European Health Care

Do we really have "Cowboy" health care?  Not so much.  Singapore & Switzerland is how, if we want to, should get to universal health care.

Market Monetarism

Or at least a concept within it.  Has monetary policy been too tight or too loose?  Not sure I fully understand all the concepts, but it at least sounds plausible.

Title IX

How much is it responsible for the increase of women in sports in colleges?  And how much of it is an accident in time?  That women were, of their own choice, becoming more interested in sports, as opposed to a law being the reason they chose to become athletes.

Jonathan Chait and Republicans

One of the latest examples of Jonathan Chait going to massive extremes to figure out the "insanity" of the right.  That and why (even though John Roberts didn't agree) the idea that there was something unique about the individual mandate could be true.

Speaking about Jon Chait and John Roberts.  I think I read some where else that he thinks that John Roberts made his decision in the way he did (by avoiding the Commerce Clause and instead using the tax powers) so as to destroy the law (ACA).  And that GW Bush signed in to law Medicare Part D to destroy Medicare.  I suppose assuming deviousness on the part of your political enemies is something....

Climate Change and your priors

It turns out that if you are a self-described liberal, your certainty about anthropogenic global warming increases as you become more scientifically literate.  However, if you are a self-described conservative as you become more scientifically literate you become more certain that whatever global warming is occurring is not due to human causes.

Now, the author of the linked blog post says this might be because values drive how interpret empirical things.

I've seen it elsewhere said else where that what the study mentioned in the link shows is that conservatives are close-minded.  It's almost like the people elsewhere are trying to prove the study true....

Is Medicare (or single payer) more efficient?

It's not clear, if you include ALL the costs.  And even though I cannot find the link right now, NEJM seems to have found that once you adjust for the increased costs of Medicare Advantage (which runs on competitive pricing and premium support) it costs less then "base" Medicare.

Regulation

Reagan did a decent job of reigning it, and discretionary non-defense spending too.  At least by one or two (adjusted federal register pages) measures.  Though not all measures.  The second link is also from 2003 or 2004, so it doesn't quite tell you the full Bush the Junior story (never mind Obam).

A tale of two concepts

You know how we hear over and over again that the individual mandate for health care is a "conservative" concept.  Guess what?  Paul Ryan's premium support model for repairing Medicare is just as much a "liberal" concept.  Just to add another link....

A change in structure, not a change in existence

Clumsy title, I know.  The key point is that the most recent version of Paul Ryan's Medicare reform doesn't kill Medicare, it reforms it.  And the reform is using competition not a panel of experts to try keep costs down.

It is also true that the maximum growth for Medicare, whether we're talking Obama's plan of IPAB keeping the costs down (through cutting things Medicare will pay for, or changing the reimbursement rate) or Ryan's plan of using competitive bidding (for Medicare Pt. A), of GDP growth + 0.5%.

Whether either of them could actually keep the growth that low, given political pressure, who knows.

How the "surplus" became a deficit

Surprise, it doesn't look like it was Bush's tax cuts.  Some of it was, of course, because of them, but not all of it.  Or better about 25% of it seems to be because of them.  And that assumes that he can be "blamed" for Obama and a Democratic controlled Congress renewing the tax cuts

Power Hungry much?

Who knew (ok, most people did) how power hungry LBJ was? The beginning gives context, for example,

In the view of the Joint Chiefs, the United States was piling on forces in Vietnam without understanding the consequences. In the view of McNamara and his civilian team, we were doing the right thing.

but for LBJ's thoughts start with about half way down, with "Normally, time...." (search for that phrase) and just read on. The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted for the war with Vietnam.

He [General Wheeler] proposed that we isolate the major port of Haiphong through naval mining, blockade the rest of the North Vietnamese coastline, and simultaneously start bombing Hanoi with B-52's.

Not quite what we ended up with. McNamara and LBJ wanted something else (a land war in Asia; brilliant!) so LBJ reacted thusly

He screamed obscenities, he cursed them personally, he ridiculed them for coming to his office with their "military advice." Noting that it was he who was carrying the weight of the free world on his shoulders

Just keep in mind that "military advice" can save lives.

Management advice

From Star Wars. Specifically, from the Galactic Empire, how NOT to manage a company/Empire.

Redistribution

Of wealth, income, or spending? From the "1%".ec

Drug shortages and Government involvement in Health Care

Connected? Yeah, probably.

Medicare's low overhead

Why you'll hear about the low overhead of Medicare versus private insurance. It ignores the costs of collecting taxes, fraud, or that the overhead per person is actually higher, the fact that seniors on Medicare spend twice as much as seniors on private insurance.

Men and Women

An essay on where the genders stand relative to each other, and just how far (in education anyways) men are falling behind women. Reading the responses can help understand what people disagree with the general point about.

We're about to find out what a world, or at least a country, would look like run by woman. At least in about 10 or 20 years.

Texas employment

And unemployment numbers. How can a state have a relatively high unemployment % and still a "good" state when it comes to employment. Think people moving to the state and jobs being created, but not fast enough for people moving in.

Computers and humans

And how they interact. And interesting interview, or at the very least quotes in the post attached.

The Costs of Obamacare

And Pelosi/Reid-care to be fair. We still don't know what it's likely to cost. But, ultimately because more people will have health insurance coverage, the fact (or likely fact) that it will cost more then promised will be swept under the rug.

What we do and don't know

General Anaesthesia is used all the time, and don't have a good idea how it works. That it works, ok fine.

Fabio Cannavaro's 2006 World Cup

The anticipation is stunning.

The immigration debate in 1980

Between Reagan and Bush the Elder. A little different then today, yes. Also, it was before the 1986 amnesty, so who knows if they would feel the same.

Another reason to end the war on drugs

Because it even corrupts our attempts at fighting terrorism. Or at least piggy-backs on the War on Terrorism.

Special Ed Spending

Something, that at least prima facie, seems like a good idea by the Obama Administration. Mazel Tov.

Who the Government spends money on

Surprisingly, (or not) it's old, not young people. 2.5 to 1. Guess who votes, and has voted (damn, gave it away!)?

Reproducing results in Science

Can sometimes be really, really difficult. Certainly for new cutting-edge research.

Patents for Abstract Ideas

Should they exist? Here's hoping the Supreme Court agrees they shouldn't.

Politics, as usual

Trying to change, admittedly only by tradition not rule, the way the Senate votes, by Democrats. Sure to anger Democrats when it's used on them.

Interesting note on math and music

Better music soon? Hopefully.

A sign of a mature or old culture?

When the bureaucrats make more then the the innovators? It could also be a sign of a reduction in importance of money too, but I'm betting against that.

Neo-liberalism, eventually

I mean that in a quasi-classical liberalism, from Marxism. An interesting report on the Israeli kibbutzim and their capitalism. Also, the importance of the incentives of tax rates.

Hypocrisy

Shocking, I know. Obama really does like lobbyists.

Deficit reduction

Neither side actually believes in it. Duh.

Cell phone bans

While driving, do they matter? Not obviously.

The Decline of Violence over time

Comments on Steven Pinker's new book on the decline of violence. True, but with some caveats. Important sometimes, insigificant sometimes. Mostly, it comes down to interpretation of the data, more then the data, though there is that as well.

A video about soccer coverage

Specifically, in America, and how much detail that is provided in American broadcasts across sports. Why is American soccer broadcast TV so vague, while football, basketball, and baseball broadcasts are so detailed? And would it make a difference in interest in the sport?

Religion

Defended by an atheist. At least about what is keeping technology back today in America.

Class size and Education

It looks like it doesn't help as much as we're told. But, the things that do "frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations" would make teaching more difficult. And we wouldn't be spending all the time on non-teaching stuff. Ah well.

UPDATE: A nice hour long podcast on teaching matter. I think I have already linked to this.

Contraception

Forcing Catholic employers to pay for contraception for employees either directly (original plan) or indirectly ("compromise" plan) is pure politics. Between this decision and XL pipeline, Obama is on full bore campaign mode. It is one thing that he does really, really well, so I don't blame him.

Of course, this becomes a "turtles all the way down" question. Lefties can say that no, secular institutions (hospitals for example) run by religious institutions should not be exempt from national policy. Righties say, but they help the poor (which they do)! Lefties say they get money, so yes it doesn't matter they help the poor. Righties threaten that the institutions could close their doors or only stay open for their own "kind" (in this case Catholics) and that without the money that the secular institutions (or probably Jewish in the Northeast) get from the government they can't compete. I wonder, I don't know the answer, how many secular hospitals, etc. there are. Ok a quick look seems to imply about 85% of hospitals in America are not part of a religious network. So, maybe it wouldn't be horrible if the religious hospitals went out of business. Although, like schools would we have more or better hospitals, if government hadn't taken such a large percent of hospitals? Who knows.

They really should have never accepted government money in the first place, I guess. But, I doubt they really could have avoided government involvement, either through regulation or money competition.

More NGDP information

I feel like doing some sort of NGDP targeting is one of those things that you might be able to get intellectuals on both sides of the aisle could get behind, but the populists of the two parties' likely wouldn't let it happen. On the left, fiscal stimulus is much more popular, as the spending done to improve things would be out in the open and done by government officials, not private companies. On the right, trusting government to be able to "target" something and hit that target, in this case inflation, sounds implausible.

And more.

Ideas on Infrastructure spending

Presidents since at least Thomas Jefferson (Louisiana Purchase any one?) have been spending money on infrastructure. And Jefferson apparently slashed the federal government's spending by 50% from John Adam's last year as president (I guess back then there actually was a difference between the two parties on spending). Never mind both parties use nowadays transportation bills (to be fair they do it with all bills) for earmarks. Thinking deeper about transportation would require spending smarter then our federal government class is really capable of, I fear. Either that or unitary party government. But, the last time we had that under Democrats we got Obamacare and under Republicans the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan. Neither of which were well planned out.

NGDP targeting

FAQs about the concept. And from my perspective answering some of the concerns about government being able to, or not, "control" inflation.

Wealth versus Race

What causes variability on test scores in 13 year-olds? It looks like, at least since about the mid 80s it has been wealth. Now why it has worked out that way will probably depend on your moral intuitions (e.g. something about the education system and how to fix it).

Slip slidin' away

That would be the US on the Heritage Foundation's measure of economic freedom. Yes, the Heritage Foundation has Canada ahead of the US in terms of economic freedom. And Denmark is just a bit behind of us. And just to make sure it's not a partisan thing, we started dipping around 2000. Heck, we're behind a South American and African country. AND they include size of government, which most center/center left wouldn't include. Woohoo!

More reasons to be happy.

The IP wars

Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, IBM, Google, and Facebook all do it. I don't mean innovate, though they do that, I mean sue each other for some piece of code they wrote once, and recieved patents for. It could be a big problem going forward for the things that these companies are know for, namely innovation. Mostly, I blame the stupidity of our patent system. We really should try to prioritize and rationalize the system.

Climate Change and WHY you believe what you do

Or Confirmation Bias, writ large. Of course the typical person who claims to believe in (or not believe in) global warming doesn't actually understand the science. It comes down, for the typical person, to what is important to you.

I wouldn't go as far as HATE....

But, why I don't like Barcelona, in an Op-ed. I also think that their games with Madrid have calmed down a lot, so Barca doesn't dive as much (because they don't need to).