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May 8, 2015
Two new and excellent short e-Books
Jonathan Rauch, Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy. The tag “self-recommending” was made for books like this one. According to Rauch, transparency is overrated and politics should be more transactional.
Jeffrey Towson and Jonathan Woetzel, The One Hour China Consumer Book: Five Short Stories That Explain the Brutal Fight for One Billion Customers. The short tale of why the most successful beer companies are the state-owned enterprises is alone worth the price of this book.
And I just downloaded Hugo Dixon’s The In/Out Question, which argues the UK should try to stay in the European Union…
May 7, 2015
There is still a great stagnation
Sam Fleming reports from the FT:
The economist Andrew Smithers singles out a longer-term decline in investment as a share of GDP as a critical drag, as well as a slowdown in education improvements in recent decades. A report by the Aspen Institute and MAPI Foundation on Wednesday warned of a “significant lag in capital investment” in the US and argued this was a major contributor to low productivity growth. Whereas real GDP was in 2014 some 8.7 per cent above its level at the end of 2007, gross private domestic investment was up just 3.9 per cent in the same period, it said.
Productivity in the US rose just 0.6 per cent from a year earlier, according to the figures on Wednesday. San Francisco researchers John Fernald and Bing Wang warned in a note in February that their “best guess” is the relatively slow pace will continue. The implications from such sluggish productivity data are numerous.
The full story is here, interesting throughout. And here is a related post from Michael Mandel. Of course you should not infer much from quarterly productivity numbers, but that last quarter did not help, as employment went up a good deal and output did not.
For the pointer I thank Jim Olds.
What would a Tory victory mean?
The exit polls are predicting a solid Conservative victory, as is most of my Twitter feed and most importantly the bookies. If indeed this comes to pass, it has (at least) two pretty simple implications:
1. A people “wise enough” to opt for government-owned hospitals and single-payer health care have decided they want government smaller, not bigger. You will note “UK public spending was 36.6% of gdp in 2000, and had edged up over 50% by 2009 and 2010 and now [2013] is still in the range of 49% or so.” The Tories are indeed the party for smaller government.
2. The verdict is sufficiently positive on the “austerity experiment” (not what I prefer to call it, but that is a different story). I know this is literally unfathomable to the authors of the 7,243 blog posts I have read criticizing or perhaps even savagely attacking UK austerity, but here’s the nub of the matter: If indeed the UK should have a smaller government relative to gdp, in the medium term it will make up all of the relevant lost ground, and then some. A lot of UK voters understand that, a lot of American and British intellectuals do not, even though the latter are the ones who have studied the Solow model. I do not a priori dismiss the “labor market scarring story,” but if there is any country where it does not seem to apply it is the UK, which has had quite a rapid labor market bounce back.
Anyway, electoral events may yet surprise us, but at the very least the Tories are still in the running. Scott Sumner comments as well. By the way, if SNP really did take 58 out of 59 Scottish seats, it does seem to me that Great Britain will split up, much to my chagrin. So I am not overall cheered by the exit poll.
Whale fact of the day
Scientists at UBC have discovered — by accident — a rorqual whale can take a gulp of water that’s bigger than its massive body, then bounce back to its normal shape.
The whale has nerves to its mouth and tongue that can stretch to double their normal length, then snap back without damage, said Wayne Vogl, a professor in the department of cellular and physiological sciences at UBC.
“The nerves that supply these remarkably expandable tissues in the floor of the mouth of rorqual whales … are very stretchy, they’re like bungee cords,”
It was a surprising discovery, as most vertebrate nerves are more of a fixed length, said Vogl.
There is more here.
The roots of racial segregation in Baltimore
The residential segregation bill won the City Council’s approval of December 9, 1910…
Blacks simply were not allowed to live in white neighborhoods, and when it comes to mixed blocks, it was hardly the rule of law which reigned. Blacks who moved into mixed blocks were penalized when white politicians wanted to do so. The entire regime was extreme:
Baltimore’s innovation was the use of government legislation to achieve systematic, citywide race separation. “Nothing like it can be found in any statute book or ordinance record of this country,” the New York Times wrote. “It is unique in legislation, Federal, State, or municipal — an ordinance so far-reaching in the logical sequence that must result from its enforcement that it may be said to mark a new era in social legislation.” Baltimore thus became a national leader in residential segregation.
That is from Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City, by Antero Pietila. Anyone interested in the roots of current problems in Baltimore should read this book
May 6, 2015
Spain was a weak state, and that still matters
Robin Grier (with Jerry F. Hough) puts it thus:
The great weakness of the Spanish government was not its bureaucratic nature, but its inability to build an effective bureaucracy until the 1700s. Without an effective bureaucracy, Spain was doomed to a personalistic policy process in which options and tradeoffs often were not properly weighed. Rulers could not trust the market because they were incapable of taxing decentralized economic activity.
One example of the lack of bureaucratic capability during the 1500s and 1600s is found in the example of Philip’s attempt to conquer England with the Spanish Armada. Until the 1580s Philip’s “defense department” had only one secretary assisted by a handful of clerks, none with military experience.
As he prepared to launch the Spanish Armada to try to conquer England, he doubled the number of responsible defense officials to two – one for the army and one for navy!
The ships were largely rented from Genoa. Although many of them were sunk in the failed attack, Philip did not try to build a merchant fleet of his own to match Elizabeth’s rapid expansion of her armed merchant fleet at the same time.
That is from her new and excellent The Long Process of Development: Building Markets and States in Pre-industrial England, Spain and their Colonies, recommended. This is essential reading for the history of colonial Mexico in particular.
Books I liked but do not currently have time to write about
Ian Zack, Say No To The Devil: The Life and Musical Genius of Rev. Gary Davis.
Alexander Klose, The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think.
Kevin Madigan, Medieval Christianity: A New History.
Marshall Sahlins, Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa.
Today, I am away, and sadly don’t even have time to be chatting with Miles Kimball, who is visiting GMU…
May 5, 2015
Which students repay their student loans?
Fans of Game of Thrones know that “a Lannister always pays his debts.” So too do nearly all alumni from Notre Dame, Vassar, Harvey Mudd, and Brigham Young, at least when it comes to federal student loans.
There is more here, from Brookings, via Matthew C. Klein. Ahem…and for whatever reason, students from St. Johns do well too…
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