Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 451

Assorted links

1. Robotic fish to catch drug dealers.

2. Megan McArdle on the Romney tax returns.

3. Do electronic medical records raise costs?

4. Rushdoony thought Twins was the funniest movie.

5. Dani Rodrik on the recent Turkish trial.

6. Karl Hess remains influential.

*Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know*

That is the new Jason Brennan book, which has yet to arrive on my doorstep.

For the pointer I thank David Levey.

Is the Indian left preparing its cave-in on FDI?

It seems there is still some fight left in them:

…leftwingers inside and outside the Congress party, including a few of Mr Singh’s allies in the multi-party coalition, oppose economic liberalisation and in some cases regard retail reform as a capitalist plot masterminded by Walmart.

“The tragedy is that our prime minister has begun to worship the US,” said Sitaram Yechury, leader of the opposition Communist Party of India – Marxist. “Congress wants Indians to be slaves and foreigners to be our masters. We will not accept FDI [foreign direct investment] in retail. We will protest this decision till our last breath.”

On the political right, BJP leaders – backed by small shopkeepers wary of retail competitors – sense an opportunity to destabilise the government before its term expires in 2014 and are not shy in pursuing that goal through short-term alliances with the hard left.

Developing…

Are the Republicans preparing their cave-in on taxes?

“This is a referendum on taxes,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a senior member of the House Budget Committee. “If the president wins reelection, taxes are going up” for the nation’s wealthiest households, and “there’s not a lot we can do about that.”

Funny words from a party that might control Congress, or at least the House.  Read the Constitution!  Here is much more.

I’ve long maintained that Republican legislators do not hate high taxes, they only hate having to vote for high taxes.  Come this December, they may pretend to voters that they are more or less powerless, while negotiating some concessions from Obama (and other Democrats) behind the scenes.  A lot of them are probably relieved or happy that taxes can go up, and furthermore they can then complain about this the next time around.

Go ask Ramsay MacMullen

It used to seem shocking that five of the ten richest counties in the United States were part of the DC Metropolitan Statistical Area, but  the 2011 American Community Survey numbers released yesterday show that the DC suburbs now account for seven of the ten richest counties in America.

Loudon, Fairfax, and Arlington in Virginia lead the way followed by Hunterdon County, NJ then Howard County in Maryland; Somerset, NJ; Prince William and Fauquier in Virginia; Douglas, CO; and Montgomery County, MD.

Here is more.  File under “Makers vs. Takers.”  Here is .

Does work or school boost your vocabulary more?

From the new James R. Flynn book:

It appears that the world of work, which follows university, has been the main force behind the adult vocabulary gains of the last half-century…Note that in 1953, low-IQ people enhanced their vocabularies over the ages of 17 to 22 far more than low-IQ people did in 2000.  I suggest the hypothesis that they were more likely to be settled in apprenticeships or adult jobs in those days than today.  Even the high-IQ people increased their vocabularies more between the ages of 17 to 22 in 1953 than in 2000.  Apparently being placed in work was more potent than being in a tertiary institution.

Isn’t it also the case that we have been moving to a flatter, simpler English for a long time?  Try reading some James Fenimore Cooper.  Plus schools are less likely to make you memorize long, classic poems, which is another good way of building vocabulary.

Assorted links

1. There is no great stagnation (video).

2. Update on the French economy (there is a great stagnation).

3. Interesting findings on poverty, mobility, and happiness.

4. Martin Wolf on the UK productivity and output puzzles.

5. What do contemporary pianists think of Glenn Gould?

6. Gabriel Kolko on the New Deal.

Still the No Brainer Issue of the Year

In The No Brainer Issue of the Year I wrote:

Behind Door #1 are people of extraordinary ability: scientists, artists, educators, business people and athletes. Behind Door #2 stand a random assortment of people. Which door should the United States open?

Once again, as the NYTimes reports, our dysfunctional political system has opted for Door #2:

A Republican bill to provide permanent resident visas for foreigners who graduate from American universities with advanced degrees in science and technology failed to pass the House on Thursday, a setback for technology companies that had strongly supported it.

…[The bill] would have eliminated an annual lottery and instead allocated 55,000 visas for legal permanent residency, known as green cards, each year to foreigners who have completed master’s and doctoral degrees from American universities in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Some life expectancies are shrinking

For generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is now mounting evidence that this enduring trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites, an increasingly troubled group whose life expectancy has fallen by four years since 1990.

And this:

The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.

Here is more, scary throughout.  We are not as healthy as we thought we were.

Can a Google autocomplete function be libelous?

From Germany:

…for Bettina Wulff it’s a nightmare. The wife of former German President Christian Wulff wants the search engine to cease suggesting terms that she finds defamatory. This has nothing to do with the search results, but rather with the recommendations made by Google’s “Autocomplete” function, a service that is also offered by competitors like Bing and Yahoo. All one has to do is type her first name and the first letter of her last name to get search suggestions such as “Bettina Wulff prostitute,” “Bettina Wulff escort” and “Bettina Wulff red-light district.”

Don’t forget the problem of cascades here:

The Autocomplete function, the usefulness of which Google so guilelessly praises as a means of giving one’s fingers a rest, undeniably helps spread rumors. Assuming that someone unsuspectingly begins to look for information on “Bettina Wulff” and is offered “prostitute,” “Hanover” and “dress” as additional search terms — where, independent of their actual interests, will users most likely click?