We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I am sure that many readers dislike Krugman for his relentless - and often deceptive and hysterical -political partisanship in the NYT. However, he has apparently made some genuine contributions to economics.
The NJ's link to Marginal Revolution on Krugman's Nobel led me to this somewhat technical essay by Krugman on The Role of Geography in Development. Quite fascinating, whether you agree with his assumptions or not.
During the presidential debate Tuesday night, Barack Obama was asked if he thought health care was a “right.”He said he thought it was a right. Well, if you accept that premise, I think you can ask some logical follow-up questions:Food is more important than health care. You die pretty quickly without food. Do we have a “right” to food in America? What about shelter? Do we have a “right” to housing? And if we do have a right to housing, what standard of housing do we have a right to? And if it is a right, due to all Americans, wouldn’t that mean that no one should have to accept any housing, or health care, which is inferior to anyone else’s… since it’s a right? Do we have a right to be safe? Do we have a right to be comfortable? Do we have a right to wide-screen televisions? Where does this end?
Read the whole thing. This is a point we have all made many times on Maggie's Farm. American rights are the rights of freedom from the government. There are no rights "for" anything. Whenever the government provides something, it diminishes the rights and autonomy of somebody else because government produces nothing - no products and no wealth and no money and no capital. Only citizens do that. That's the problem: rights without responsibilities are are snare and a delusion.
Related to the above, it's time to repeat our earlier notion that the markets are anticipating an Obama victory, thus driving more money - and especially foreign money - from our markets. In support of that idea, Insty found this graph:
Real Yankees don't do "nice." Indeed, we tend to be suspicious of it. We like to be cranky and difficult, too, along with zenophobic and intolerant - whenever possible. And when we're told what to do, we tend to rebel.
Did you know that identical twins, whether they are separated at birth or raised together, are equally similar in personality, intelligence, interests, and habits? It's a stunning fact, I think.
I have been teaching the essentials of human nature and the related genetic foundations of human differences for years, partly because these things are true, and partly to counterbalance the "blank slate" bias in our society that says that we are all somehow equal until parents and our environment get their hands on us. This assumption lies behind the insidious mid- 20th century idea in psychology that Moms are the cause of everybody's problems. (No, I am not denying that events affect us, but only in the most extreme cases do they shape our basic architecture.)
The blank slate assumption, with its denial of human nature, has a lengthy history, but it was picked up most ardently by Marxists who wished very much to believe that social and psychological experts could shape children in such a way as to create "a new man," better suited to their vision of a utopian society (run by them, of course).
Steven Pinker's 2002 book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature was one of the first non-technical books (along with books like The Bell Curve) to address the subject. Unlike Larry Summers, Pinker was not run out of town for saying the politically incorrect things he says.
David Thompson has a fine brief discussion of this topic, and posted the short and entertaining lecture below by Harvard's Pinker in which he also touches on the topics of the arts and of parenting:
I'm pretty good at this political prognostication stuff, so I'm feeling quite confident when I make this bold prediction regarding tonight's debate:
I predict the Republicans will claim McCain won and the Democrats will claim Obama won.
Pretty daring of me, don't you think? Well, when you have the keen political insight I'm gifted with, bold predictions like this just come naturally. 'Daring' is my middle name.
For more keen, indepthful, bold-like and daring insights into the foul, fetid, stinking morass we call modern politics, please...
Now you can't say "wetbacks," or you will be in deep trouble. Then what should we call people who swim across the Rio Grande illegally? How about "swimmers"?
And can I still say "terrorist"? Or should I say "ununiformed murderer"? I refuse to give in to the Speech Nazis. In fact, I resist them, even at the risk of being impolitic or unmannerly at times.
Columbia University is lucky to have Simon Schama on board. I have been a fan since I read his rambling masterpiece Landscape and Memory, and I have attended his lectures on Rembrandt.
You can get a lot out of his rambles through history, art, culture and philosophy. The man has been prolific.
I'm fairly sure I don't agree with his politics (but that's not normally his subject), but he does have a new book out: The American Future: A History.
Although he loves his new home in America, I am going to take a pass this time. I don't need immigrants to talk to me about our future. I have Massachusetts Bay Colony and New Hampshire roots that even Simon might not understand.
I don't spend much time reading the news, but it appears there's an election coming up sometime soon. I glanced over the article and saw the word "Alaska", so I presume we're voting on whether or not to finally make it a state. Big mistake! All that barren wasteland covered with a sheet of ice? I say sell it back to the Russians!
We might finally make a profit!
The second of the three presidential debates is on tonight at 9 Eastern. Despite the rancor of their recent TV ads, I don't expect many fireworks. They'll be asked about the vitriol in their recent ads, but that's different. I think it'll be the usual fluff, or as one pundit put it:
It might be a snooze-fest, full of earnest questions and foggy bromides.
(A good example of what separates us lowly bloggers from professional pundits — we never think of cool expressions like "foggy bromides".)
I originally thought someone had said this would be all four candidates, but it's just Obama and McCain, dagnibbit. Without you-know-who's perky self, I wouldn't be surprised to hear it had an extremely low turnout, and I'd note that it's going up against some TV heavyweights, like 'Law & Order' and 'House'.
Our own Dr. Bliss and our net friend AVI are our go-to people on tribalism.
For better or worse, tribalism is in our blood. It probably was essential for human survival, and probably still is for non-human primate survival. Probably for us, too, if we value our own culture at all. I do value mine - my culture and my subculture.
Health care could be the next Fannie Mae type disaster.Similar forces are at work, and despite the lessons that should be drawn instead may be accelerated by the current financial meltdown.These forces are exaggeration of need and rights among the poor, greed by many of the rest of us, and many politicians seeking votes or contributions.
The forces in the credit crisis were the appeal to provide opportunities for home ownership to the poor and the consequent inflation of housing values that provided paper gains to the middle class and wealthy.Underlying these forces was a pyramid scheme profiting the political and financial elites that was dependent on trust in repayment of subprime loans by many without the means or stake in doing so.
Thus, ultimately the taxpayer and more careful consumers and investors are required to pay off, also making other worthy goals unaffordable.
Whenever there are crises in markets, socialists are quick to label them as failures of capitalism and free markets. While markets surely do, on occasion, fail, freeze-up, or get clogged (although they are far more effective than planned economies), in this case you need look no further than the role of government regulation and control to see the seeds of the problem:
Rep. Barney Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing. . . .
Yes, Congress asked Fannie and Freddie to roll the dice, and they did so while making a pretty penny for themselves. As Kimball put it today:
... in recent years the “invisible hand” that adjudicates among competing interests to produce the most efficient channels of economic growth has increasingly been replaced by the heavy hand of government-sponsored social engineering. One especially onerous one is in the form of the Community Reinvestment Act, which, in its fully-developed, post-1995 form, was a gigantic wrench tossed into the engine of capitalism that stymied the orderly evaluation and pricing of risk. It’s one thing to give Chris Dodd or Barack Obama a sweetheart mortgage for favors rendered. It’s quite another to force banks to issue more than $1 trillion of risky mortgages to people with bad, or no, credit history and then prop them up with taxpayer guarantees through the agency of entities like Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.
Banks didn't want to own all these loans so they packaged them in creative ways and sold them like bonds to willing buyers (albeit with possibly erroneous triple-A ratings). You can call that "greed" or you can call that smart. But when the market for these packages disappeared because the housing bubble burst, the owners of the packages were forced under the new laws to mark to market - and there was no market. It's as if you tried to sell your house today for $500,000., but nobody gave you an offer today, so overnight your net worth (and your ability to get credit) dropped by $500,000.
Anyway, now banks are hoarding cash to meet their capital needs and to avoid further risk. That is why we will begin to see funds fail, and maybe more institutions fail, unless the Feds do more than their rescue bill to loosen up credit.
Marxists and statists of all stripes are, as one might expect, rubbing their hands in glee and declaring this the final death crisis of Capitalism. But I think just the opposite is occurring. What we are in fact seeing are the final death throes of governmental social engineering. As I noted two weeks ago, we are in a kind of Mentos-in-coke world right now - where, thanks to tech, the sheer speed of transactions and the enormous breadth of response, almost any outside influence can quickly turn the whole economy (or culture) into an explosive brew.
Will Wilkinson takes on Thaler and Sunstein's "libertarian paternalism." One quote:
Despite the welcome weight Thaler and Sunstein throw behind a few genuinely liberty-enhancing policies, the thrust of the conceptual renovation behind the term libertarian paternalism is to empower, not limit, political elites. In the libertarian paternalist scheme, the rules will allow for an easy opt-out only so long as those writing the rules happen to care about preserving choice. The "libertarian" part of the equation is secured by good will alone. If that falters, we are left with paternalism, plain and simple. Old-fashioned libertarianism, it turns out, had a great deal to say about the choice architecture of politics. Given the intense attractions of power and the limits of benevolence, liberty (and therefore the commonweal) is best secured by setting in place a structure of rules that strictly limits the discretion of the powerful. That includes the discretion even of choice-loving technocrats.
All Nudge really offers is the idea that we should use what we know about how people act in order to design policy that will help them. And we shouldn't take away their choices. Well, I'm for all of it. If some policy makers really are misled by unrealistic economic models of rationality, then they should cut it out and bone up on psychology. Behavioral economics provides valuable new information about what will and won't work, and why. Thaler's work on savings plans is a great example of what can be done by taking into account new findings in psychology.
But it's no source of ideological realignment, no basis for what Thaler and Sunstein call a "Real Third Way."
You can read his whole piece on Nudge at the Cato Institute. Our readers already know my problems with their line of thinking: "Libertarian paternalism" is an oxymoron, and the academics and political elites, who claim they want to "help" us by guiding our lives, have never impressed me as possessed of any particular wisdom in that regard - or even of any ability to manage their own lives any better than anybody else.
Re world food prices, quoted from Our Daily Bread in The Boston Review:
What happens to future corn and vegetable oil prices, and therefore to the entire structure of food prices, is dependent primarily on the price of oil and on whether the new biofuel mandates for ethanol in the United States and biodiesel in Europe are imposed or rescinded.
The price of oil, in particular, is a fundamental factor in the overall equation. In a world of $50-per-barrel oil, growth in biofuels would have been more limited, with a much smaller spillover onto food prices. But the links that have emerged between agricultural and energy sectors will shape future investments and the well-being of farmers and consumers worldwide.
The question is almost never raised whether our tax deduction for charity is excessive.Whatever our religious faith, all agree that charity is a high personal and societal calling and deserves government support.Republicans and Democrats agree, in supporting President Bush’s faith-based organizations in its delivery (although Barack Obama would restrict their ability to exclude hiring outside their doctrine, requiring they act secular instead).
However, much described in the tax regulations as charity is not.Scriptures refer to helping the unfortunate and being neighborly and loving. The preferred methods providemeans to recipients to support themselves.This concept of charity has been broadened by advocates of non-profit organizations, and by liberal interpretations of scripture, to include virtually anything that one can say is of any possible societal benefit, no matter how narrow, cost-ineffective, more self-serving than serving others, or even a veil for partisan politics.
Some conservatives argue against narrowing the tax code.They, justifiably, see our income and assets as our own, not the government’s, and want to keep as much as possible outside the government’s control.Further, they see individual choices as both morally and practically preferable, more cost-effective, better measured, more adaptive, and more focused than government.They are correct.
Our internet friend Right Wing Prof emailed these thoughts to us:
The "Catholic vote" must refer specifically to the "Observant Catholic vote," or it's a meaningless demographic.
First, Catholics differ from Protestants in their fear of apostasy. Protestants often covert or change churches; Catholics rarely do. This is why you hear about lapsed Catholics, but never lapsed Methodists. The point here is that lapsed Catholics, those who never go to Mass, identify themselves as Catholics and always will, but pay no attention to the precepts of the Church. They will always be a part of the "Catholic vote" on any survey or poll, unless the poll differentiates. Most don't.
Second, you have the cafeteria Catholic segment. Some go to Mass only on Easter and Christmas, while others go to Mass more or less regularly. Because like Protestants, they feel they can pick and choose among matters of faith, they are very hard to pin down. Many are strongly pro-life, but the question is how they balance life against other issues. Note that in response to Pelosi and Biden, over a hundred American bishops have now stated that life is more important than all other issues, although none has endorsed a ticket. These statements may swing many cafeteria Catholics to McCain and Palin.
Remove these two groups from the Catholic demographic, and you are left with the observant Catholics. Note that observant doesn't merely mean they go to Mass regularly. Observant means that they take their faith seriously, and follow the precepts of the Church. This is perhaps the strongest pro-life group in the United States, and tends to be socially conservative in general.
Two things are going to swing the votes more than we would see in most elections: The bishops' statements in response to Pelosi and Biden, and the Born Alive Infant Protection Act that Obama refused to vote for. McCain's support of federal monies for stem-cell research hurt his standing among pro-life Cathoics to some extent, but putting Palin on the ticket seems to have outweighed that, and McCain's stance on federal money for stem-cell research pales next to Obama's refusal to support the Born Alive Infant Protection Act as a pro-life issue.
Note, however, that even if only the observant Catholics vote Republican, that's a significant demographic. There are 67 million Catholics in the United States. If observant Catholics only account for 25% of the entire Catholic population, that's 16.25 million votes.
(There are other problems with treating the self-identification "Catholic" on polls and surveys as a voting block. First, there is the intersection between Hispanic voters and Catholic voters. Hispanics have a whole set of issues that aren't necessarily Catholic issues, and these will affect how they vote. Second, you have the historical effect in play with ethnic Catholics that aren't really ethnic at all anymore, but tend to vote the same way their parents and grandparents, etc., did. These groups tend to be geographically as well as ethnically defined, such as Irish Catholics in MA, Italian Catholics in Philly or NYC, etc., and nearly all are urban.)
Keeping all these problems in mind, there are these poll results. Zogby reports that 54% of Catholics in general are intending to vote McCain. Another Pew poll that differentiates between lapsed and attending (non-lapsed, since this would include cafeteria Catholics who attend Mass and observant Catholics) Catholics reports an even split for McCain and Obama among lapsed Catholics, and a 52-36 McCain advantage among Catholics who attend Mass (non-lapsed).
Oddly enough, Gary Bauer of all people wrote an article about Obama's "Catholic problem" in Human Events. He does, however, hit the nail on the head: "Obama is hemorrhaging Catholic support for the same reason John Kerry lost the Catholic vote in 2004: because most Catholics believe that some issues are non-negotiable."
Well, he almost hits it. I'm not sure "most" is correct, but he's referring to non-lapsed Catholics.
IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.
It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.
Read the whole thing. We linked this morning to a piece that reveals a Soros org. behind the Palin cancellation.
It's the drumbeat of the left. It is political, philosophical, theological, and social. It pervades every activity. It is post-structural, post-modern, post-everything in the parlance of the day. It is tolerant, diverse, non-judgmental, non-discriminatory, egalitarian, politically correct, multicultural, globalist, and collectivist. It insists that there are no rights and wrongs, no moral absolutes. It turns everything upside down in its looking glass world. It denies the correctness of all that produced what our culture revered before the deconstruction of the world in accordance with the tenets of cultural Marxism.
It denies God, human exceptionalism, and the soul. We are reduced to Darwinian animals floundering in an amoral sea of meaninglessness. It is a product of the nihilistic, existentialist philosophical movement, which went hand in hand with modern art, atonal music, scientific materialism and modern physics, and the generally discordant nature of the twentieth century.
Read the whole thing (link above). Fortunately, conservatives are too busy with work, family, volunteering, going to church, and having fun, to keep their drums beating this way.
A reader, "Rural Counsel," offered this deeply American comment on my post yesterday about Elite Northeast Conservatives:
I think it boils down to a rural versus urban mindset. Or in a related concept, to the old social classes. There was a time that conservative meant "wealthy." Prep school. Ivy League.
Those days are long gone. Conservative now contains the best of American independence and stubborness, self-reliance and work ethic, individualistic. And that, my friends, describes most folks who make a living off the farms and ranches across that "flyover" country.
Elitism doesn't cut it any more. We've seen that electing elites doesn't get us good government. Intellect is nice, but it doesn't fill the bill. We need more grit and temperment than we do PhD dissertations. These self-anointed conservative intelligentsia are about as outdated as the Electoral College; they need to get the chip off their shoulders and become a little more egalitarian.
I may spend my first and last hour of the day out in the barn feeding and watering cattle. I may clean stalls and spread manure on my fields. I sweat every summer getting my hay crop in, and take the chainsaws out in the woods in the fall to cut my firewood for the winter. I'm more likely to be welding on equipment or changing the bearings on the kicker on my baler than I am to be reading the NYT or National Review. I'd rather be taking my kids out to target shoot than being in the "know" about inside politics.
But you know what? I've got three engineering degrees (2 from MIT) and a law degree. I don't need to be told what to think. Just point out the facts; I can draw my own conclusions.
I've met plenty of folks with Ivy League degrees, and they aren't particularly better or brighter than the blue collar guys I used to work with in the chemical plants. And frankly, they aren't as nice. Or as trustworthy.
We don't need first class intellect and second class temperment in the Executive Office. Common sense and a "show me" attitude are the right tools.
We should vote for someone that we'd be comfortable sharing a foxhole with, not someone with the biggest stack of diplomas. Because the important part of the job is a lot closer to picking a business partner than it is picking a college president.
This reader sounds a lot like me: A chain-saw, pick-up truck and single malt Conservative - but I am a blue-blood and an Ivy Leaguer too, for whatever it's worth, these days: not too much. Which is for the best, probably, although it does enrich one's life in subtle and private ways.
People talk about the Canadian system (horrible for Docs and patients) and the NHS (which 56% of Brits want eliminated). Few discuss the way the French do it, but it's worth thinking about.
Part 1 of Health Care Reform discusses the history French system, noting "They emphasize private, fee-for-service practice even more than we do." If you are interested in the topic, Synthstuff links all 4 parts of this essay, written by a Doc who likes the system.
The selection of Sarah Palin as Republican vice-presidential candidate has revealed a serious chasm in conservatism, a chasm separating conservative elites – opinion leaders, pundits, spokesmen -- from the vast population of center-right Americans they purport to represent.
As a more-or-less elite, prosperous, hyper-educated Northeastern conservative, I think he has a point - but it doesn't apply to me. I have an F-150, I like Palin, and I get a kick out of Rush (though I rarely have time to hear him).
What an Obama presidency plus a Dem filibuster-proof Congress could mean for you. 
Did you know that identical twins, whether they are separated at birth or raised together, are equally similar in personality, intelligence, interests, and habits? It's a stunning fact, I think.
I'm pretty good at this political prognostication stuff, so I'm feeling quite confident when I make this bold prediction regarding tonight's debate:
Now 
Columbia University is lucky to have 
I don't spend much time reading the news, but it appears there's an election coming up sometime soon. I glanced over the article and saw the word "Alaska", so I presume we're voting on whether or not to finally make it a state. Big mistake! All that barren wasteland covered with a sheet of ice? I say sell it back to the Russians!
Health care could be the next Fannie Mae type disaster.
Re world food prices, quoted from 
A reader, "Rural Counsel," offered this deeply American comment on my post yesterday about