"The best argument for putting inequality on the back burner is the depressed state of the economy."

Concedes Krugman. "Isn’t it more important to restore economic growth than to worry about how the gains from growth are distributed?"

Of course, his answer is: "No." Or, to be precise (and to capture the Krugman condescension): "Well, no."

"Yes, Men Should Do More Housework."

Writes Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. Key paragraph:

So, yes, we could all do with slightly dirtier houses, and nobody ever died saying their only regret was they didn't buy enough ceramic tile cleaner. But maybe, now that women are out-earning us in bachelor's degrees and (often) in marriages as well, we could stand to do oh-just-slightly more than 35 percent of the dishes.

I don't see why one spouse making more money than the other should matter (the way one working longer or harder hours in a job should matter). But if the reason for the man to step up and do half of the housework is that the woman earns more, then that's implicitly saying the reason women have been doing more housework is subservience to her man because of the money he has brought to the relationship.

All couples are in some kind of an exchange — like the man in the earlier post who seems to have been buying a lady shoes as a way to earn his place in the relationship. We idealize relationships that are mostly or entirely love for love. And how lucky you are if you're in a 100% love-for-love relationship. It's highly rewarding to feel the love, and the feeling is much better if you're in a position to give it, and you never run out. And you get love too.

But there are all sorts of exchanges among couples, from the stark clarity of the money-for-sex exchange that is prostitution on up to the pure ideal of love-for-love.

Where are you on that continuum?

Graphing the real value of the minimum wage.

The President and the media are trying to get us to talk about income equality. I know, it's an effort to distract us from the obvious problem of the Obamacare debacle (which itself is probably a distraction from other things we shouldn't/should be looking at). But I was motivated to Google "minimum wage over the years adjusted for inflation."

The first hit went to a site called Raise the Minimum Wage which gave me the kind of graph I wanted to see:



How dumb do you need to be not to look at this graph and suspect that 1968 was chosen as the starting point because it was an upward spike? Here's another graph:



As you go upon your way this morning, watch out for propaganda.

The persistence of hits and blockbusters in the era of the internet and "the long tail."

Nicely analyzed in The New Yorker. Excerpt:

Although “The Long Tail” proclaimed a coming revolution, [Chris] Anderson was careful never to predict the demise of blockbusters. “Hits, like it or not, are here to stay,” he wrote. But he believed that the cultural power of hits was fading, and he presented his economic analysis as a moral crusade. “For too long,” he wrote, “we’ve been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop.”
The language reflected his own tastes, which were self-consciously hip. (He was vexed by the popularity of boy bands and excited about a retro-futurist electronic genre known as “chip music,” which achieved micro-success in the aughts.) He hoped that more of us would discover “smaller artists who speak more authentically to their audience,” and that all of us might, at last, perceive “the true shape of demand in our culture.” He was flattering his readers by inviting them to be part of his community of connoisseurs. Long-tail economics would make good on the promise of the Internet, turning more people into experts on topics fewer people had heard of. Elberse flatters her readers, too. In her book ["Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment"], the old ethos of the Internet has given way to the new ethos of social media; while Anderson predicted the end of the “watercooler era,” Elberse sees the water cooler reborn, as fans track the progress of the latest cultural juggernaut across their Twitter timelines. “Because people are inherently social, they generally find value in reading the same books and watching the same television shows and movies that others do,” she writes, recasting our taste for hits as proof of our common humanity. Lurking behind her blockbuster thesis is the suggestion that being sociable matters more than being hip.

ADDED: The article says "Elberse's book is is written in the upbeat, anecdotal, gently exhortative style of an airport best-seller...." That's a way to say "Malcolm Gladwell" without saying it, right? But Gladwell's writing originated in The New Yorker, so it's a tad incoherent to tweak it as "airport best-seller" in The New Yorker.

"Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke is trying to make the case that Wisconsin voters should trust her..."

"... in part, because of the nearly 1,000 jobs created in the state by Trek Bicycle Corp., a firm founded and run by her family."

But now Burke is coming under criticism from some within her own party following a decision last week by the U.S. Department of Labor. The federal agency found that up to 20 former Trek Bicycle employees are eligible for special federal aid via the Trade Adjustment Assistance program because they lost their jobs due to foreign trade.

Actually, this is evidence that the Democratic Party does not exploit its power within government to affect electoral politics.

Some labor officials and liberal activists have been slow to throw their support behind Burke — who is aiming to take on Republican Gov. Scott Walker — because Trek is a nonunion company that has moved much of its production to China.

She's not the nominee yet, but she's not being challenged. I suspect that she's filling a spot so it won't look like the Democrats are declining to challenge Walker. She has her own money to spend.

"That's a tough pill to swallow for Democrats that spent last year bashing Romney for sending jobs to China," said a liberal activist. "Totally ridiculous — I'm ashamed to have Burke as our only candidate."

Liberal talk show host John "Sly" Sylvester... [said] "It's always a sad day for this state and America when companies that claim to be job creators turn to slave wage countries like China for their workforce"....

Why did Burke step up? Presumably to burnish Trek's reputation. Now, Wisconsinites want us to hate Trek? Nice way to treat a Wisconsin company!

"So why is it important that we have a multitude of desperate law school graduates and many more politically ambitious rich than 30 years ago?"

"Past waves of political instability, such as the civil wars of the late Roman Republic, the French Wars of Religion and the American Civil War, had many interlinking causes and circumstances unique to their age. But a common thread in the eras we studied was elite overproduction."

Excerpt from an article at Bloomberg.com (by Peter Turchin, vice president of the Evolution Institute and professor of biology and anthropology at the University of Connecticut) titled "Blame Rich, Overeducated Elites as Our Society Frays."

Worth clicking for the illustration, a diagram of how this terrifying process, depicting "Unemployed Lawyers" as a crucial link in a chain between "Wealth Glut" and Elite Fratricide."

But the chain can be broken — "catastrophe isn’t preordained" — and you can probably guess how. But first, you gotta believe the catastrophe is coming, so soften up and get scared.

"A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans' personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project..."

The debt was purchased for $400,000.

Andrew Ross, a member of Strike Debt and professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University... said the group had received letters from people whose debt they had lifted thanking them for the service. But the real victory was in spreading knowledge of the nature of the debt industry, he said.

"Very few people know how cheaply their debts have been bought by collectors. It changes the psychology of the debtor, knowing this. So when you get called up by the debt collector, and you're being asked to pay the full amount of your debt, you now know that the debt collector has bought your debt very, very cheaply. As cheaply as we bought it. And that gives you moral ammunition to have a different conversation with the debt collector."

"In the mid-1970s, the tiny Canadian town of Dauphin... acted as guinea pig for a grand experiment in social policy called 'Mincome.'"

"For a short period of time, all the residents of the town received a guaranteed minimum income. About 1,000 poor families got monthly checks to supplement their earnings."

Evelyn Forget, a health economist at the University of Manitoba, has done some of the best research on the results. Some of her findings were obvious: Poverty disappeared. But others were more surprising: High-school completion rates went up; hospitalization rates went down. “If you have a social program like this, community values themselves start to change,” Forget said.

Evelyn Forget is such a great name that I almost want to believe what she's selling. But I'm one of those people who fear the lost incentive to work. I remember a professor here at UW some years ago propounding a guaranteed minimum income of $20,000. He just assumed most people would work so they could have more than that. What if you were just starting out in life and knew you could go work-free if you were willing to live on $20,000?

I'm sure if that deal were offered to me when I was 20, I'd have taken it. I'd have worked at living on that $20,000. Oh, yes, eventually I might have wanted to write a book called "How to Live Well on $20,000 a Year" — because it would have amused me and I wouldn't have minded some extra spending money.

But who knows what the psychology of it all would be? It's one thing to experiment on a tiny town in Manitoba, but what happens when it gets bigger... and less Canadian?

Amazon gets the Postal Service to do Sunday deliveries.

And WaPo calls it "Amazon’s brilliant plan to rescue the Postal Service and disrupt the shipping industry."

Amazon could have offered to pay the Postal Service for carrying more of its packages generally, and USPS would have gotten a much-needed injection of cash....

By launching Sunday deliveries, the Postal Service has moved to where its longtime competitors aren't. Hardly anybody in any industry delivers on Sunday, with the exception of newspapers. As a business idea....

The other reason it's disruptive? This is one of the few cases we've seen of what we'll call reverse contracting — when the private sector hires a government agency to fill its need rather than the other way around. 

This might be a good place to remind you of the brilliance of the Amazon Associates Program, which lets you make a cost-free contribution to writers like me. (The "shop Amazon" link is always at the top of this blog in the banner.)

In 6 weeks, only 40,000 have signed up through Healthcare.gov — if "signing up" means putting a plan in your "shopping cart."

"That amount is a tiny fraction of the total projected enrollment for the 36 states where the federal government is running the online health-care exchange, indicating the slow start to the president’s initiative."

Though the number is inflated with those who haven't actually purchased a plan, it's not not additionally puffed up with those who signed up for Medicaid. That number is said to be 440,000, which means only 8.3% of those who have managed to use the website are actually buying health insurance, and 91.6% have used it to access a welfare program.

A spokesman for the insurance industry’s main trade group said the slow early enrollment does not matter as much as how many sign up by the spring. “That’s what will determine how well these reforms are going to work,” said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for the group America’s Health Insurance Plans.

The insurance industry has a substantial stake in who enrolls, as well as how many do so. Unless enough young, healthy Americans sign up, the cost of coverage is likely to escalate — in turn, discouraging people from getting or keeping coverage.

So the number — 40,000 — is dismal, but if it turns out these are disproportionally the sort of person who will be using a lot of health care services — and don't you think they are? — that's an even bigger problem.

By the way, what's with "young, healthy"? I understand "healthy," but why "young"? If we're going to use stereotypes and generalizations about the groups of people who are less likely to incur health-care costs, why stop at "young"? Why not say "Unless enough young, healthy, male Americans sign up"?

"Are Unmarried People Bad for the Economy?"

A Gallup-poll-instigated question.

"The Cities Creating The Most Middle-Class Jobs."

The top 4 are in Texas.

"Health Care Law Fails to Lower Prices for Rural Areas."

A NYT headline.

While competition is intense in many populous regions, rural areas and small towns have far fewer carriers offering plans in the law’s online exchanges. 

I'm impressed at the investigative reporting here. They got into the online exchanges and got to the point where they could find out what's on offer in many places? Apparently. But some of the analysis is based on a list from the Department of Health and Human Services showing which insurance companies are serving various counties. 58% of the counties have 2 or only 1 company offering insurance.

The analysis suggests that the ambitions of the Affordable Care Act to increase competition have unfolded unevenly, at least in the early going, and have not addressed many of the factors that contribute to high prices. Insurance companies are reluctant to enter challenging new markets, experts say, because medical costs are high, dominant insurers are difficult to unseat, and powerful hospital systems resist efforts to lower rates.

This feels like a foundation for the argument that markets don't work and therefore a fully government-run health care program is needed.

It is unclear how the online marketplaces might evolve over time. Many large insurers are closely watching what happens in the first year to decide whether to more aggressively pursue new markets. In the meantime, problems with the healthcare.gov Web site are making it harder for them to know whether the exchanges’ slow start is the result of technical difficulties or more serious underlying problems, such as a lack of consumer demand, that would discourage them from entering.

This seems to set up an argument that we never got to see what private companies would do in the marketplace, since the promised marketplace was never there in a form where it could be observed and intelligently responded to.

(There's much more in the linked article.)

"This is not what bankruptcy is about.... What’s next? Are they going to start going after food stamps?"

Argues a lawyer for a woman who filed for bankruptcy with $23,000 in debt, whose landlord — not among the creditors — stepped forward with an offer to buy out her rent-stabilized lease for an amount equal to her debt. It's worth it to the landlord because, under NYC's rent stabilization law she pays only $703 a month for a place that would go for thousands in the current market. She's 79 and has lived there for 50 years.

The legal question, pending before the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals is whether the lease is an asset like a car that can be part of the bankruptcy estate or whether it's like a welfare benefit (which would be exempt).

The widow’s lawyers argue that a rent-stabilized lease is a public assistance benefit, just like Social Security or disability payments, and should be exempt from the bankruptcy estate. Treating it like an asset, the lawyers said in court documents, undermines the intent of rent-stabilization laws in New York designed to protect tenants deemed in need of assistance with housing....

“It’s an unfair money-grab,” said David B. Shaev, the New York state chairman of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys. “To remove this foundation, this safety net, it’s unconscionable.”

You have to read pretty far into the linked NYT article to see that the landlord in this case is not trying to throw the woman out. His offer allows her to stay for the rest of her life. He does, however, want to block her 50-year-old son (who lives with her) from having "succession rights" to the place. Nevertheless, the article ends with a quote from the old woman:

“I’m afraid to find a white paper on my door,” she said with her head down, tearing up as she tugged at the edges of her plastic-covered chair.

Any tears for the young people who are trying to live in NYC, looking for apartments and stuck entering a housing market skewed by the 2.2 million people in rent-stabilized places? No, because Mary Veronica Santiago is a specific person, crying here for you, and you're not supposed to notice that her real concern is for a middle-aged man who'd like to live out his years in one of the cheap apartments that make other apartments so insanely expensive in NYC. And no one cries for the creditors, owed $23,000. They're just credit card companies.

It’s an unfair money-grab... it’s unconscionable....

Why is a benefit that comes at the expense of a private landlord equated with "a public assistance benefit, just like Social Security or disability payments"? I know welfare benefits are paid for out of money that comes, via taxation, from private citizens, but that is pooled money, collected according to whatever tax policies the legislatures have seen fit to adopt. Government may create valuable rights for tenants under rent-stabilization, but the value is extracted from one individual or entity — a particular landlord. Isn't it strange to call the landlord's loss of income a public assistance benefit?

ADDED: Reason's Matt Welch is also talking about this: Like me, he highlights the son's interest. ("That's right — in New York City, you can put your rent-stabilized apartment in your will, and hand it off to the next generation of $703-a-month payers.")

"If this video doesn't inspire you to plan a trip, nothing will."

Buzzfeed offers this "Facts That Will Make You Want To Travel." Since questioning traveling is a big theme on this blog, I'm going to embed this before watching it. I'll get back to you on whether it consigns me to the category Buzzfeed considers uninspirable.



UPDATE: Second-by-second reaction.

0:02 I realize I have seen this video before.

0:12 I've seen reports of those "studies" and am skeptical. People misjudge how much buying, say, clothing will make them happy, but they also may misjudge how much happiness they got from a trip. The strains of traveling are over, and they are now nurturing the memory they made. What's really being compared are 1. material objects that you have in your possession and come to view as not such a big deal anymore and 2. past events that are only in memory and can therefore be massaged into a form you enjoy. This is testament to the power of the mind and the value of the intangible possession that is the past.

0:16 That music thinks it can juice me up. Instead it makes me more aware that I am watching propaganda. And this is propaganda for the travel industry. It must convince me to drop money into things that won't last — like the $300 shoes that I'll "eventually forget about." Yeah, but meanwhile, I'm always going to need some shoes. They're not just for the purpose of memory-making. And: 1. Money saved not buying expensive shoes doesn't have to be thrown into travel. 2. For $300, I could buy, instead of expensive shoes, a pair of shoes, a skirt, and 2 tops or some other combination of useful wearable things that will make daily life comfortable and nice. 3. I actually do have some happy memories of specific shoes, in fact, only yesterday I was contemplating a particular kind of shoe that we wore circa 1960 that I'd love to find today.

0:21 I don't need to spend $300 to gaze at a sunset over a beautiful landscape. I can walk or bike to many beautiful vantage points, and I can drive an hour or less and get to really scenic places. If I'd spent money and time getting to somewhere farther away, would I be more likely or less likely to arrive at the elated expression seen on that woman's face? I think a less planned and more subtle experience might produce greater joy. But the contrast made in the video is to $300 sneakers. That's not the relevant comparison.

0:31 "A short trip will make you feel just as happy." Yeah, that's the argument against travel! Go for a walk in your own town or to the nearby state parks. You don't have to make a big deal about it.

0:33 Those people look like they could be enjoying sitting out on Union Terrace, having a drink while the sun sets over Lake Mendota. We love to walk there.

0:39 This shows that what is important are relationships with other people. Travel is presented as a means to that end, but there are obviously many other means. And there's a correlation-is-not-causation problem with "Regular travellers get along with people better." Maybe people who avoid travel do so because they don't get along with other people. Those who love interacting with other people may go in for travel because one of the stresses of travel isn't so stressful for them. You can't necessarily infer that traveling will improve your ability to get along with other people. I'm picturing a crowded plane with the usual annoyances.

0:46 Here we see how nice it is to have an intimate partner in life. What's the connection to travel? I see they are in a car. Meade and I are often in a car together. It's always nice, around town or off on some longer trip. But the surtitle is trying to nudge us to think couples have sex more if they go on a trip. Sex — or some other "intimacy" — is the end. Travel is offered as the means. That strikes me as a bit pathetic.

0:51 Another argument in favor of having someone to love. This is classic advertising propaganda. Put the product with something else that's good.

1:05 Oh, great. Che Guevara. I should travel because Che Guevara. Blech. He "found himself." Do you seriously think your self is out there somewhere you need to travel to find?

1:11 Monet didn't travel to Argenteuil. He lived there. Relocating your home isn't travel.

1:16 "The ticket is usually the only big cost." Oh! The money we have spent in hotels and restaurants. That's where you hemorrhage money.

1:19 "A massage in Bali is $6." Why the hell would you spent all that money and time going to Bali and then lie around with your eyes closed and have a passive experience that you can get at home? Yeah, it's more than $6 at home, but why'd you go to Bali? And do you really want to extract the pleasure of a massage from someone you are exploiting economically? The argument the video is making here is that you should give a lot of your money to the airlines because they can take you to places where the people will sell themselves super-cheap. How about avoiding the (terrible) airlines and spending the money in your hometown, on people who are your neighbors, who contribute to your community, and are asking a fair price for their work?

1:32 Eh. I'm smart enough.

1:37 "It's time to plan a trip." Planning. I don't like planning. I like spontaneous. Make an equivalent video about living spontaneously in the present. Won't that bring more happiness and intimacy, and won't you be more likely to find yourself and to get along without spending too much money? I think so.

"They love my beautiful mind... I am ugly, but they’re attracted to the brains. I’m a rock star among geeks, wonks and nerds."

Said the economist, noting that his parties are great because of "fun people and beautiful girls" and "I look for 10 girls to one guy."

But you need to be more careful about your bragging, apparently, because now the Department of Buildings is coming after his giant rooftop hot tub, which he's ordered to remove, because he didn't seek approval.

Lesson: First, seek approval from the government. Then, seek approval from fun people and beautiful girls.

Paraphrase of the lesson: The government wants to be your beautiful girl.

ADDED: "10 girls to one guy" = "Surf City" x 5. 

IN THE COMMENTS: Crunchy Frog improves on my bad math:

10 girls for every guy = Surf City in binary.

NYC builds a newsstand designed to be run by blind workers, then decides to scrap it because it's not theft resistant.

Now they're going to build an new one.

“As part of a major and vital rehabilitation of the Kings County Criminal Court, we are adding a new newsstand and investing to make it accessible,” said a spokesman for the city Department of Design and Construction. The Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator ordered the DDC to build the stand as part of a $38 million courthouse renovation. City courthouse newsstands are operated by blind workers through a program run by the state Commission for the Blind.

Blind people have traditionally run newsstands, but the safeguard against theft —  a problem at any newsstand — is the heightened sense of morality people feel about cheating the blind.

Said one court source, “Let’s face it. It’s in the lobby of a courtroom, so you might get a few criminals walking by who wouldn’t think twice about stealing from a blind guy.”

You might think NYC should just use the new place and not employ a blind worker, but consider that there is a pre-existing but run-down newsstand in the lobby, run by a 61-year-old blind man who's worked there for 10 years, the design of the new shelves really does facilitate shoplifting, and there are other aspects of the design that aren't suitable for a blind person. The area behind the counter is said to be too small to use a cane or seeing-eye dog.

It sounds almost as though the designer had a secret agenda of ousting the blind. That's a premise I'd explore if I were suing. Things less cheap than lawsuits: 1. building another new newsstand, and 2. eating the cost of shoplifting.

Quite aside from potential litigation, there's the political problem. Here you've got: 1. wasting the taxpayers' money, 2. looking stupid, 3. showing lack of concern for the blind, 4. the embarrassment of a ridiculous crime paradise in the lobby of a criminal courthouse, breeding more and more disrespect for the law among those with the least reason to feel respect.

"Barely a third of U.S. senators pay their interns — and embarrassingly for Democrats, a party focused on workplace welfare, most of them are Republicans."

Under the heading "EXPLOITATION," Instapundit links to this piece in The Atlantic.

No pay is the ultimate defense against the accusation of low pay.

It's the difference between a girlfriend and a cheap prostitute.

If you don't have the money to buy something at a price that won't offend the seller, you should try to get it for free. Then the seller is flattered.

This is the way the world works. Not everything is commerce, or — I should say — not everything is always usefully portrayed as commerce. The only hypocrisy I see in Congress here is that whenever they want to use their Commerce Power, they'll argue that their regulatory target is commerce.

"Government is the same institution that takes over forests to 'protect' them — but then builds logging roads into forests to cut down trees..."

"... that unsubsidized, private roads might never have reached. The forests end up smaller, but people still assume they're safer in government hands than in greedy private hands."

Government is the institution that puts itself in charge of caring for wildlife but recently sent a dozen armed agents into a Wisconsin animal shelter to seize and kill a baby deer named Giggles who was being nursed back to health there, since Giggles wasn't in the right type of approved shelter.

When government screws up, we're supposed to say, "They meant well." When individuals pursuing their own interests screw up, we're supposed to feel ashamed of industrial civilization and let government punish and control us all. If we let it do that, government will do to the economy what it did to Giggles.

"The legal profession is 'right-sizing,' and law schools should follow suit."

Argues David Lat, rejecting the alternative of keeping up the present incoming class size by lowering admissions standards. The shrinkage model is painful:

Last week, we heard reports of one law school basically axing its entire junior faculty. All of the untenured professors received notice that their contracts might not be renewed for the 2014-2015 academic year. Ouch.