Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The American Dream

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How Utah keeps it alive.

I think that Mormonism is the most American of religions, being home grown. I also think that they’re most likely to be successful space colonists.

[Update a few minutes later]

I hadn’t RTWT when I posted the link, but there are very interesting points in it:

Utah has not entirely escaped the change, but it is relatively insulated; the state leads the nation for marriage and for children with married parents. How do we get Utah’s results without marriage?

“Why don’t we use what we have?” Price asked. “You’ve got this institution that has worked for thousands of years.” And yet, he said, “there’s a reluctance to use the word ‘marriage’ in public policy.”

People who don’t see why you need a marriage certificate to make a stable home for a child may be skewed by their own social position, Price said: “We’re always looking at the wrong group — the high-income group.” He added: “The people who are doing the research are the people who don’t need marriage.”

Utah’s unique religious history not only democratized the relationships between the affluent and the struggling; it also democratized marriage, at a time when elsewhere in the U.S., marriage seems to be morphing into an elite institution. Price thinks that gives the state a huge boost in launching kids into the middle class, and Chetty et al’s data back that up.

This does raise some questions about the viability of Utah’s “compassionate conservative” model outside the state. The vast welfare infrastructure from the Mormon Church naturally makes it easier to have smaller government. Perhaps that could be replicated by other communities. But the values of the Mormon Church may create a public that simply needs less help. That’s harder for another community to imitate. I’m not sure this key ingredient is available in a secular version; I think religion might only come in religion flavor.

How the heck is some state government supposed to get people to marry, and stay married?

Another argument to get government out of the marriage business (and a lot of other businesses).

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The Death Of Expertise

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Thoughts from Glenn Reynolds:

In the realm of foreign affairs, which should be of special interest to the people at Foreign Affairs, recent history has been particularly dreadful. Experts failed to foresee the fall of the Soviet Union, failed to deal especially well with that fall when it took place, and then failed to deal with the rise of Islamic terrorism that led to the 9/11 attacks. Post 9/11, experts botched the reconstruction of Iraq, then botched it again with a premature pullout.

On Syria, experts in Barack Obama’s administration produced a policy that led to countless deaths, millions of refugees flooding Europe, a new haven for Islamic terrorists, and the upending of established power relations in the mideast. In Libya, the experts urged a war, waged without the approval of Congress, to topple strongman Moammar Gadhafi, only to see — again — countless deaths, huge numbers of refugees and another haven for Islamist terror.

It was experts who brought us the housing bubble and the subprime crisis. It was experts who botched the Obamacare rollout. And, of course, the experts didn’t see Brexit coming, and seem to have responded mostly with injured pride and assaults on the intelligence of the electorate, rather than with constructive solutions.

By its fruit the tree is known, and the tree of expertise hasn’t been doing well lately. As Nassim Taleb recently observed: “With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers.”

There was also the failure of the CIA to see the Iranian revolution coming. And certainly the “experts” in charge of space policy haven’t been covering themselves in glory, at least if the goal is to expand humanity’s economic sphere into the solar system (as Marburger once said).

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Stem Cells

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…in spaaaaaaaace:

“Stem cells are inherently designed to remain at a constant number,” Zubair explains. “We need to grow them faster, but without changing their characteristics.”

The first phase of the investigation, he adds, is answering the question: “Do stem cells grow faster in space and can we grow them in such a manner that they are safe to use in patients?”

Investigators will examine the space-grown cells in an effort to understand the mechanism behind microgravity’s effects on them. The long-term goal is to learn how to mimic those effects and develop a safe and reliable way to produce stem cells in the quantities needed.

Just once, it would be nice to discover something that can be done in space that can’t be later mimiced on the ground. I hope that Made In Space has found one.

And of course, as I point out in the book, this kind of research could be accelerated if they added one more crewperson to ISS. The only reason they haven’t is lifeboat requirement, something that doesn’t exist in Antarctica.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Science And Society, Technology and Society

A New Cholesterol Drug

I’m suspicious of these results. And like most such studies, they’re not properly controlled, and we don’t know if we’re treating a symptom. It may be that the drug does reduce risk, but that the LDL reduction is a side effect, not the reason that the risk is reduced. And notice that there is no mention whatsoever of diet. My LDL is very low since I cut back on carbs.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Laffer Curve

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Yes, there’s more to tax revenue than rates. I think that from an economic growth (and revenue) standpoint, a reduction in regulations would be more effective. I don’t think that most people understand the regulatory cost to the economy. It’s probably trillions.

[Update a while later]

This, on the continuing and growing ignorance of the media, seems related:

The article explained that unlike Egypt or Pakistan, America doesn’t really have a powerful deep state, and to claim that it does “presents apolitical civil servants as partisan agents.”

Give me a break. “Apolitical civil servants”?

A deep state absolutely exists. Some call it “administrative state” or “regulatory state.” These are the people who crush innovation and freedom by issuing hundreds of new rules. Regulators, if they don’t pass new rules, think they’re not doing their jobs.

Even “anti-regulator” President George W. Bush hired 90,000 new regulators. Calling them “nonpartisan” doesn’t make them harmless—it just means we put up with them through multiple administrations.

Even if you exclude the military and post office, more than 20 million Americans work for the government. Because of civil service rules, it’s almost impossible to fire them.

The Times calls these 20 million people “apolitical”. Please. Most are just as partisan as you or I. Maybe more so, as leaks and signs of bureaucratic resistance to presidential edicts demonstrate.

The notion that George W. Bush was an anti-regulator is ludicrous.