Category Archives: Economics

The Half-Wit

I don’t normally pass along emailed jokes, but I thought this one too good to pass up:

A man owned a small ranch in Montana. The Montana Work Force Department claimed he was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to interview him.

“I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,” demanded the agent.

“Well,” replied he said, “there’s my ranch hand who’s been with me for 3 years.. I pay him $200 a week plus free room and board.

“The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her $150 per week plus free room and board.

“Then there’s the half-wit. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally.”

“That’s the guy I want to talk to … the half-wit,” says the agent.

“That would be me,” replied the rancher.

I think that Tuesday’s results show that the half-wits are coming to their senses.

Helping Haiti

The Anchoress has some useful links.

The devastation in that benighted country (our own little bit of Africa in the western hemisphere) demonstrates how deadly it can be to be poor, and why attempts to hold back economic growth in the third world with things like Kyoto and cap’n’tax are almost genocidal.

[Update a while later]

“You hear yells everywhere from underneath the rubble.”

Horrible.

[Update on Thursday morning]

Why is Haiti so poor? Some hypotheses from Tyler Cowen.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

History’s most deadly quakes. I expect Haiti will be added to this list, though it’s unlikely to set a new record.

[Update late morning]

Remembering the “good times” in Haiti:

On an official visit to the island in the 1980s, as head of the Latin America/Caribbean Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), I witnessed a grown man, my 28-year-old executive assistant, a lawyer who had not traveled extensively outside the U.S., cry inconsolably after touring an orphanage and hospital run by Belgian nuns and supported by USAID food and medical aid. The rest of my team consisted of experienced (read: hardened) professionals who had seen famine and desolation in other countries many times. The assistant had been shocked at the sight of the “triage” set up by the nuns, whereby they calmly and tenderly separated emaciated Haitian newborns into those who would not survive the night and those who might. Both groups received the same loving care from the nuns, but the ones born with no chance of survival did not receive precious resources that could be used to save the lives of other, slightly stronger infants with a chance of living another day and perhaps even surviving.

That hospital, run by angelic Belgians and their Haitian collaborators, was a metaphor for the entire country. The U.S. chose to deliver its significant assistance (more than that of any other nation) only through private organizations, because the government of Haiti was deemed either too incompetent or corrupt to deliver it safely.

It hasn’t improved in the interim, and this disaster is unlikely to improve it.

Living in Boca Raton, almost all of the blacks that I encountered were Haitian (many of them checkout and stocking personnel at the local supermarket). They were good people, and obviously very happy to be here.

Unspeakable Truths

Thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson:

I am fortunate for a wonderful graduate education in the PhD program at Stanford, but I learned more about the way the world works in two months of farming (which saved a wretch like me) than in four years of concentrated study.

In short, the world does not work on a nine-month schedule. It does not recognize concepts like tenure. It does not care for words without action. And brilliance is not measured by vocabulary or SAT scores. Wowing a dean, or repartee into a seminar, or clever put-downs of rivals in the faculty lounge don’t translate into running a railroad—or running the country. One Harry Truman, or Dwight Eisenhower is worth three Bill Clintons or Barack Obamas. If that sounds reductionist, simplistic, or anti-intellectual, it is not meant to—but so be it nonetheless.

I’ve never been less impressed with Ivy League degrees than I am now.

Geoengineering

Apparently there’s a conference in California in a couple months on the subject. It might be interesting to attend, if it’s in LA (or wherever it is, but I’ll be more likely to attend if it’s in southern Cal).

[Update a couple minutes later]

This looks like it. It’s at Asilomar.

Well, March is a beautiful time to drive up the coast highway, though it’s pretty chilly in Pacific Grove that time of year (or any time, really — the wind off Point Joe can be bitter even in the summer).

My concern is that the people discussing space-based solutions will use bad (i.e., overly high) estimates for launch costs, because they won’t understand the economics of space technology.