O Canada

From today's Economix:

If unemployment continues to rise over the next few months in the United States, as predicted, many families will lose their health insurance coverage or struggle to pay premiums they can ill afford. By contrast, increased unemployment won’t reduce Canadian access to health care.

As the economist (and fellow Economix blogger) Uwe Reinhardt explains, the single-payer Canadian health care system delivers very good results for about half the per-person cost of ours — with huge savings from reduced paperwork. Economic disparities in access to health care are significantly lower there.

and...

According to latest estimates from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a married worker earning the average wage, with two children, could expect 78 percent wage replacement in Canada, compared to 52 percent in the United States. The differences are even greater for those earning higher than average wages, because of low benefit ceilings.

The recently passed Economic Stimulus and Recovery Act offers incentives to states to expand unemployment provision to part-time workers and to those leaving jobs for “compelling family reasons.” The Canadian unemployment insurance system offers more comprehensive family benefits, including paid sick leave, paid compassionate care leave, and paid maternal and parental leaves of up to 50 weeks. Many American workers aren’t even eligible for the 12 weeks of unpaid family leave guaranteed by the Family and Medical Leave Act — although President Obama promises to change that.

Finally...

There’s no evidence that Canada’s public provision of health care and social benefits has reduced its economic growth, and the federal budget just presented is the first to show a deficit in 11 years.

What explains more support for public spending there? Slightly lower income inequality may encourage slightly more solidaristic policies. Such policies, in turn, reduce income inequality. The French social-democratic traditions of the province of Quebec exert a distinct influence. The Canadian political scientist Keith Banting argues that explicit efforts to develop a strong but multicultural national identity have strengthened norms of mutual support.

Bad Television Parenting

In a post entitled, "Why Are There No Good Parents on TV," Lisa Belkin of the NYTimes Magazine says the following:

Bad parenting, I can’t help noticing, is the only kind of parenting on television. An anthropologist with just our TV programs to go by would think that most of us at the turn of this century have no children, and that those we do have tend to go poof when they become complications (What happened to Molly in “Heroes”? Or JD’s son in “Scrubs”? Why doesn’t Chloe ever call the baby-sitter on “24″?) The smattering of kids allowed to stick around are being raised by self-involved, clueless, overly permissive (or overly militant), absent (or hovering) parents. This is true whether the characters are fictional (”Gossip Girl,” “Desperate Housewives”) or “real” (”WifeSwap,” “Jon and Kate Plus Eight”).

I certainly can’t claim to watch every show out there (and please send me examples of where you see this trend, or not) but from where I sit, it has been a while — since the days of The Bill Cosby Show, and One Day at a Time, and, before that, The Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family — since a parent on television spent much time actually being a parent. They might not have done it realistically back in those days, but at least they did something that resembled parenting.

I think that shows are simply different than they were ten or twenty years ago. Taking her own examples, what notable difference can you point out between shows such as "Scrubs," "Heroes," and "24" and shows like "The Bill Cosby Show," "The Brady Bunch," and "The Partridge Family?" Well, the former are clearly not shows about the daily lives of a typical (or in some cases, comedically eccentric) American family. "Scrubs" is about the life of several hospital employees, with the show's focus centered around the hospital and not the family unit; "Heroes" is about a group of ordinary citizens all over the world who cope dealing with superpowers (and speaking of which, I think that there are plenty examples of good parenting in this show--at least in the first season: think of Claire's mother and father, persistently trying to protect her from harm as she struggles with her newfound abilities); and "24" is...well you get the idea.

The point is that most television shows today (at least the popular ones) are less concerned about the every day trials of the family and more with bestowing upon their viewers elements of the fantastic or the unexpected. "House" is a great example of a show that takes elements from previous doctor/hospital stereotypes and flips it by marking the protagonist as a misanthropic, rude medical maverick--in many ways opposed to the expected archetype of the caring, nurturing healer. This is why most families you see on TV today are unusual and differ from the "good" parents of yore.

The question really is why the American public has grown so tired of seeing those American families in their daily lives. Is it simply that we've become oversaturated and bored with the same overt attempts at teaching us morality? Is it that storytelling has evolved to more creative, stimulating plateau? Or is it reflective of the fact that Americans are simply less concerned with family values than they were a decade ago. Personally, I think it's some combination of the first and the second.

Donorschoose.org

I'm sure this is old web news, but as someone who values education I wanted to post this so everyone could check out the program and possibly find a project that they would want to support.

Not only is this a brilliant example of using technology toward positive social change, by connecting donors with projects in need of funds it provides at least a glimmer of transparency and accountability in our education system--something not often found with programs that tend to dump money on schools instead of holding teachers accountable for results and ensuring quality educations. If there were a mechanism that could maintain the flow of funds to projects that needed through public channels more efficiently than at present, I would welcome it.  Far too often the stories of underfunded schools that deserve a chance and over funded administrative waste in others pervade our educational system. Until then, it is comforting to see highly motivated social capitalists and the programs that they build moving to fill in the gaps of our nation's state educational systems.

The bottom line: DonorsChoose it is great mechanism for change and should provide a boon to our country's needy schools.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Blackwater stresses that their recent name change is part of a reorganization of the umbrella company's priorities--a shift from direct armed engagement to training. The new conglomerate, Xe (zee) may have a new name, but must carry with it the burden of atrocity, stigma of being an accomplice to a misguided invasion and draconian methodology that (hopefully) lives in the history books.

More Phelps

If Michael Phelps were to have committed his egregious infraction in Newark, NJ later this year, he would've fallen under the jurisdiction of Mayor Cory Booker's community courts. These courts, the first of their kind in New Jersey, allow local residents to decide if low-level drug infractions warrant public community service.

Instead, South Carolina police are spending money, time and resources trying to put him in jail, where Phelps would be unnecessarily taking up more state money, time and resources.

Good News! Cancer Risk Assessment Is Here...

...but only if you're white of course. It looks like the National Cancer Institute released a snazzy, fancy online protocol that helps people identify their approximate risk for colon cancer. The catch?

The catch is that it only works for whites.

That’s too bad, since blacks are at higher risk than whites for colorectal cancer, developing it and dying of it at higher rates, and recent reports suggest the racial gap is widening.

The new screening tool, developed by the National Cancer Institute and available at www.cancer.gov/colorectalcancerrisk, asks roughly 20 questions, the first two about race and ethnic background.

If the user answers “Hispanic” or “Black or African-American,” a box of red text pops up that says, “At this time the risk calculations and results provided by this tool are only accurate for non-Hispanic white men and women ages 50 to 85.” The text refers readers to another Web site for more information.

Financial Incentives for Smoking Cessation

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine observes that when given a financial incentive, smokers are more likely to quit for a given period of time. In particular, smokers were three times more likely to quit for six months when given approximately up to $750.

This raises several questions regarding study methodology and psychology. The question that sprung quickly into mind was how the payment structure worked. Were study participants paid after completion? Were they paid in advance? Was the payment in the form of a monthly stipend pending proof of smoking cessation? Each of these structures, of course, would have a vastly different effect on the outcome and provide different inferences about the human condition. Surely, for example, if a person were to be paid upon completion of a study, he or she would be more likely to quit smoking. I know that this is not exactly the point of the study -- rather it is more of an economics question to see generally how large the incentive would have to be for smokers to temporarily cease their bad habit. Yet, I am actually fascinated by the psychology underpinning this issue.

I took a look at the source study in the NEJM (a note to readers: you may be able to only view the abstract of the study, as I have a subscrition to the Journal). As suspected, the study participants were periodically interviewed and paid part of the total reward during each interview if they had successfully stopped smoking (proved with a cotinine test) and the rest upon completion. This suggests that individuals would accept some form of reward (not necessarily financial) to temporarily relinquish a bad habit, but I wonder what would happen if the study were expanded for a significantly lengthier period. Suppose the investigators tracked participants for a decade, two decades, etc and offered a substantially larger reward for completion. What if these participants were paid a monthly stipend rather than a lump sum? Would smokers permanantly give it up?

My guess is not. In general, I think, individuals are willing to accept small probabilities of harm or death for small rewards (i.e. jaywalkers accept a small chance of getting killed by a car in order to save a few seconds of time). Conversely, individuals might be willing to accept small monetary rewards to spare some temporary pleasures (cigarette smoke), but are probably not as likely once the magnitude of the risks and rewards are increased.

Give Michael Phelps a F***ing Break

Really? Arrests? For smoking pot at a party? Seriously?

Somebody please tell these South Carolina police that they're nice people. Pat them on the back, take their picture with the mayor, hell, throw a kitten in a tree for them to rescue and then get some people to applaud them for it. Because clearly they're bored or publicity-starved or something. They're investigating the infamous party where serial-gold-medalist Michael Phelps was photographed perpetrating the most dastardly of crimes: taking a hit from a bong! (After concluding their investigation of possible marijuana use at a college-age party, these police will likely get to the bottom of whether alcohol is consumed at bars.) The cops are arresting people involved to build a case against Phelps like he's some kingpin on the phone with Columbia between races.

Hey! We have this incredible athlete that inspired us by reaching unimaginable heights. Let's ruin his life! Because we have to think about the children. Because what if they see him giggling and eating fistfuls of cake? We won't be able to stop them from buying black light posters. And we all know how ugly those are.

Instead of this incident suggesting that society itself is crumbling and we have no one to look up to, maybe it says this: you can be highly functional, even the highliest functional, and still occasionally enjoy functioning high. Maybe, and I know this sounds crazy, but maybe smoking pot isn't so bad an offense as to warrant destroying this guy. We still revere stars like Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle, and they took years off their careers and lives with that dangerous drug that we love so much, alcohol. Watch a baseball game today and count how many beer commercials you see. But since pot is the drug we've arbitrarily decided is tearing apart our moral fabric, Phelps has to go from national hero to green-lunged monster.

But not all is lost for poor Michael. Maybe they won't put him on the next Wheaties box, but I bet he's high in the running for the Cheetos bag.

Stimulus Agreement

The House and the Senate reached an agreement on the stimulus bill. I think the Economist's Free Exchange put it best:

The total is now down to about $789 billion. Coverage of the negotiations again suggests that getting the headline figure below $800 billion was a high priority and again offers nothing in the way of explanation as to just why that's the case.

I'm about as stumped as any of you.

South of the Border

So, the solution to an increasingly unstable neighbor is to to erect a wall between us and them and let them sort it out? While America pours money, men and material into Iraq and Iran thousands are killed in un-civil violence right next door. Instead of working with Mexican authorities to stem the trafficking of drugs into America and to cut off the producers of the problem, solutions like the wall are instituted and send out a strong message of unwillingness to cooperate while only emboldening the drug dealers. Is there not a way to make this crisis a priority on par with our current commitments overseas, or will we see this ongoing tragedy fall along the lines of 'unimportant' policy?

TALF!

"Mr. Geithner wants us to believe that TALF is the way forward, but it is truly a backward initiative. And when we view it as the backward initiative it is, TALF falls FLAT."

OK, no one has actually said this. Also, I currently know nothing about TALF. But how am I supposed to be confident in a program that, after 11 weeks of planning, is left open to such a pithy line of attack?

Cory Booker's State of the City, My State of Mind

I went to Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker's State of the City address yesterday, and a curious thing happened. I believed him. I believed in him. Maybe that's as corny as it sounds, but it's the truth. I didn't think I was listening to a politician motivated by his self interest or using his rhetoric for sound bites (though there were many). I was listening to someone who gets it, who wants to do what was right for the city, who feels he is serving a calling that means something more than power or fame or recognition. He wants to make life better for his citizens, and he is really doing it.

I feel naive saying so. I know how easy it is for inertia, for bureaucracy, for the overwhelming challenges facing a long-neglected city or for the lure of political ambition to tamp down the loftiest intentions. I've seen The Wire. But I don't know about any behind-the-scenes dealing or hypocrisy, and the sheen hasn't worn off for me yet. And maybe it's a betrayal of my journalistic curiosity, but if anything like that existed, I can almost say I wouldn't want to know. Because right now, I'm thinking about the positivity, the inspiration I felt when he was on that stage, and that's what's real. It's that perception that's making me proud to work in Newark and looking to move to Newark. And maybe it's that perception that's making another person or a company feel the same way, making someone or many someones stop and rethink their assumptions about what has been for so long a maligned place.

I just think he understands. He understands that a renaissance is for every citizen, not just those who can afford to live in tony redevelopment. He understands that minor drug offenders and other quality-of-life criminals need help and not prison. He understands that ex-offenders need to be brought in from the margins and given a second chance. He understands that the future of our cities is energy efficient.

And a lot of people seem to feel the same way. He has an 80% approval rating. Violent crime is down by double digits. Newark has seen more affordable housing, free tax preparation centers, high profile donations and partnerships with celebrities like Shaquille O'Neal and Bon Jovi and Oprah (hey, perception counts), and tons of groundbreakings and ribbon-cuttings (plus a kind of weird sounding project involving Shaq's development of a modern dinner-theater).

I know how I sound: Gushing, starry-eyed, and anything but dispassionate. But I'm aching for some good news, and in this city, with this mayor, I feel like I found it.

More Gyro Please!

From the NYTimes:

After nearly five years of follow up, about 275 people in the healthy group developed mild cognitive impairment. People who closely adhered to a Mediterranean diet had a 28 percent lower risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, compared to those whose eating habits were the least like a Mediterranean diet. Moderate followers of a Mediterranean diet also benefited, showing a 17 percent lower risk than the lowest-scoring group.

A Mediterranean diet also appeared to slow decline in those already diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. Among the 482 men and women with mild cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, 106 developed Alzheimer’s disease about four years later. But among those who strictly adhered to the Mediterranean diet, risk of Alzheimer’s was 48 percent lower, while risk was 45 percent lower among those who ate a moderate version of the diet.

Increase Government Spending

Justin Wolfers thinks that a stimulus package should be more oriented on government spending, rather than tax cuts. He presents a clear explanation as to why.

Our current problem is deficient aggregate demand. The government can raise total spending either by buying more stuff, or it can lower taxes and hope that consumers take their tax breaks to the mall. If consumers do indeed spend their full tax cuts (a big if), you might think that either approach stimulates aggregate demand in roughly equal measure.

But that’s not the whole story. Tax cuts stimulate both aggregate demand and aggregate supply. If taxes are temporarily lower, they make working today more attractive than working tomorrow, and thus increase labor supply. This boost to the nation’s productive capacity means that a tax-cut-based stimulus doesn’t do as much to narrow the gap between output and what we can produce.

Under normal circumstances, this doesn’t present a problem, because the Fed can lower interest rates to close this output gap. But right now, the Fed has set interest rates as low as they can go, and so different principles apply. Eggertsson’s concern is that a big output gap will lead inflation to fall, leading real interest rates to rise in the middle of the recession. These higher real interest rates further dampen economic activity, and with the Fed powerless to offset this, there’s the very real risk of a deflationary spiral. And so a tax-cut-based fiscal stimulus might actually backfire.

This is What Happens When Physicists Write Poetry

A Problem in Dynamics
James Clerk Maxwell

An inextensible heavy chain
Lies on a smooth horizontal plane,
An impulsive force is applied at A,
Required the initial motion of K.

Let ds be the infinitesimal link,
Of which for the present we've only to think;
Let T be the tension, and T + dT
The same for the end that is nearest to B.
Let a be put, by a common convention,
For the angle at M 'twixt OX and the tension;
Let Vt and Vn be ds's velocities,
Of which Vt along and Vn across it is;
Then Vn/Vt the tangent will equal,
Of the angle of starting worked out in the sequel...

Hat Tip: Build on Facts.

Gimme Only What I Need

I found this to be interesting. Today's Economix column presented some survey data from the Pew Research Center on goods that consumers consider "luxury" or "necessity" stratified by year and age. Take a look at the following charts from the NYTimes:

Take a look at what consumers considered "television" to be, in particular. Notice that respondents who felt that television was a necessity consistently hovered around 60% from 1973 to 2006. Also notice how, seemingly counterintuitively, more of these people are older, with about 71% ranking it a necessity in the 50 - 64 and 73% in the 65+ range. This is actually not that surprising, however. As the column notes, much of this is probably due to the fact that younger populations have found new means of watching television shows (internet, DVDs, etc.). I also suspect that older populations use television as a considerable passtime once retired. Though, I wonder what the data would look like had children under the age of 18 been included in the sample.

Still, it is interesting to have this bird's eye view of what consumers consider necessity today and realize how signfiicantly spending habits have changed over the years.

Young at Heart

Is it really just a matter of America and the world sitting on their hands and waiting for Iran to change internally? I think it is.

With a largely youthful population, there is at least a strong generational factor in the ability for political and social change to occur--a generation that has enough outlets for democracy that both highlight the pitfalls of theocratic rule and allow for moderate change (i.e. elections, universities, NGO's, etc.) In the meantime, the last thing that is needed is sanction after sanction (and worst of all, invasion) from nations that the youth of Iran could be looking toward as exemplars of functioning democratic societies.

Oops! Michael Steele DOES think fish are important!

Matt Yglesias points us to this interesting nugget of info:

For example, Nyhan reveals that back when Steele was Lieutenant Governor of Maryland serving under Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich, the Steele-Ehrlich administration touted removal of fish passage barriers as an important policy priority. They explained that “migration barriers are anything in the stream that significantly interferes with the upstream movement of fish” and “unimpeded fish passage is especially important for anadromous fish which live much of their lives in tidal waters but must move into non-tidal rivers and streams to spawn.” They warn that fish passage barriers, if unaddressed, create a situation in which “the diversity of the fish community in an area will be reduced and the remaining biological community may be out of natural balance.” They even set up a hotline you could call to report a fish passage barrier so that the state could remove it.

What? No, that can't be true. The removal of fish passage barriers is one of them useless stimulus provisions that those liberals are trying to frivolously waste government money on. Right?

Summers on the Stimulus

Via Calculated Risk.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me start out by putting up a little chart that shows the House and Senate versions of this stimulus package. Let me show our viewers that right now. The overall cost is about the same, the House $820 billion, Senate $827 billion, but the composition different. The Senate has about $100 billion more in tax cuts, but $40 billion less in state aid, $20 billion less in education, $15 billion less in payments to individuals, some other differences.

I know that, when the president was meeting with these moderate Republican senators this week, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine, he told them he endorsed their efforts to scrub the bill of what they called excessive spending. Does that mean the president prefers the Senate version to the House version?

SUMMERS: No, the president feels that, above all, we need a major program enacted very quickly that will create 3 million to 4 million jobs. He believes we need to perfect it in every way we can.

If there are programs that aren't going to serve important purposes, they should be -- they should be eliminated. He certainly believes that. He's open to good ideas from both -- from both sides.

But we're going to have to look at both these bills, assuming the Senate bill passes, as most people expect at this juncture, and craft the best possible approach going forward.
...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Some of the critics of the Senate bill say that the most important elements have been -- have been brought down. Paul Krugman, writing on his blog this morning, said, "Some of the most effective and most needed parts of the plan have been cut." He's citing especially that $40 billion in state aid.

And he goes on to say that, "My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years."

SUMMERS: There's no question we need -- we need a large, forthright approach here. There are crucial areas, support for higher education, that are things that are in the House bill that are very, very important to the president.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But will the Senate bill produce fewer jobs?

SUMMERS: There's no question -- no question what we've got to do is go after support for education. And there are huge problems facing state and local governments, and that could lead to a vicious cycle of layoffs, falling home values, lower property taxes, more layoffs. And we've got to prevent that.

So we're going to have to try to come together in the conference. And the president is certainly going to be active in sharing his views as that process -- as that process...

Ugh! It looks like my initial optimism on the Obama administration was naive. I'm slowly getting scared that our economy will not rebound. I am so sick of hearing about eliminating the programs that "serve no purpose." All of them serve a purpose. The purpose is creating jobs and boosting aggregate demand. But rather than focusing on cutting the fat of the bill, we should be worried about including things that will help state and local governments. And unfortunately, aside from adding tax cuts, the Senate version of the stimulus bill eliminated that sort of aid.How many more concessions will the Obama administration make before realizing that he is not a Republican? When will this stop???

Good Idea for Improving the Stimulus

Increase pork.

Here's how things stand: the stimulus bill is way too small, it's floundering in the Senate, and we stand possibly on the edge of a deflationary abyss.

Solution: find, say, the 5 most wavering Republican senators and offer them each $100 billion worth of pork. (2 isn't enough because 1 or 2 might defect and some Democrats might defect also -- although it's kind of hard to imagine a Democrat joining a Republican filibuster under the circumstances),

That solves both problems: the stimulus bill will be big enough (if perhaps less evenly distributed in its impact than one might hope -- but multiplier effects will spread out over space), and it will survive a cloture vote.

Problem solved. No depression. Happy days are here again.

Probably one of the best ideas I've ever heard. In all seriousness though, I don't exactly see the problem with including a large amount of pork spending in the stimulus package. The point, as I see it, is to combat deflation by investing money in projects that could create jobs, raise aggregate demand, and prices. In fact, some argue that useless pork projects is where we should be putting our money. Let me outsource this:

All alliteration aside (but apparently now actively assonant), the general purpose of stimulus packages is to mobilize the economy's unused resources, and, in this particular case, to (sorry, I can't help it) prevent prices from plummeting. Does the presence of pork in a package (really, I'm sorry, but I give up) in any way hinder the pursuit of such purposes? As far as the deflation issue is concerned, useless projects are precisely the place we should be putting our power. Useful projects will augment aggregate supply and thus push against the attempt to arrest falling prices. Instead of one bridge to Nowhere, let's have two! Just so the builders of those bridges can use up labor and make it harder for others to hire, thus halting the hemorrhage of wages and helping stabilize the price level.

My other point is that, in any case, pork projects actually will be useful to someone. Somebody wants to drive to Nowhere, and that's why they want to have the bridge built. It might be pointless to divert resources toward such projects when the economy is already using most of its resources, but today (and in a few months, when there will be even more slack resources), the pointless thing would be to let those resources be wasted. Pork may not be the best use of those resources, but it's better than nothing.

And there is also the secondary effect, the Keynesian multiplier. The people hired to build bridges to Nowhere will spend some of their new wages on things that they want. When those things are produced, the resources involved are clearly being put to good use, because they create something that somebody wants and is willing to pay for.

Update: Matt Yglesias weighs in on the issue of pork spending regarding the removal of fish barriers:

With everything in this debate, though, if you understand what’s happening you understand that the point isn’t that a reduction in the number of fish passage barriers will stimulate the economy. The point is that to stimulate the economy you need to identify projects that will employ people and materials. But ideally we don’t want to employ people and materials doing something totally pointless. Removing fish passage barriers will, I assume, have environmental benefits and ensure the long-term viability of fish populations. That’s good for the fish, probably good for water quality, and probably beneficial to people whose livelihoods depend on fishing or the viability of the tourism and recreation industries.

The Bare Necessities?

It seems that Brazilian courts are expanding the definition of what is an essential good.

(Link courtesy of that oh-so-lovely web clip scroller on the top of Gmail)

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Programmer Scorned

And we thought financial irresponsibility and poor investing were the only pressing items that Fannie Mae had to deal with. Reminds me of Office Space, but a little more severe.

Re: NIMNHCP

Earier, T wrote:

I think it's precisely the health habits and lifestyles of Americans that keep the estimated price tag on a national health program so high.

I disagree. He is absolutely right that there is something uniquely unhealthy about the the American lifestyle -- smoking, obesity rates, etc., and that this contributes to the high cost of health care. However, this factor is certainly not among the highest that contribute to exorbitant health care costs. Take a look at Paul Krugman's column from November 2007 in the NYTimes, where he notes that the "Cheeseburger" theory of American health care costs has been drastically overstated, and points to evidence from McKinsey Global Institute. In reality, the main contributors of the increasing rate of skyrocketing health care costs in the United States are

a)Age -- baby boomers are now getting to the age where they are experience drastic health problems and require more attention and

b) Technology - This country has invested a lot of money in financing improvements in health technology, which has ironically caused an increase in utilization of health services. If people want MRIs, they can go get MRIs and it costs the bucks.

Music

It is an understatement that Apple (and particularly Steve Jobs) has redefined the delivery of music to consumer with iTunes. Not only has the digital delivery service changed how music gets in the hands of listener but also what gets listened to. Apple's ability to dictate what music sold is not malevolent or conspiring, but the charts do point the direction of music to some extent. That song you hear on Grey's Anatomy during the wistfully emotionally scene with the camera zoom-out will undoubtedly be a number one on iTunes minutes after the show. The popularity meter will rocket that song to further purchases by those who can see quite plainly what is popular.

The move to DRM (digital rights management) free material is fantastic (for all digital media, including video games). At the same time, the music companies have the ability of flexible pricing which does allows iTunes to profit from nuanced marketing and the consumer to benefit from occasionally great deals on content. Overall I think that iTunes has made it that much easier for people to get and share music and that is a good thing. The Times does well to highlight the dynamic between Apple and the record companies in the classic context of producer vs. distributor through the lens of the new music climate.

Why do we care about shareholders?

“We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system,” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said.

Why? Maybe someone can explain this to me. Why does it make any sense for taxpayers to give billions (or more) to these banks and not own the banks? Why are profits privatized and losses nationalized? I'm not saying anything new. Krugman has repeated this refrain ad nauseum. But I'm not asking rhetorical questions. I genuinely don't get it. The government bought preferred stock so as not to dilute existing shareholders' stake. But why the hell are we jumping through hoops to protect these shareholders? Why?

If I invest in a company by buying stock, and that company goes broke, I lose my money. Nobody protects me. But if a bank goes broke — the precious shareholders! We can't let anything happen to them! Please, give our money to the same people who just blew up our economy and give us nothing in return. We don't need any control over these banks beyond the tisk-tisking power of politicians. Just don't hurt the shareholders!

These banks are broke. They would be distant memories were it not for government life support. So why aren't the shareholders who invested in these now-bankrupt banks already wiped out? If not for the bailout, there would be no banks to hold shares of. Someone please explain it to me. Seriously.

Not in My National Health Care Plan (NIMNHCP)

Check out this post on Matthew Yglesias' blog

I think it's precisely the health habits and lifestyles of Americans that keep the estimated price tag on a national health program so high.  While I think that a comprehensive program is indeed something the government should provide, there are many American health habits that will turn even a great attempt at a glutted, faulty and unjust system.

These are outliers (to some degree), but why should a healthy American pay for the costs associated with his neighbors 20 year smoking habit or his other neighbors chronic heart problems directly developed from obesity. For years I always heard this argument as the main reason why a national health program is 'unjust', but considering the fattier foods that average Joe America eats, the hours he does not spend at the gym and myriad other harmful things he does to his body, whatever plan arises will certainly have to draw the line in some places.

More Republican Opposition

Oy. Via Mark Thoma, here is a snippet of another Andrew Leonard post:

[Richard] Shelby said he wants to "shelve" the existing bill and "start all over and look at it in a bipartisan way." But all that means is that he wants the bill to be written as if the Republicans were still in power, ladling out tax cuts to all and sundry. Meanwhile, he says the real focus should be on fixing the bank system.

"What will turn the economy around is us finding some solution to the financial frozen assets and banks not making loans because that's what will create jobs."

But as the interviewer astutely noted, that's precisely what the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), currently being rejiggered by the Obama team, is for. And Shelby voted against TARP -- even though the initiative was cooked up by his own party. I guess when the choice is between bailing out banks, and bailing out the general public, the Republican option is a no-brainer: help the rich!

Bipartisan Politics

I more or less agree with what Paul Krugman is saying here:

You see, this isn’t a brainstorming session — it’s a collision of fundamentally incompatible world views. If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it’s that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir, and government spending is almost always bad.

Obama may be able to get a few Republican Senators to go along with his plan; or he can get a lot of Republican votes by, in effect, becoming a Republican. There is no middle ground.

I agree that it's true that Obama has made way too many concessions in the current stimulus plan to pave the way for his doctrine of bipartisan cooperation. As it stands, I believe, the Senate bill contains some $300 billion in tax cuts, which I'm sure is more than Obama had initially wanted. I think on the one hand that it is admirable that he is geniunely attempting to commit to his word / his lofty ideal / his political platform during the election of ending the era of partisan politics (or at least ushering in an era of cooperation). Yet, after all the concessions, we know what happened in the Assembly. If Obama is going to water down the stimulus in favor of an ideal -- if he's going to include big business tax cuts, remove provisions for family planning, etc, it would be nice if there would be some actual, noticeable political results at the very least. I think it's time for Obama to break out the big guns.

Is it too much to expect out political leaders to work together?

Building Families the Economic Way

From The Economist's Free Exchange:

MULTIPLE births are in hot demand and possibly recession proof. In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatments run about $25,000 and if you desire more than one child, having twins means you won’t need future treatments:

Jennifer Gilbert, 40, founder of event company Save the Date, admits she did IVF hoping for twins. "I wanted three kids," says the Tribeca mom, whose daughter Blaise, 4, was conceived via IVF. "My husband wanted two. So when we used IVF to try for a second child, I was thrilled when I found out we were pregnant with twins. It's two for the price of one." She's now a mother of 1-year-old boys, Saxton and Grey. "I have friends who go through IVF praying that two will take. It's an expensive, emotional process so it makes sense that people want it over with."

The New Deal and Unemployment

Apparently, columnists at the Wall Street Journal believe that the policies of the New Deal did not diminish the nation's unemployment rate as much as it should have -- in fact, perhaps not at all!

This reality shows most clearly in the data -- everyone's data. During the Depression the federal government did not survey unemployment routinely as it does today. But a young economist named Stanley Lebergott helped the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington compile systematic unemployment data for that key period. He counted up what he called "regular work" such as a job as a school teacher or a job in the private sector. He intentionally did not include temporary jobs in emergency programs -- because to count a short-term, make-work project as a real job was to mask the anxiety of one who really didn't have regular work with long-term prospects.

Sure, well I suppose if you exclude from the employment rate those people who were, you know, employed by New Deal policies, the statistics would look a lot weaker. Here's Andrew Leonard on the issue:

Of course, some would argue that "masking the anxiety" of workers who did not know how they were going to feed their children or put a roof over their heads is precisely the job of government in times of great economic turmoil. And that, really, is where the whole project of New Deal revisionism breaks down.

The bottom line conservative position on the New Deal is that, theoretically speaking, the economy would have returned to "normal" more quickly if FDR had refrained from interfering with the workings of the free market through his vast array of interventionist programs. Sadly for them, we never got a chance to find out, because the situation in 1933, when Roosevelt took office, demanded government action. Twenty-five percent of the nation was unemployed. Human suffering was immense. If the market had been left to work its problems out all by itself, further suffering in the near term would have been unimaginable. And not just unimaginable -- but also politically unacceptable.

If the New Deal actually extended the Great Depression, we might wonder, why was Roosevelt reelected three times? One explanation would be that the general public is an idiot, and I must confess, I've leaned toward that point of view myself after viewing the aftermath of Election Day in the U.S. on a number of occasions over the last three decades. But another explanation could be that a majority of voters experienced material improvements in the quality of their lives as a result of New Deal programs. This is a point of enduring frustration to conservatives, and they've expended vast effort over the years in their attempt to rewrite history and convince us that what our grandparents knew was wrong -- to the point that they've even tried to tell us that the people who built the fantastic Art Deco structures at the high school my daughter is currently attending were "unemployed."

Via Mark Thoma.