EclectEcon

Why Don't More [North] Americans Like Jazz?

Dyske Suematsu says Americans like songs with lyrics, even [especially] rap music, but are far less interested in music that has no words. Suematsu notes that many foreigners, while liking N. American music, do not listen to the words so much and hence have a better appreciation of music for the sake of the music itself. Suematsu also claims that these foreigners have better understanding of and richer appreciation for instrumental music, including jazz.



And here is why [h/t to RonN]:

... American ears are getting lazier and lazier. It wasn’t so long ago that most people knew how to play a musical instrument or two. Now the vast majority of Americans couldn’t tell the difference between a saxophone and a trumpet. Thanks partially to music videos, music is now a form of visual art. The American culture is so visually dominant that a piece of music without visuals cannot command full attention of the audience. For Americans, music is a background element, a mere side dish to be served with the main course. If they are forced to listen to a piece of instrumental music without any visuals, they don’t know what to do with their eyes, much like the way a nervous speaker standing in front of a large audience struggles to figure out what to do with his hands. Eventually something visual that has nothing to do with the music grabs their attention and the music is push[sic] to the background.



... If we were to reverse this trend, we would need to make a conscious effort in promoting the abstract aspect of music. For instance, play more instrumental music in schools or teach how to play an instrument instead of how to sing. We could go as far as to teach kids in school instrumental music only, because their musical exposure outside of school would be dominated by non-instrumental music anyway. It would be a good way to balance things out.

It is certainly the case that children in the schools in this century have far less exposure to instrumental music than my generation did. But as self-anointed chair of the Philistine Liberation Organization, I have to ask whether it really matters.



The sad, simple fact is that even I, someone who knows a little about music, don't much care for tonnes of improvisational jazz, where I sit and listen to talented musicians try to make things up on the fly. I do really like the older jazz of Brubeck (especially with Paul Desmond) and Miles Davis, to name a few, and when I was quite young I enjoyed myself at some jazz performances. But for the most part I prefer baroque muzak instead.



.

Rigoletto at the Toronto Opera Repertoire

Yesterday, out of the blue, I received an e-mail from Alon Eshet, a former student from one of my introductory economics courses, saying,

A number of years ago, outside of Economics 020, we discussed theatre and you mentioned that should a student take part in any production, you'd consider attending. Well, I was reminded of your blog a few days ago when reading http://www.mises.com and thought to invite you to a production of Verdi's Rigoletto we're performing. I realize this is very short notice and I wish I had remembered to send this out earlier, but all the information is here: www.toronto-opera.com (I have a lead role on Saturday's performance)

It looks as if this coming weekend is the last weekend of performances, for those of you who live in/near Trono and who might be interested. I might make it, but I must confess to having some concern about how members of the PLO might react if I do.



From the write-up about the Toronto Opera Repertoire:

Cheap tickets (not much more expensive than a movie). No fussy dress code. Down-to-earth, approachable singers who might just be your friends and neighbours. Toronto Opera Repertoire makes opera accessible — both to the audience, through Supertitles in English, and to the performers.



... Our performances are fully staged, professionally costumed, and cost just $22 (less, if you’re a student or senior). ...

Be sure to read Alon's bio!

Aboriginal Land Claims in Caledonia

Things have been more than just "tense" in Caledonia, Ontario, with many native Canadians claiming a legal and moral right to land that was being developed for residential use. John Hagopian, writing in the Hamilton Spectator, critiques those legal and moral claims [thanks to Jack]:

It's time for the politically incorrect truth to be told. In short, the Six Nations have no legal rights to the lands in question, and have had none for over a century.



They have never had any rights to land in Ontario by virtue of aboriginal title or by treaty. For a tract of land along the Grand River, they obtained in 1784 merely an occupancy permit from British colonial Governor Frederick Haldimand that endured only at the pleasure of the Crown. After 1784, the Six Nations surrendered to the Crown various portions of the Grand River tract, and by the middle of the 19th century all that remained was the land contained in the current Six Nations reserve south of Brantford. That is a summary of their legal rights.



As for moral obligations, a review of the history of the Six Nations Indians indicates that they are not innocent victims of land robbery by European colonizers, but are instead themselves the culprits who terrorized, conquered, and displaced many other Indian tribes whose lands and resources they sought to control.

These land claims, along with the legal, historical, and moral criticisms, remind me of the various historical claims I have read about land in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Emotions run high and cloud whatever clarity there may be in the law.

Economics and the Traveling Salesman Problem

My younger son, Adam Smith Palmer, is studying computational physics and recently mentioned "the Traveling Salesman Problem" [TSP]. No, the TSP is not a problem involving where or with whom a visiting traveling salesperson must sleep when his/her car breaks down and s/he seeks assistance at nearby farm house. Here, from Wikipedia, is a description of the problem:

Given a number of cities and the costs of traveling from any city to any other city, what is the cheapest round-trip route that visits each city exactly once and then returns to the starting city?



... It can be shown that the requirement of returning to the starting city does not change the computational complexity of the problem.

My question is: Why does the problem require or constrain the salesperson to visit each city once and only once?

• I can readily imagine there might be solutions in which it is cheaper, even necessary, for the traveling salesperson to visit some cities more than once to reduce the costs of visiting other cities.
• For example, how can one arrive at a solution if the problem involves a city at the tip of a peninsula with only one road in and out (e.g. Tobermory, Ontario, at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, ignoring the ferry to Manitoulin Island)? This question reminds me of the old joke about Poland and the Mongol hordes.
• And from the revenue side, the constraint that the formulation of the problem, requiring the salesperson to visit each city no more than once, seems to assume that the incremental or marginal revenue of visiting a city more than once during the grand trip would be zero. Surely it is plausible that visiting some cities more than once and some cities not at all would be more profitable than the constrained solution of visiting each city exactly once.

Maybe the problem has some applicability in integrated circuitry, but I'm not sure it should be cast in terms of a profit-maximizing traveling salesperson. Surely the optimal route of a traveling salesperson should consider the incremental or marginal costs and marginal revenues of visiting each city. Indeed, most traveling salespersons do, in fact, spend more time visiting markets/cities with higher expected net revenues and less time in markets/cities with lower expected net revenues.

Time to Cash Out?

I've been pessimistic about the equity markets for a long time. If you had followed my advice from last year, you'd have partially missed out on a long rise in stock prices. :-(



At this point, Irwin Yamamoto agrees. He has many reasons, listed here, but the best is this:

With all the frenzy, mania and froth, Wall Street failed to take note of how corporate insider selling has increased to its highest pace in 20 years.

He recommends going all cash (plus maybe shorting the market), but I don't think I'll go that far.



Also, see this in The Economist, which points out that margin borrowing is at its highest ratio since the 1920s.



[h/t to Jack]

A Cultural Tax on Employment?

Several years ago, a colleague told me that in many developing countries, when a person gets a job, suddenly dozens of relatives show up and expect to be supported by that person. But because this reaction is expected by possible job-seekers, it amounts to a fully anticipated tax that, not surprisingly, deters people from seeking reasonably paying jobs in the legitimate market, forcing more work into the underground economy.



Here is another effect [via Judith]. A Saudi female physician is being forced to divorce her husband, in part so her family can arrange her marriage to a partner of their choosing, and in part because they are dependent on her financial support.

The case of Rania Albou-Enin, a 27-year-old Saudi physician has caused particular concern. In her last month of pregnancy, she is anxiously awaiting an appeals court decision in a case of forced divorce brought by he father.



Her husband, Saud Al-Khaledi, is being held in a police jail in Alkhobar, according to her lawyer Ibrahim Al-Behairi. Rania, who had been paying all her family's bills, has claimed she was beaten by one of her brothers and that the family brought the case to ensure they would not lose their main breadwinner.

Update: thanks to John Chilton for reminding me about this piece by Tyler Cowen, which sets out the family tax on employment. Be sure to read both the piece and all the informative examples provided in the comments!

Dangerous Joke

The next time the boss or maybe an annoying colleague or that officious pest from IT stops by to visit you, click on this link and shout "oh my god!".



[via Stephen Pollard, who recommends a different use.]

Racism and Islamophobia

Is it racist to question whether Islamists can integrate into Western society? Surely some Muslims can and do (e.g. Salim Mansur,who writes a weekely column for the Toronto Sun newspaper chain). And yet I think it is a reasonable question to contemplate.



Raphael Israeli says no.



Not everyone agrees with him, of course.



And Raphael Israeli responds to his critics here.



Be sure, too, to see the book, Londonistan, by Melanie Phillips.

. .

Exam Answers

My nephew sent me these. I have no idea where he got them. Some of them are "tears-streaming-down-the-cheeks" funny.

How Did They Know Who Really Had Been Driving???

from BenS:

Woman ticketed for having sex with passenger on highway fast lane

By Reuters



Police investigating why a car was blocking traffic in the fast lane of a major highway on Sunday found a couple inside having sex.



A police spokesman said the female driver and her male passenger gave in to their passions without pulling over to the side of the road, causing congestion and leaving other motorists having to swerve to dodge their stationary vehicle.



A patrolman gave the woman a ticket for holding up traffic.

What impresses me about this situation is the implied calculation that must have been made by the couple, assuming they are rational maximizers: the incremental benefits of pulling to the shoulder of the road were expected to be less than the incremental costs of doing so, even without considering the benefits to other drivers had the couple pulled off the road. That has to say something of significance.

Wimbledon Eschews the Labour Theory of Value

The All-England Club, which hosts the Wimbledon tennis tournament, has announced that beginning in 2007, the prize money will be the same for male and female winners. But there has been considerable resistance to providing equal prize money there, even though the other grand slam tournaments do.

The All England Club has gradually reduced the pay gap over the years, but held out against equal prizes as a matter of principle.



[Club Chairman (sic), Tom] Phillips had cited surveys showing that men give better value than the women. The men play best-of-five set matches, while the women play best of three. Also, the women make more money overall because they also play in doubles, while the top men usually play only singles.



"It just doesn't seem right to us that the lady players could play in three events and could take away significantly more than the men's champion who battles away through these best-of-five matches," Phillips said last year. "We don't see it as an equal rights issue."

The important question is not who works harder or who has what opportunities to earn extra income from other matches. Instead, the important question is who is expected to generate how much revenue. And judging from the ratings and attendance, it appears that a three-game women's tournament generates at least as much revenue as a five-game men's tournament. If so, it makes sense that the women's prize money would be at least as large as the men's prize money.



What puzzles me, though, is why these grand slams do not extract more rent from the contenders.

Last year, men's champion Roger Federer received $1.170 million and women's winner Amelie Mauresmo got $1.117 million.

Would the top talent really give Wimbledon a miss if the prize money were "only" $1 million?



The answer, presumably, has to do with entry conditions. If Wimbledon offered only $500,000 as the top prize, how long would it take for some other tournament to emerge, claiming a position as one of the top four grand slam tournaments? Possibly Dubai?

The Evolutionary Extinction of the Penny

When I first wrote about getting rid of the penny (one-cent coin) nearly twenty years ago, one of the points I emphasized was that no matter what policy makers decide, no matter how emotionally attached some people might be to the penny, eventually with continued inflation, people will just stop using the coin. The transaction costs of using it will outweigh whatever benefits there are.



It looks as if we in North America are slowly moving in this direction [with thanks to Jack and CT]:

A recent survey conducted by Desjardins Financial Group shows only 37 percent of Canadians still pay with pennies and the organization is suggesting we ditch the one-cent coins, following in the footsteps of countries like Australia and New Zealand.



There are few things, if any at all, you can purchase with a single Canadian cent. Long gone are the days of penny candy, penny matchbooks and penny arcades. A one-cent stamp even costs more because of the tax.



The coinage also costs more to produce than it's actually worth. Desjardins estimates that producing pennies and keeping them in circulation costs Canadians an estimated $130 million per year. [EE: for more details, see this.]



There are about 20 billion one-cent pieces in circulation yet the Canadian government continues to issue about 820 million a year to replace the ones tossed in fountains and thrown out.

Please, no arguments that getting rid of the penny will lead to higher prices:

• It hasn't in New Zealand and Australia, both of which got rid of their one-cent and two-cent coins long ago. And here is why:
• Competition will keep merchants all from rounding up automatically. And even if all merchants could round the purchases up,
• I quite frankly don't care if the final tally is always rounded up — I'd just as soon not get the pennies and would be just as happy if the merchants kept them.

I read recently that residents of Illinois are reluctant to give up a coin with Lincoln's image on it. There is an easy solution: The U.S. could take paper one-dollar bills out of circulation [and they will, sooner or later] and put Lincoln's image on a one-dollar coin, and Washingon's image on a two-dollar coin.



I have posted extensively about pennies in the past. For a list of some of the postings, see this.

The Music of Steve Reich

I'm sure many of you have heard of and heard the music of Steve Reich, but I had not until I chanced upon a performance of some of his music at the Jazz Festival in Copenhagen last summer. I had no idea what was being performed, but I loved it. The atmosphere was relaxed and, I am reluctant to use this term, "mellow" at the outdoor venue, with people coming and going, drinking beer, eating ice cream, and enjoying themselves. People's heads were bobbing in unison to the rhythm; and then there would be a chaotic interlude to the head-bobbing as the music developed a different cadence.



The music, I have come to learn, was typical Steve Reich: lots of percussion, including xylophones, marimbas, and other mallet instruments. Good examples of his music also appear on the CD, Sextet; Six Marimbas, which I just received from Amazon earlier this week. After the performance, I made my way through the crowd to talk with one of the musicians to ask if they had a CD out. He chuckled a bit and told me that this was the first time they had performed together. I then asked him about the music they had been playing, and he told me it was by Steve Reich.



Reich's music seems very repetitive, but as you listen to it, you begin to notice changes in the nuances, with a slight difference in nearly every bar (or whatever Reich uses for his music). Sometimes there's a slight change in the harmony, sometimes in the melody, but the music slowly progresses or evolves throughout the entire piece or movement.



I don't quite know how to classify Reich's music. Some might call it jazz, but there is little, if any, improvisation in it. Others might call it classical. But maybe "new age" is the best category for it.



Finally, if you have any idea what piece was being performed in Copenhagen, or if you know someone who performed in that group, please let me know.

. .



For more on Steve Reich, see this by Ted Frank. Also, Tyler Cowen recently mentioned the early looped tape music of Steve Reich.

Jimmy Carter's Bonfire of the Vanities

I have read many criticisms of Carter's book that accuses Israel of apartheid. Some have pointed out that even though he said he wrote the book to promote/provoke discussion, he steadfastly refuses to discuss the book in public with those who are experts, like Alan Dershowitz.



Here, though, is the very best substantive criticism of Carter's book I have read so far, with the title I used for this posting [h/t to Judith]. Excerpts:

Carter argues that because Israel has built a security barrier between Israel and the occupied West Bank, this amounts to building an “apartheid wall” to subjugate the Palestinians.



Carter totally ignores the fact that the barrier does not separate Jews from Arabs, and that Israel does not practise racial segregation. There are 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel, where they enjoy full political rights – there are 13 Arabs in the Knesset, one in the current cabinet, and one on the Supreme Court bench. Is this apartheid?



In fact the West Bank barrier was built only as a measure of last resort to stem the wave of homicidal bombings directed at Israel from the Palestinian territories. If there had been no campaign of bombings, there would be no barrier. Carter rails against the “apartheid wall,” but calls the suicide bombings “unfortunate for the peace process.”



Describing the calculated murder of over a thousand Israeli civilians by suicide bombers as “unfortunate,” while comparing Israel’s defensive measures against this campaign as “apartheid,” shows a serious moral blindness, not to mention complete lack of sympathy for Israel and its people.



... [T]he fundamental fact which Carter ignores is that the Palestinian leadership, backed by Syria and Iran, still aims to destroy the state of Israel .

[emphasis added]

David Suzuki: an ad hominem

I do not usually like ad hominem arguments.



Actually, to be honest, I usually do like them when they attack people with whom I disagree, but I do not find them persuasive. And sometimes they are just too much fun to resist. Here is a great one, attacking the integrity of noted Canadian geneticist and environmentalist, David Suzuki.

... Suzuki dismisses questions about the scientific integrity of Kyoto, characterizing as "a lot of baloney" [interviewer, John] Oakley’s observation that "a lot of scientists feel they're intimidated from speaking out…"



"2,500 scientists signed the IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change) Report on February 2!" Suzuki exclaims. (To hear the audio clip click here.)



... I decided to check this out for myself – and discovered that, in fact, only 51 individuals signed the IPCC Report released on February 2.



... After Suzuki insinuates that scientists who disagree with him are "shilling" for big corporations, Oakley asks him where he gets his funding. Suzuki replies that his foundation takes no money from governments and complains that “corporations have not been interested in funding us."



... Actually, the David Suzuki Foundation’s annual report for 2005/2006 lists at least 52 corporate donors including: Bell Canada, Toyota, IBM, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Microsoft, Scotia Capital, Warner Brothers, RBC, Canon and Bank of Montreal.



The David Suzuki Foundation also received donations from EnCana Corporation, a world leader in natural gas production and oil sands development, ATCO Gas, Alberta’s principle distributor of natural gas, and a number of pension funds including the OPG (Ontario Power Generation) Employees’ and Pensioners’ Charity Trust. OPG is one of the largest suppliers of electricity in the world operating 5 fossil fuel-burning generation plants and 3 nuclear plants... which begs the question – is Suzuki now pro-nuclear power?

This is a man who has his own television show on a network sponsored by Canadian taxpayers and then claims that he takes no money from gubmnt. Yeah, sure.

Isn't This Predatory Pricing... Or Dumping... Or Some Kind of Unfair Competition?

During the run-up to the Christmas season, Olevia sold LCD high-definition television sets for less than their average costs and probably less than the marginal costs of producing them. From the NYTimes:

If his Olevia line of televisions was ever going to get any attention from consumers, Vincent F. Sollitto Jr. would have to do something big, splashy and, in economic terms, just plain crazy.



On the day after Thanksgiving, Mr. Sollitto, the chairman and chief executive of Syntax-Brillian, had 32-inch Olevia liquid-crystal display TV sets selling at Circuit City for $475, almost half its regular price.



Syntax almost certainly lost money on the TVs. The flat screen that makes up about half the cost of an L.C.D. TV is about $350 on its own.

This is an excellent example of promotional, not predatory, pricing.

Olevia does not have the luxury of the name recognition enjoyed by Sharp and others. “A year ago we were nobody,” Mr. Sollitto said. “We were just trying to get people to hear our story.”



That is starting to change. Viewers of ESPN’s high-definition cable channels and its other media outlets are more familiar with the brand after a spate of advertising. Consumer Reports magazine recently rated an Olevia a best buy, along with a Sony.

This cannot possibly be predatory pricing. Even if Olevia were to drive other producers out of the market, they would not be able to raise the price to monopoly levels to extract supra-normal profits because the high prices would attract entry from large, well-established firms with deep purses who could withstand a price war much more easily than Olevia.



So, as a consumer, all I can say is, "Hurt me some more."

Inflation in Venezuela

A number of bloggers have written about the effects of price controls in Venezuela, including Phil Miller, Brian Ferguson, and Lynne Kiesling among others, all pointing out that price controls, in an attempt to put the lid on inflation, have created massive shortages.



Interestingly, I have not yet come across any blog postings that mention the rapid rate of growth of the money supply in Venezuela, and yet we all know that "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon [Milton Friedman]."



According to The Economist data, the Venezuelan money supply increased from 2,652 to 4,228 currency units over the past year. Given such a high rate of growth of the money supply, what surprises me is that nominal interest rates and the rate of inflation are not a lot higher. That makes me very suspicious that measured inflation is not picking up the rapid growth in prices in the underground and black markets.



In other words, the Chavez price controls are probably having some effect in keeping the lid on measured prices. But the resulting shortages are undoubtedly driving many markets underground, where, I'd venture, prices have been sky-rocketing.



The problem, of course, has been that Venezuela has a massive trade surplus because of the high price of oil and its huge oil exports, but the central bank has refused to sterilize the currency inflows, letting the money supply increase instead. And that's almost surely because Chavez has wanted to use those currency inflows for his give-away programmes.



For more thoughts along these lines, see The Emirates Economist and the comments there.

Does Canada Really "Need" More Graduate Students?

Last week, the C.D. Howe Institute released a study saying that "Canada Needs More Graduate Students." I usually agree with the results of the research done under the auspices of the C.D. Howe Institute, but I have two very sizable nits to pick with this one.

• First, I abhor seeing things cast as "needs". Anytime I read or hear about someone using the word "need", I figure they're trying to put their hands in someone else's pocket. They are, in reality, trying to get taxpayers to pony up for something that will benefit only a few. And in this case (surprise!) academicians think taxpayers ought to cough up more for graduate students, schools, research, etc. No vested interest there... No rent-seeking there, nosiree Bob!
• Second, In the increasingly global economy, or even with increased mobility within Canada, it is not at all clear to me that Canada, especially Eastern Canada, has or should try to develop, a comparative advantage in the production of graduate education. Instead, we should ship our good undergraduate students to the U.S. and elsewhere (including Alberta? see below), let the taxpayers of those jurisdictions foot the majority of the bill for the education, and then hire all the people we want (not need!) from those places.

Sadly, the report seems to confuse the idea that "to grow, we will want well-trained employees" with the conclusion "therefore the gubmnt should train 'em." It doesn't follow.



In fact, we should even consider closing down all our graduate schools and letting all the highly paid professors go wherever the market might take them. For every one of those profs who leaves, we can probably hire at least two assistant professors. We tell 'em we expect them to do research and keep current, but they won't have graduate courses to teach, and they won't have graduate students to be research assistants. I really doubt that undergrad education in Canada would suffer as a result. We would have more professors, albeit on average likely to be of lower research quality, but they would have a much lower student-faculty ratio.



Perhaps Canadians would be better off if Canada let others subsidize post-graduate education. We could then free-ride off their efforts and use our scarce resources to concentrate on something else.



There is one possible exception to this plan: Given that Alberta seems determined to plough a truckload of its oil revenues into research and post-graduate education (see this), perhaps the rest of Canada should try to free ride on Alberta (and the rest of the world). Even so, there is still no compelling evidence that the rest of Canada "needs" more graduate students.

Canada and Kyoto

Rory Leishman has terrific column about the attempt by Canada's opposition parties to embarrass or force the gubmnt into formulating a plan for Canada to honour the commitments made by the Liberal party under the Kyoto accords.

Under terms of the Kyoto Protocol, Canada is supposed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below the levels set in 1990 by 2012. The previous Liberal government signed this Kyoto Protocol on behalf of Canada, but failed to devise a plan for fulfilling the commitment.



... Having failed for two years to devise a plan for complying with Kyoto, how can Dion expect the Harper government to pull off this feat within 60 days? Dion knows full well that this deadline is preposterous. In a candid moment during last year’s election campaign, he admitted that he did not think that a Liberal government led by him would be able to slash Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions as required by the Kyoto Protocol within the next five years.



Dion had good reason for scepticism. It’s practically impossible for any government to have Canada comply with the Liberals’ rash Kyoto commitment According to the latest data from Environment Canada, Canada contributed about 758 megatonnes of green house gases to the atmosphere in 2004. That was 195 megatonnes above the Kyoto target.



... On the Kyoto issue, it’s evident that the Liberals are hypocritical. And the same goes for leaders of the New Democratic Party, Green Party and the Bloc Quebecois. They all must know that Canada cannot possibly comply with the reckless Kyoto commitment made by the Liberals without plunging the entire country into a dire economic crisis.

He also has a number of interesting comments about the economics of the Alberta oil sands and Canadian federalism.

Shopping Cart Economics

A couple of weeks ago, Alex Tabarrok informed us that February is "Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month".



My reaction to that notice (and to the comments posted there) is to ask why more supermarkets don't use coin-deposit mechanisms for their shopping carts. For example, SuperStores in Canada do not have any shopping carts available in the stores. Rather, you must pick up a cart in the parking lot. You put a loonie ($1 coin — hold on US readers, maybe you'll get one that isn't a collector coin soon) in a slot of the box attached to the handle of the cart. You shop. You take the cart back to your car and unload your purchases. Then you return the cart to the "cart corral" and plug something from a standard or another cart into the box on your cart to get your loonie back. In other words, it is a deposit system, not a rental system.



There are several drawbacks to this system, which I acknowledge, but which I think are minor and will be overcome with time and experience:

• When you are used to picking up a cart inside the store, it is disconcerting to go into the store, look around for a cart, and then realize you have to go back out to the parking lot to get a cart. It has taken me an embarrassingly high number of trips to learn this phase of the system.
• It takes awhile for people to remember to keep loonies with them in their car for the shopping carts, and if you need change, the line-up at the customer service desk can be so long that you might have to wait what feels like an eternity (maybe 15 - 30 seconds) just to get a friggin' loonie in change. This has been enough to cause some people to say at least once, "Damn, I don't have a loonie; let's go to Safeway instead."
• Watch your cart. I once left mine unattended and someone stole it. For a lousy loonie (of course: people respond to incentives). So I had to trudge back out to the parking lot and pay another deposit for another cart.

Those are minor problems, though, as I see them. There are also some big pluses to the system.

• There are no carts left lying around the parking lot, blocking parking spaces. If you don't return your cart to the cart corral, someone else grabs it pretty quickly to avoid the $1 deposit (and to get it back themselves when they finish their shopping)
• People don't take the carts home and leave them in the front of their building. Or, if they do, someone else brings the cart back just to get (and/or save) the loonie deposit.
• The store can save a fair amount of money by not having so many carts disappear. Those things are expensive because they have to be built to last through some serious use and punishment.
• Also, the store can save a fair amount of money by not having to hire young people to round up the strays several times each day and return them to the corral, and from there to the store. I expect this saving alone amounts to at least $100/day for each store.

So why don't more stores use this system? Surely we would get used to it eventually if we encountered it more often.

Carrots: Too Important to be Left to the Market

Brian Ferguson at Canadian Econoview takes note of a story that carrots and other vegetables may become important in many manufacturing processes:

Can you imagine it? Driving around in cars that are eighty per cent carrot? Flying in aircraft made out of turnips?



Clearly there are policy issues to be considered here. For example, give the immense potential of curran, it'll be important that we not be dependent on foreign, and possibly hostile, producers of carrots. There will have to be Pigovian subsidies to encourage the production of curran, and indeed of carrots themselves. And since industrial uses will compete with demand for carrots for human (not to mention rabbit) food uses, we'll need a central carrot governing body to allocate the crop between the various uses. Carrots are, after all, too important to be left to the market. And obviously we're going to need a strategic carrot reserve.



There's no time to waste. We've got to hop to it. Right now.

How Cold Is -20 C?

The other day my car had been left out of the garage overnight, and the temperature was -20°C when I got to it. When I picked up a coin that had been left in the car, it stuck to my fingers. Unfortunately, it fell off before I could take a picture of it.



Digression #1: Remember that when talking about temperatures, C stands for "Canadian" and F stands for "foreign".



Digression #2: Yes, the car started.



Digression #3: That same day, three different highways were closed because water mains near them froze and broke.

Toilet Paper Testimonial: Charmin "Extra Strong"

I walked out of the bathroom and said to Ms. Eclectic,

I can't believe I'm saying this.... I can't believe I'm about to sound like a friggin' commercial.... but what brand of toilet paper is that? It's the best we've ever had!

it turns out to be Charmin Extra Strong.







If it isn't available in your area, look for that tight-weave pattern in the above photo.

A&W - a Hang-out for Seniors?

Ms. Eclectic and I went to A&W for breakfast this morning. She had bacon and eggs and pronounced them fine. I had a ham and egg and cheese sandwich, and it was sub-mediocre. Let's face it, nothing lives up to McDonald's Egg McMuffin.



What struck me was that the theme is all 50s, with photos from A&Ws back then, when A&W was in its hey-day. And the music was all hits from the 50s and maybe very early 60s — like that used in American Graffiti. I liked the music, and kept feeling as if I wanted to get up and sing and dance along with it.



Maybe if/when I retire from my present job, instead of becoming a Wal-Mart greeter, I'll get a job at A&W.

.

Welcome Stephen Pollard to the PLO

Stephen Pollard is clearly a member of the Philistine Liberation Organization:

'Why should any government bother with the Arts?'



Naturally, I'll be arguing that it shouldn't.

Neato!Copenhagen Photography

Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from a webmaster in Copenhagen asking permission to use this photograph (click on it to see a reasonable resolution version of it) on their tourism website:

It originally appeared, unedited, here, along with a few other photographs I took in Copenhagen in July, 2006.



I guess they weren't interested in my photos of crowds and drunks in Copenhagen.

Iraq: Can the U.S. End a Civil War in Another Country?

What is the US hoping to accomplish in Iraq now, given it is there and given the situation there appears to be quite unstable? How can the U.S. possibly exit gracefully from Iraq? How can it possibly avoid foresaking its allies, leaving the country in a state of chaos?



I keep hoping that the U.S. knows and knew what it was and is doing in Iraq, and I am certain that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was an important mission. But I'm not so sure the result will be all that great now.



Here is another view from Lawrence Kaplan in the New Republic($). The teaser for the article says, inter alia,

Bush hasn't escalated our presence in Iraq to quell al Qaeda; he has sent them there to stop a civil war, a plan that has exceptionally little chance of success.

Minimum Wages and Immigration

The minimum wage [W-min] will not cause unemployment if it is set below the equilibrium wage rate [W-equil] for low-skill workers. One bit of evidence that many places are in this situation (W-min < W-equil) is the massive number of fast-food outlets that are advertising for help these days.



My hypothesis here is that the minimum wage acts as a signal for employers in fast-food restaurants who set that wage and expect to be able to sort from among the applicants; the hypothesis also requires that these folks are slow to adapt their expectations about W-equil to the reality of high labour demand. If so, turnover will be higher in these jobs, and many of the jobs will go unfilled. Also, if these hypotheses have some validity, then raising the minimum wage would not necessarily create much, if any unemployment, but would only serve to get employers' expectations in line with reality.



But so would time: those employers who don't raise wages to W-equil would find themselves either having to do so, to do more work themselves, or losing customers because of poorer service from less-experienced or stupider employees. It is difficult to imagine their expectations would be out of line with reality for a really long time.



Another bit of evidence that there is an excess quantity demanded (not an excess demand) for fast-food labour at current wage rates in the US is this ad (courtesy of Gabriel Mihalache):

In his posting, Gabriel says,

Willing to pay for a minimum wage job in the US? — I know someone who knows someone who went and they said it was OK. This is only for university students and it has a grade average requirement!

The point is that the current minimum wages are attractive to many qualified workers in other countries, of course, but going through the extra transaction costs to hire students from Romania is attractive to employers, too. If W-min were > W-equil, these employers would have many more US residents to choose from and would be less likely to bother with programmes for student immigrants.

What Can I Do with an Economics Degree?Earn a "respectable" income

Via King Banaian and from CNN Money:

Employers have said they expect to hire 17.4 percent more college grads than they did last year, and in many instances they plan to pay them more, too, according to a survey released this week by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).



The students faring the best are marketing and business administration majors.



The average starting offer for seniors majoring in marketing is up 14 percent from last year to $41,323.



Those majoring in business administration are seeing a 9.2 percent jump to $43,523 in average starting salaries.

But check out some of the starting salaries by discipline, including these:

• Management information systems: Up 5.5 percent to $46,568
• Civil engineering: Up 4.8 percent to $47,145
• Accounting: Up 1.7 percent to $46,508
• Logistics/Materials management: Down 1.8 percent to $43,294
• Liberal arts (including psychology, political science history, English): Down 1.1 percent to $30,502

But to answer the title of this posting, consider these starting salaries:

There are no prior year comparisons for two majors because in prior NACE surveys they were grouped together as one. However, based on prior years' average starting offers in the category (in 2006 it was $45,191), NACE characterized these average starting salaries as "respectable."



* Finance: $47,905

* Economics: $51,631

In contrast, socionomology grads earn the minimum wage at Burger King.



To see which majors earn more than economics majors, on average, check the original link.

Who Is Anna Nicole Smith?

From The Borowitz Report [via Alex]:

A media watchdog group today blasted the major news networks for failing to provide enough coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death in the 72 hours following the blonde bombshell’s passing.



... At a press conference in Washington, Carol Foyler, a spokesperson for the group, hit hard at the all-news networks for giving the Anna Nicole Smith story “short shrift.”



“Instead of staying on the Anna Nicole Smith story nonstop, the networks would sometimes cut away to coverage of the war in Iraq for seconds at a time,” Ms. Foyler said. “For a nation struggling with its loss, this was like twisting the knife.”



At CNN headquarters in Atlanta, network president Jon Klein apologized for failing to provide seamless, wall-to-wall coverage of the Smith story, telling reporters, “We dropped the ball.”



“I was watching our coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death and without warning we cut away for an 8-second story on Darfur,” he said. “I can assure you that that sort of thing will never happen again – not on my watch.”

I think at least one of my sons may have slept with her at one time or another and may have fathered a child with her.