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There is a famous statue/fountain in Brussels of a little boy urinating; it is called Manneken Pis.
I often wonder if the condo management where I live would be willing to put a replica of the statue in our lobby. I'd be willing to contribute more than my pro-rated share if they would.
I was reminded of this statue/fountain when I saw this photo (the Canadian version of Manneken Pis?) on Facebook:
Posted by EclectEcon on January 31, 2016 at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
There is a famous statue/fountain in Brussels of a little boy peeing, called Manneken Pis.
I often wonder if the condo management where I live would be willing to put a replica of the statue in our lobby. I'd be willing to contribute more than my pro-rated share if they would.
I was reminded of this statue/fountain when I saw this photo (the Canadian version of Manneken Pis?) on Facebook:
Posted by EclectEcon on January 30, 2016 at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
This morning my online statement from Rogers Bank (a Mastercard offering 1.75% cashback, which I can apply to pay my Rogers bill) says:
Current Balance:
$xxx.xx
Due Date: 01/25/2016
Minimum Due: $10.00
Past Due Amount: $0.00
I wrote them to ask how I could have a balance due five days before today. Their canned response was that the "Due Date" is listed as the previous due date.
Huh?? I have no past due amount, but I have a minimum amount due 5 days ago?
Time to change the algorithm, Rogers.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 30, 2016 at 11:40 AM in Computer Stuff, Eclectic Miscellany | Permalink | Comments (0)
Jack sent me the following message yesterday:
Bernie Sanders' Longevity Stats Issues
He will be 75 if he assumes the Presidency.
Based on life table info for the USA http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_21.pdf
He has a 17% chance of dying in his first term, and a 24% chance of dying before the end of a second term.
His chances for major pathology short of death is of course much higher but not addressed by life tables..
I find it unacceptable that political correctness would trump discussion of these real issues.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 30, 2016 at 08:32 AM in Aging | Permalink | Comments (0)
In the summer of 2012, I gave a public lecture at The University of Regina. In that lecture I criticized higher education because most people don't remember much of what they studied as undergraduates. As an alternative, I emphasized signaling theories of education. I also emphasized the importance of learning-by-doing and the importance of learning from one's own mistakes.
Below is a link to the lecture on YouTube. Unfortunately, the technician forgot to turn the microphone on until the 26-minute mark. So you will miss the introductory remarks by Hafiz Akhand, who was the economics department chair out there at the time. You will also miss my own introduction in which I chronicle all the evidence I had from my own life about everything I may have learned but then quickly forgot. Here is a snippet from the notes I had prepared for that talk:
Old exam story. Saw an intermediate theory exam I’d taken as an undergrad. “Did I know that then? I don’t remember having studied or learned that.”
Disclaimer and personal history.
The fact that I didn’t learn or retain much as an undergrad would surprise none of my undergraduate professors. Ds in two econ courses, Failed a math course, barely passed and barely graduated. Majored in bridge and the identity crisis, and if there’d been an exam in bridge, I’d probably have failed that.
Re-took all the math. Even after only three years, remembered very little.
Okay, okay, I remembered a few things. Dy/dx when y = xn
Virtually no Russian. No Henry James. No Plato, etc. No chem-phys. A bit of Hemmingway. One specific paragraph from Tropic of Cancer that I won’t recite for you now.
Not much econ, really. One item that I remembered and that stood out was the result of a phone call to my prof. Technology change. Used it in gradskool.
Micro theory? Bad sense of analytic geometry by prof. Also methodology (and Machiavelli).
Money and banking? A lot of IS-LM and a prof who looked out the window and cancelled classes.
As I said, I was a bad student, but I think I was fairly typical. How many of you remember very much from the undergrad courses you took (aside from, but maybe even including, fields in which you have continued to work?)
Another example from a different realm: It may be old age, but when I look back at some of the things I wrote the blog 7-9 years ago, I think, “Really? I don’t remember that.” The point I’m making is that memory deteriorates, even with continued refreshing. In Econ speak, if memory is a capital good, like a machine, it deteriorates over time, and (speaking as a senior citizen) it requires continued gross investment to keep it working.
So suppose we do remember very little and use practically none of what we may have learned. What does that imply about higher ed?
Before I try to answer that,
Teaching experiences and thresholds for law and biz.: Experiences at UWO: 70 for bizskool, 80 for lawskool numbers have changed but the idea is still the same.
Couldn’t let them through unless they had demonstrated….. what? That they had learned enough?
Well that fits in nicely with the “human K theory of ed”
But does it follow if we don’t remember any/much of what we are taught? And what if what we DO remember has nothing to do with our future productivity?
What I seem to be moving toward is a challenge of the “human capital theory” of education, which says we get education, at least in part, so we will be more productive in the future.
Those are just the notes for the first 26 minutes. If you would like to see the entire set of notes, I'll be happy to send them to you. Just write me or post a comment requesting them.
And here is the link to the YouTube video [it's about 1 hour and 41 minutes long. I think the last 35-40 minutes are questions-and-answers.
Friends will recognize two things (aside from my general lack of gift of glib):
Finally, let me say that I was really pleased with this lecture. I'm glad I was finally able to salvage this much of it.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 28, 2016 at 12:33 PM in Economics, Education, Theatre | Permalink | Comments (0)
We had more snow than expected overnight, so I hustled out to the condo lawn to do this snow stomp art this morning:
I like some of the patterns, and I may try to work on it some more this afternoon.
Previous examples of my snow stomp art:
A weak pattern in the blowing snow.
The same pattern after some melting
A Christmas Tree (my first effort)
Posted by EclectEcon on January 27, 2016 at 09:45 AM in Eclectic Miscellany, Photography | Permalink | Comments (0)
45 Years ago today I visited London, Ontario, on a recruiting trip to The University of Western Ontario. I think I had probably been through here once as a child, but this trip was essentially my introduction to the city and to the university.
I flew into town the evening of January 24th, 1971, spent the day of the 25th meeting with future colleagues, and left town on the 26th.
Those were different days for the economics department at UWO. It was known as a revolving door, hiring ten people a year, and firing (actually, not renewing) 8 or 9 each year. The department was growing in size and stature and was serious in how it approached the hiring-firing decisions. Several of my future colleagues groused about the uncertainty and what seemed like inappropriate or unequally applied standards (to them), but they also all agreed UWO would be a good place to have been.
I had always hoped to go to a small liberal arts college to teach. I didn't want to write anything more than what was required for my dissertation. (What a change I went through. See this). But UWO looked like an exciting place to be, and my future colleagues convinced me it was worth coming here for a few years.
The day of interviews was gloriously warm, for late January. The sun was shining. We walked around campus in our sport coats and basked in the sun. People joked about how the snow-sculpture contest was going to have to be canceled.
Lunch at the faculty club, meetings with more future colleagues, dinner with a former gradskool classmate. An exciting day. But nothing like what was to come...
The Blizzard of January, 1971
The morning of the 26th, I got up early and went down to the lobby to catch a limo/bus to the airport. It had started snowing, and the snow looked as if it was pretty heavy, but the streets to the airport were okay, and I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.
Those were the days with no security checks at the airports. Those of us who were due to fly out stood by the window, looking at the runway, a bit worried about the intensifying snowfall, and speculating about whether we would make it out.
Soon, breaking through the clouds, we could barely make out the Air Canada plane that was due to arrive (and which would be our return flight to Toronto).
We saw the plane approach the runway, and then pull up.
Massive groan.
But then we saw it come back for another attempt at landing.
It pulled up again. Another groan.
It made a third attempt but again pulled up. The pilot didn't feel safe landing because he couldn't see the runway!
In those days, with fares as high as they were (in real dollars), airlines took on many more obligations than they do nowadays. We all queued up at the ticket desk, and the Air Canada ticket agents rebooked our flights out of Toronto and then put us all in taxicabs to the Toronto airport. I was put on an American Airlines flight to Chicago and had plenty of time to make it.
The trip to Toronto was interesting. By coincidence, I was in a cab with Levis Kochin, an economist who went on to have a very successful career at The University of Washington.
We arrived in Toronto in plenty of time. I checked in at the American ticket counter, and we boarded the plane while the sun was still shining.
Then the snow hit with a vengeance. American canceled the flight and told us to disembark and reschedule.
I think I must have joined 5-6 different queues during the next 24 hours, changing flights, getting vouchers for a hotel and meals, catching a cab to some hotel, rebooking flights again and again. At least in those days the airlines put us up when bad weather interrupted our flights.
I managed to get out by noon the next day, but it sure was a challenging welcome for a recruiting trip.
I was reminded of this recruiting trip by the blizzard that hit the US middle-east this weekend.
The blizzard that hit London that year was pretty serious (though not as serious as the blizzards of 1977-78). According to one report,
1971 A 5 day long blizzard in London, Ontario dumps 62cm snow and kills 3. It was the worst blizzard in decades
And here is a column from newspaper in a nearby town describing that storm.
We may complain about weather forecasting, but it is one heckuva lot better now than it was 45 years ago!
Posted by EclectEcon on January 24, 2016 at 10:48 AM in Eclectic Miscellany, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)
I have railed relentlessly in the past about "Storm Porn" and about how forecasters and mediots so often focus on worst-case scenarios --- forecasters because they don't want to be held responsible if things turn out to be worse than forecast [someone called it CYA forecasting]; mediots because drama sells and pumps up ratings. [see this, this, and this]
For the storm this weekend that hit the U.S. middle east, forecasters got it wrong on the low side, though. From the NYTimes, this is the map of how much snow was being forecast on Friday afternoon.
And this is how much actually fell over Friday and Saturday:
That storm was MUCH worse than anticipated. And now these places have to figure out how to remove so much snow and then where to put it all!
Posted by EclectEcon on January 24, 2016 at 08:57 AM in Eclectic Miscellany, Media, Science | Permalink | Comments (0)
I went 2 - 2 last weekend, which is a whole lot better than 0 - 4 the previous weekend.
The spread on Sunday's games hasn't budged all week (not yet, anyway) according to Yahoo Sports.
For what it's worth, my granddaughter's partner agrees with these picks.
[Note: this post was written Friday afternoon. I may update it if there are any substantive changes that I hear about before game times]
Posted by EclectEcon on January 23, 2016 at 12:23 PM in Sports | Permalink | Comments (0)
From the Washington Post. I confess that until a few years ago I used one of these for one of my accounts. I changed it then, after reading an article like this one, but I really hate having to remember 130 different passwords. 8-)
Here are the 25 most popular passwords discovered in data breaches in 2015, according to SplashData:
1) 123456
2) password
3) 12345678
4) qwerty
5) 12345
6) 123456789
7) football
8) 1234
9) 1234567
10) baseball
11) welcome
12) 1234567890
13) abc123
14) 111111
15) 1qaz2wsx
16) dragon
17) master
18) monkey
19) letmein
20) login
21) princess
22) qwertyuiop
23) solo
24) passw0rd (using zero)
25) starwars
Posted by EclectEcon on January 22, 2016 at 10:47 AM in Computer Stuff, Eclectic Miscellany | Permalink | Comments (1)
It would seem unlikely with today's technology that sailors could convince a mapmaker to put an island on the map that didn't exist; it would seem even more unlikely that mapmakers would remove an island that actually existed from a map.
Both have happened, though. And in rare instances, these errors have continued to plague cartographers:
Non-existent islands were a surprisingly common problem in the 19th century. Some of them may have once been actual islands, which later sunk beneath the waters. Some of them were genuine mistakes–icebergs misidentified as islands, islands whose longitudes were miscalculated, illusions that really did look like they might be land. Some were straight-up fabricated by sea captains looking to curry favor with funders.
The accumulation of these frauds, errors and mislaid hopes, though, meant that by the end of the 1800s, there were 200 or so islands marked in charts and atlases that just did not exist. ...
By the mid-19th century, the proliferation of nonexistent islands was becoming a serious problem for cartographers. In Britain, the Royal Navy’s charts were cluttered with false reports, and, in particular, the 1864 edition of Admiralty Chart 2683, which mapped the Pacific Ocean, was full of mistakes. For the 1875 edition, Sir Fredreick Evans, who had spent years surveying waterways and oceans, cut 123 islands from the map, includingthree that actually existed.
Even that purge did not make world maps accurate, though. Morrell Island slipped through, for instance. As recently as 2012, Sandy Island, which was supposed to be east of Australia, was shown not to exist.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 21, 2016 at 10:38 AM in Eclectic Miscellany | Permalink | Comments (0)
Regular readers of Eclectecon know that I have championed academic freedom for decades. They also know that beginning with very early posts, I vehemently opposed any attempts to ostracize or boycott Israeli scholars. I went so far as to obtain academic affiliation (albeit nominal) with Bar-Ilan University and the University of Haifa, just to make the point that anyone who wanted to boycott scholars from Israeli universities would have to include me in the boycott.
On January 16, 2016, the American Association of Universities re-issued the following statement, opposing any boycotts of Israeli universities or Israeli scholars [h/t Canadian Academics for Peace [CAP] in the Middle East]. Even if you disagree with what Israel does in the west bank, this is the right position.
The Executive Committee of the Association of American Universities strongly opposes a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Three U.S. scholarly organizations have now expressed support for such a boycott. Any such boycott of academic institutions directly violates academic freedom, which is a fundamental principle of AAU universities and of American higher education in general.
Academic freedom is the freedom of university faculty responsibly to produce and disseminate knowledge through research, teaching, and service, without undue constraint. It is a principle that should not be abridged by political considerations. American colleges and universities, as well as like institutions elsewhere, must stand as the first line of defense against attacks on academic freedom.
Efforts to address political issues, or to address restrictions on academic freedom, should not themselves infringe upon academic freedom. Restrictions imposed on the ability of scholars of any particular country to work with their fellow academics in other countries, participate in meetings and organizations, or otherwise carry out their scholarly activities violate academic freedom. The boycott of Israeli academic institutions therefore clearly violates the academic freedom not only of Israeli scholars but also of American scholars who might be pressured to comply with it. We urge American scholars and scholars around the world who believe in academic freedom to oppose this and other such academic boycotts.
The CAP notification reads:
As many of you know, the Association of American Universities (AAU) represents 60 U.S. and two Canadian public and private research universities, including McGill University and the University of Toronto. On January 14, 2016, AAU’s Board of Directors re-released their 2013 statement in opposition to academic boycotts of Israel.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 20, 2016 at 10:59 AM in Freedom (Academic and Otherwise), Israel, Middle East | Permalink | Comments (1)
The Economist has a recent article about the agglomeration economies experienced by high-tech firms as they gravitate to certain geographic centres. The article refers to "Clusterluck".
DISTANCE is not dead. In biotechnology, as in other tech-based industries, the clustering of similar firms is more important than ever. Some American biotech startups are based in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley area, huddled with its many digital and IT startups. But the Boston metropolitan area—and in particular Cambridge, across the Charles river from central Boston—seems to be holding its own as the world’s pre-eminent biotech hub.
Clusterluck... a nice term. ;)
Obviously the article focuses on Boston and Cambridge. But there is another geographic locale that deserves mention: London.
London, Ontario, that is. The digital and hi-tech firms in London, Ontario, have been growing in unprecedented number and size over the past few years. Some have located in former churches, restaurants, and factories, putting in pretty impressive digs for the employees. Others are building new space from the ground up. And London is just one place this is happening. Another is the long-time computing centre of Canada, Kitchener-Waterloo.
One thing that makes London, Ontario, so attractive is the comparatively low cost of living here. Housing is inexpensive (especially compared with Silicon Valley and Boston in the US and Vancouvre or Trono in Canada), and that means people are willing to work for less here, making the firms more-than-competitive internationally. And of course, while the lower international price of the Loonie makes imports of fruits and vegetables more expensive here, it also makes the output produced here much easier to market internationally.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 19, 2016 at 11:15 AM in Computer Stuff, Economics, International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
New evidence suggests that people who live above the third floor of high-rise buildings have a lower chance of surviving a heart attack. From Science Daily,
The further a patient with cardiac arrest is from the ground floor, the lower the survival rate. Of 8216 people who had cardiac arrests in private residences and were treated by 911-initiated first responders, 3.8% survived to be discharged from hospital. Of the 5998 (73%) people living below the 3rd floor who had cardiac arrests, 252 (4.2%) survived the arrest, but only 48 (2.6%) of the 1844 people living above the 3rd floor survived. When analysed floor by floor, the researchers found a survival rate of only 0.9% in those living above the 16th floor (2 of 216) and no survivors (0 of 30) in those living above the 25th floor.
..."The 911 response time, from emergency activation to arrival of first responders on scene, will remain relatively constant, so long as traffic patterns do not change; however, the time from arrival on scene to initial patient contact may increase as more of the population comes to live at or above the third floor," write the authors. [Emphasis added]
We live above the third floor in our building, but as Ms. Eclectic says, "We ain't movin'".
Posted by EclectEcon on January 18, 2016 at 04:19 PM in Health and Medicine, Housing | Permalink | Comments (0)
Short answer: no.
An article in today's Financial Post suggests some economists think that currency instability is "now a serious concern" for Canada. They are wrong.
The rapid drop has been exacerbated by crumbling oil prices and monetary divergence, as a strong American labour market and solid economic growth led the U.S. Federal Reserve to increase interest rates in December.
Well, of course crumbling oil prices have had an impact on the US price of the Canuck Buck.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 18, 2016 at 01:11 PM in Economics, Economics, Money-Macro, International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
After having gone 0-4 with my NFL picks last weekend, I thought I'd take another shot this weekend. The spreads I'm using are from the Yahoo Sports application on my iPhone.
As my friends have learned, if you want to make money gambling on sports, the best strategy is to bet against my picks.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 16, 2016 at 10:25 AM in Sports | Permalink | Comments (0)
I have long favoured awarding the prize to Richard Posner, but increasingly I think I would favour awarding it to Deirdre McCloskey. Note that I have made the appropriate change in the brief post under the banner for this blog. I'd be especially happy if the Nobel prize were awarded to the two them jointly.
I discussed these views and other things with Doug Goldstein here. The interview with me begins at about the 8:50 mark.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 12, 2016 at 01:21 PM in Economics, Israel | Permalink | Comments (2)
Here are my picks for the NFL playoff games today and tomorrow [the spreads shown on Yahoo Sports are in brackets]:
Posted by EclectEcon on January 09, 2016 at 10:57 AM in Sports | Permalink | Comments (2)
Gubmnts have run up massive debts, increasingly so after 2007 and the Great Recession. A recent study by The Fraser Institute (reported here in the NatPost) points out that the total amounts currently being spent on just the interest payments on gubmnt debt now surpass the total amounts being spent on K-12 education in Canada. Imagine what the interest costs will be if/when interest rates rise back up to the 3-4% range that might be thought of as more "normal" (whatever that means). From the article:
Combined federal and provincial debt in this country will top $1.3 trillion this year, according to a new Fraser Institute report out Tuesday.
“It’s not a trivial amount,” said Charles Lammam, one of the report’s co-authors of the $450 billion in government debt that’s accrued since the recession. “There’s [sic] short and long-term consequences.”
In the short term, massive interest payments on debt gobble up revenues that could be better spent, Lammam said. Local, provincial and federal governments pay more than $60 billion a year to service their debt, money that could be better spent on services. Over the long-term, a growing body of research suggest [sic] heavy government debt loads dampen economic growth.
The current 90-day T-bill rate in Canada is about 0.50. Imagine what the numbers in the Fraser study would be like if interest rates were 3.5% or higher, as they were a decade ago!
Debt servicing is going to become a major issue for the future.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 05, 2016 at 02:21 PM in Economics, Gubmnt | Permalink | Comments (1)
A useful book that counters the notion that freer markets caused the depression of 1930-1940. And it's only 71 cents in the Kindle Version [via MK]. From the blurb:
Students today are often given a skewed account of the Great Depression of 1929-1941 that condemns free-market capitalism as the cause of, and promotes government intervention as the solution to, the economic hardships of the era. In this essay based on a popular lecture, Foundation for Economic Education President Lawrence W. Reed debunks this conventional view and traces the central role that poor government policy played in fostering this legendary catastrophe.
Most of the reviews are quite positive, noting that it is brief (possibly too brief), but with good references to further reading. Some criticize it as a libertarian attack on Hoover, Roosevelt, and the New Deal. Those who make this criticism should understand that many of us who have become libertarian (or quasi/pseudo libertarian) in our views did so because of things pointed out in this book. In other words, the causation goes the other way: historical book leads to a change in one's views about policy, not libertarian views lead one to read only books by libertarians.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 04, 2016 at 09:48 AM in Books, Economics, History | Permalink | Comments (0)
This morning Ms Eclectic sent me a review of five white wines that are readily available in Ontario. I know I have tried and liked several of them, but my palate is so untrained (i.e. I settle for most plonks and am happy) that I can't believe the things wine reviewers write about wines. Do they make this stuff up?
Here are just two that I have tried and enjoyed, but I had to look twice to make sure the write-up wasn't from The Onion.
2013 Jackson-Triggs Niagara Estate Black Series Riesling Gewurztraminer, VQA Niagara Peninsula (Ontario), #357129, $13.95.
Honeysuckle, crushed rose petal and orange blossom aromas lead to a silky-rich attack of ripe pear and grapefruit edged with crushed granite, white flowers and a certain salinity. Impressively balanced wine here offering more complexity, concentration and length than most $14 bottles. Sophisticated — and gastronomically versatile — wine for the money, made right here in Ontario.
Score: 90
014 Mike Weir Sauvignon Blanc, VQA Ontario, #686972, $14.95.ß
Enliven your palate with a sip of this tight, bright and sassy pour. Flavours of damp herbs and gooseberry wash over the palate before revealing a wet stone and sea salt underpinning that lingers. This is a great local go-to sauvignon blanc with power and finesse harnessed by impeccably balance and zippy acidity. Fabulous with a broad range of foods.
Score: 88+
Really? People who write things like this must have very vivid imaginations. I've noticed the same thing about descriptions of various scotch whiskies.
I really am a Philistine in many ways: I don't believe these descriptions, but I know what I like.
Addendum: But look at the fourth wine listed in that review. This sounds like the right wine for those of us on low-carb diets:
2014 Vinyasa White, VQA Niagara Peninsula (Ontario), #379131, $13.95.
Hands-down this is one of the most delicious offerings from Ontario for under $15. Best part? It’s also the lowest-calorie white wine from Ontario with only about 70 calories and zero carbs per 5-ounce pour. It sings with luscious peach, sweet apricot and cooked apple flavours laced with mouth-watering lime. I’ve recommended this wine before, but it definitely deserves a place on this list.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 03, 2016 at 09:40 AM in Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (3)
In a delightful column in the Washington Post, Barton Swaim discusses what he considers "a widely committed journalistic sin".
The sin? Dressing up opinions as facts by saying, "It is widely believed...." without documenting "believed by whom and by how many?" when more often than not (one suspects) the statement that follows "it is widely believed..." is little more than the writer's opinion, which is shared by some people who have a similar outlook on politics or policy.
Some examples:
... [F]rom a recent article in the Economist on the trend toward greater college enrollment by women: “Numbers in many of America’s elite private colleges are more evenly balanced. It is widely believed that their opaque admissions criteria are relaxed for men.” Maybe it’s “widely believed” and maybe it isn’t — it depends on what “widely” means — but that allegation is a serious one, and it deserves more support than a casual allusion to what’s “widely believed.” ...
Earlier this year, for instance, a writer for the Los Angeles Times began his column by noting that “it is widely held that the dopiest anti-Obamacare lawsuit is King vs. Burwell.” And an editor at the New Republic observed that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is “widely considered one of the most socially inept candidates.” Maybe both these statements are true and I am irritated by them only because, not sharing the writers’ political views, I am not included in their uses of “widely.” But when the New Yorker, in a highly flattering profile of Secretary of State John Kerry, refers offhandedly to “George W. Bush, who is widely considered the worst President of the modern era,” I am pretty sure that that “widely” does not mean what most of us mean when we use it.
I get it. I used to think George W. Bush was the worst president in US history and then Barack Obama was elected. It is widely believed among about half my Facebook friends that Obama is the best president ever; it is also widely believed among about half my Facebook friends that Obama is the worst president ever. I just happen to have a wide circle of friends from numerous walks of life.
And that brings me to all the journalists who quote an economist in their stories. I'm making this next one up, but it captures the essence of what happens:
A journalist will do a story on some proposed economic policy, say, increasing the minimum wage. S/he will call some economist at some university and get a quote that says, "Over eighty percent of economists believe that raising the minimum wage will reduce job opportunities for York and Calgary graduates unskilled workers. But the journalist cares about the working poor and doesn't want to hear this view.
And so the journalist calls another economist known to have more elitist, interventionist views who will say, "The evidence about job loss is unclear, and even if there is job loss, it is very minor, compared with the increased income for the working poor." Of course this quote will be introduced with, "But many other economists disagree." How many others?
All too often I hear or read quotes from economists who have little or no empirical or theoretical backing for their statements referred to by the MSM as representative of the profession. So here's another, this one from me....
It is widely believed that most journalists are more left-wing, more big-gubmnt, and more elitist-interventionist than the general public.
It is widely believed that most journalists have no clue about the concept of opportunity costs.
It is widely believed that most journalists think the demands for housing, gasoline, York and Calgary graduates unskilled labour, and water are all perfectly inelastic (i.e. they believe that the quantities demanded do not decline as the price goes up, ceteris paribus).
It is widely believed that journalists need to learn more basic economics.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 02, 2016 at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
King Banaian (aka Sparky) and I have known each other for about 25 years, ever since the early days of rec.sport.baseball. We finally met up at an economics convention a few years after meeting online, and then we had a chance to meet face-to-face again several years ago as I was driving through St. Cloud Minnesota.
King is a very bright guy with an amazing, quick mind. I've appeared in numerous podcasts with him in the past as well as exchanged blog posts and citations with him over the past decade.
He has asked me to appear on his radio programme this morning. He says he wants to talk about curling because I used to write a blog (with the late Alan Adamson) about curling. But he also says the half-hour conversation could go anywhere. I'm fine with that. I trust him.
You can listen anywhere via the internet:
Go to the homepage of the station http://www.twincitiesbusinessradio.com/ and you will see a Listen Live button near the top-center third of the page. Opens a new window with a player, runs a 15-second ad first.
He says the programmes are also available as podcasts, and so I'll post the link as soon as I get the precise link.
That's less than two hours from now! OMG!!!!
Posted by EclectEcon on January 02, 2016 at 09:06 AM in Media, Sports | Permalink | Comments (0)
It snowed early this morning, and so....
I need to work on my cursive writing, obviously, but we're having a lot of wind with more snow now, so I'll go out to fix it up later today.
Posted by EclectEcon on January 01, 2016 at 11:40 AM in Eclectic Miscellany, Photography | Permalink | Comments (0)