EclectEcon

Long and Variable Lags in monetary policy

Let me ask yet again, what is it about the famous Milton Friedman quip about monetary policy that today's central bankers don't seem to get? According to Friedman, monetary policy had (has?) an effect but only with a long and variable lag. Were all of today's central bankers trained by rational expectations cowboys to believe that all markets always clear instantly?

Here are monetary data from FRED for the Canadian economy:

Fascinating how M1 exploded early in the pandemic and then was followed (with a long and variable lag) by inflation that central bankers seemed surprised by. The last two Governors of the Bank of Canada oversaw this expansion and acted far too late to reduce the inflationary pressures in the economy (and I'm disappointed since both of them got PhDs from UWO).

And look at the money supply data in the past few months! The money supply is actually shrinking in Canada. No matter what the economy is like now, this decline in the money supply strongly indicates we're in for a serious recession, again after a long-and-variable lag.

How long is the lag? Nobody can be sure, which is why Friedman answered the way he did. My guess: 18 months +/- six months.

 

hat tip to David Laidler, who kindly discussed this situation with me earlier this week and who told me that Cdn monetary data are available on FRED.

Do or Did Lockdowns Work?

From this source (called Astral-Codex, written by Scott Alexander), which is a very long read but worth the effort, it looks as if stricter lockdowns probably would have been helpful early on if people had known they would work. It also looks as if continuing blunt lockdowns probably do not pass a reasonable cost-benefit test. Testing, tracing, and voluntary decisions look very good by comparison. Here's the summary, but be sure to look at the comments as well!

1: Various policies lumped together as “lockdowns” probably significantly decreased R. Full-blown stay-at home orders were less important than targeted policies like school closures and banning large gatherings. Talking about which ones were “good” or “bad” is an oversimplification compared to the more useful questions of when countries should have started vs. stopped each to be on some kind of Pareto frontier of lives saved vs. cost.

2: If Sweden had a stronger lockdown more like those of other European countries, it probably could have reduced its death rate by 50-80%, saving 2,500+ lives.

3: On a very naive comparison, US states with stricter lockdowns had about 20% lower death rates than states with weaker ones, and about 0.6% more GDP decline. There are high error bars on both those estimates.

4: Judging lockdowns by traditional measures of economic significance, moving from a US red-state level of lockdown to a US blue-state level of lockdown is in the range normally associated with interventions that are debatably cost-effective/utility-positive, with error bars including “obviously good” and “pretty bad”. It’s harder to estimate for Sweden, but plausibly for them to move to a more European-typical level of lockdown in the early phase of the pandemic would have very much cleared the bar and been unambiguously cost effective/utility-positive.

5: It’s harder to justify strict lockdowns in terms of the non-economic suffering produced. Even assumptions skewed to be maximally pro-strict-lockdown, eg where strict lockdowns would have prevented every single coronavirus case, suggest that it would have taken dozens of months of somewhat stricter lockdown to save one month of healthy life. This might still be justifiable if present strict lockdowns now prevented future strict lockdowns (mandated or voluntary), which might be true in Europe but doesn’t seem as true in the US.

6: Plausibly, really fast and well-targeted lockdowns could have been better along every dimension than either strong-lockdown areas’ strong lockdowns or weak-lockdown areas’ weak lockdowns. We should celebrate the countries that successfully pulled this off, and support the people trying to figure out how to make this easier to pull off next time.

7: All of this is very speculative and affected by a lot of factors, and the error bars are very wide.

Inflation? You bet! Hold onto your hats. We're in for one heckuva ride!

I attended a webinar yesterday* in which Christopher Waller, a member of the Board of Governors of the US Fed, said inflation is under control (despite a 4.2% annual rate of inflation measured in the past month) and that overshooting the 2% target is good because they undershot the target in the past. He also allowed, however, that he'd be concerned if the economy experienced inflation rates > 4% for several months running. [update: his views were reported numerous places. E.g. See this.]

Keep in mind that the CPI seriously under-includes asset price inflation, such as houses, stocks, cryptocurrencies, etc. Also keep in mind that current labour shortages in many occupations and industries are leading to rising wages and salaries, raising costs for many businesses.

He also said that the Fed has to be reactive, not proactive. No foolin'. I almost fell out of my recliner when I heard that. If the Fed is to be reactive, that means they will wait until the economy actually experiences inflation before doing anything about it. It also implies that they think their forecasting models are garbage.

Meanwhile, the expected rate of inflation is creeping upward, and as that happens, so will interest rates [very roughly, the nominal or stated rate of interest equals about 1.5% plus the expected rate of inflation -- see the Fisher Equation -- all risk-adjusted, of course.].

And as interest rates rise, commercial banks in the US (chartered banks, etc. in Canada) will have a strong incentive to create new loans (i.e. create more money) based on their massive holdings of excess reserves at the central bank.

And as that happens, then the large increases in the money supply will lead to even more inflation.... not hyperinflation, but I can readily imagine average annual inflation rates of 3-6% for quite some time to come.

As I wrote to some friends earlier this morning,

WTF, eh?

This guy is touted in Business Insider for having said last spring that we'd experience inflation in a year or so.

 

My friend, John H, and I were making similar predictions, but nobody seems to be beating down our doors to pay us for our insights.

 

My most recent four or five posts on it all are here in reverse chronological order:

https://www.eclectecon.net/economics_moneymacro/

 

... Central banks will have their hands full, trying to keep the genie in the bottle.

What still puzzles me, though, is that the implied expected rate of inflation from the TIPS bond rates is still low (though it is rising  and is now up over 2.5% for the long term of ten years -- see the graph below). Quite obviously, money market managers don't agree with my assessment.

 

The 5-year breakeven expected rate of inflation is even higher at 2.65%.

 

Yes, the Fed can dampen these effects by "soaking up" a lot of excess reserves; it can do this by nudging up the interest rate they pay on commercial bank excess reserves held at the Fed, but:

1. That is a potentially very blunt tool. Raising that rate by even 0.05% will soak up a LOT of excess reserves, creating sizable starts and stops in the macroeconomy.
2. As interest rates rise, the interest payments on all gubmnt debts will skyrocket, creating more deficit problems for the future. Yes, all levels of gubmnt will face budget shortfalls (for which most will be only vaguely, at best, prepared).

Hold onto your hats, everyone. We are in for one heckuva ride...

UPDATE: Also see this CBC piece about an interview with David Laidler. He has similar concerns.

UPDATE #2: After I sent this to David (a fellow emeritus from UWO), he wrote back

Yup - in old style movie going, the phrase was "This is where we came in"

UPDATE #3: My friend, King Banaian, devoted an hour of his regular radio programme to this issue, expressing a similar disbelief that two members of the Board of Governors of the Fed plus the president of the St. Louis Fed all said pretty much the same thing.

----

*with thanks to the Global Interdependence Center for inviting me to attend their webinars.

People Respond to Incentives, Marriage and Divorce Version

 From Foreign Policy (morning brief, April 23, 2021):

Taiwan’s marriage leave policy is under fresh scrutiny after a couple married four times (and divorced three times) to take roughly one month off work, the New York Times reports. Taiwan is one of the few countries to offer paid leave for marriages, a generous eight days, a fact the notorious (but so far unnamed) couple took advantage of by wedding four times between April 6 and May 12 of last year.

The case became more controversial after the groom’s employer, a bank, refused to grant further leave past the initial eight days, prompting the groom to file a complaint with the labor department. The company was fined $700 for violating the law, but the fine was revoked last week by the head of the department.

The importance of vaccines in deterring the spread of Covid-19

It looks as if vaccines work well in controlling the spread of Covid-19.

These data are from the Financial Times, showing new cases/100K. The huge drop in the UK and Israel, combined with the sizable drop in the US and combined with the recent rise in Canada and Sweden is good prima facie evidence (not compelling for the skeptics, I know) about the importance of vaccines in controlling the spread of Covid-19.

 

Compare those case numbers with vaccination rates. The countries with low vaccination rates are reporting much higher infection rates. I know, correlation is not causation, but these data make a compelling prima facie case.

 

The current rise in rates in our area likely has more to do with poor ventilation and the hubris of youth [note that in London-Middlesex, well over 2/3 of the cases involving new variants are for people aged 0-29, and, of course, it's these younger people who are not receiving the vaccine yet.

More Data on Excess Deaths

These data are from the US. I can't find a comparable study using Canadian data (I'll be surprised if there isn't something comparable out there, though).

Excess deaths (the number of deaths observed in a jurisdiction above and beyond the number experienced in the same jurisdiction during the previous five years) is a pretty interesting measure of the impact of Covid. Here's one graph from the site:

Interesting that there were brief bouts of excess deaths two and three years ago, too, but nothing like the recent, Covid period of excess deaths.

The site allows lots of different ways of massaging the data, including by state, ethnicity, age, etc. Here's a breakdown of excess deaths by age group over the past year:

For all my friends who aren't concerned: please look at the data again.

For all my friends who think Covid is "just another flu": please look at the data again.

Go to the site and play around with the data.

For those of you living in or with relatives locked down in seniors' homes: there's reason for concern.

Covid: It's Time to Praise Ontario's Premier, Doug Ford, Not Bury Him

The MSM (mainstream media) are still all over Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, because of the rising case numbers in our province. The media members and everyone in North America need to know that the case numbers are very impressively low compared with nearly every other jurisdiction in North America. Look at and compare the numbers and graphs for the various provinces and US states using the data from Worldometer (Ontario data are shown in brown in each graph; the other jurisdictions' data are shown in very faint, pale grey and are generally unlabelled). Here's a comparison of Ontario with New York, California, North Carolina, and South Carolina:

In case you think I've stacked the deck, here are are two other comparisons. The next one is with Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, and Illinois. The data for Ontario are exactly the same as in the graph above, but the scale had to be expanded because those states have had so many infections. Ontario looks downright healthy in comparison.

And here's another comparison, this time with states and provinces that have low infection rates (Maine, Vermont, and Nova Scotia) and also have very low population densities:

Nova Scotia is shown in blue because it stood out as having notably fewer cases because it was part of a Maritimes bubble that strictly limited migration to and from the area.

Note the past tense. Unfortunately, the data from Worldometer are not right up to date (about 2-3 weeks delayed). Recently the Maritime bubble has burst a bit, and case numbers in those provinces are creeping upward.

The comparison with other Canadian provinces is also generally favourable to Doug Ford. All the others for which data are provided by Worldometer have leapt ahead of Ontario in daily new infections/100K over the past few weeks -- substantially so in some cases:

I have recently spoken with some hospital workers. It seems that infection numbers have been rising in some hospitals in Southwestern Ontario because staff members were required to take breaks and eat lunches in small, confined spaces... duh. No masks are possible while eating, and no distancing is possible in the small, confined, enclosed break rooms in most hospitals; it's not surprising that cases spread in those settings. Apparently some hospital administrators have figured out that they have acres of conference and auditorium space available these days in their hospitals, and they have now (finally) loosened up and made those spaces available for lunches and breaks.

From what I see (casual empiricism), it looks as if distancing is a real problem. It's difficult and inconvenient to distance when you live (or maybe work) in a high-rise and must ride elevators with other people who may or may not be as careful one might wish. It's difficult and inconvenient to distance when you must ride elevators and eat lunch and take breaks in small, confined spaces at work. If my take is right, it'll be distancing that will be important during the transition and until a vaccine is widely available. And that distancing has to include making it possible for front-line workers to distance as well.

Meanwhile,

1. We're back to avoiding eating in restaurants (take-out and delivery for us). and
2. Don't blame the conditions in Ontario on Doug Ford. Ontario has, overall, done a very good job.

The Gubmnt Must Do Something! This is something.

The title of this post came to mind when I read this morning's headline in the Democratic Party Newsletter, aka The Washington Post*:

Biden plans to move fast on the pandemic and the economy

Quite frankly this whole-hog determination that the federal gubmnt must do something about these two issues bothers me.

Pandemic policies should be and have mostly been up to the states, not the federal gubmnt (similarly here in Canada, it's mostly up to the provinces). The feds can help by collecting and disseminating information [which the CDC and the Timid Tam have failed miserably at doing] but it's not up to the feds to impose nation-wide restrictions. We're wrong to listen to and look to our federal leaders on this issue. So lefties, stop blaming Trump; righties, stop blaming Trudeau and Tam.

Back in January, when China and the WHO were lying to the world about the nature of Covid19, the federal gubmnts could have done more by imposing strict tests and restrictions on international travelers. But instead they called out the ostriches and denied the seriousness of the issue, hid facts, and actually lied about the usefulness of masks.

So now, what is Biden going to do about the pandemic and the economy?

Well, he's going to do something, and that has to be good.

I doubt it. He'll meddle. He'll hire and take more advice from members of the elitist interventionist caste, and he'll claim victory as the pandemic begins to fade next year and as the economy continues to rebound (assuming the Fed doesn't mess up horribly).

Let's hope he doesn't muck up the middle east peace process. He has a chance of continuing the good work going on there.

* Yes, I have subscription to the Washington Post. They have a very low subscription fee for international subscribers, and we are willing to pay that just to get their crossword puzzles, which we print off and do at our leisure.

 

 

A Fed-Induced Liquidity Trap (or is it a vacuum?)?

The United States gubmnt has massively increased its indebtedness, and apparently the Fed has bought most of this debt. Why hasn't this monetization of the debt led to expectations (in the markets) of increased inflation rates a year or two from now?

Here's one possible explanation, but I'm open to others. Since I'm an old-skool monetarist, I'm still thinking in terms of the relationship between the money supply and prices: MV=PQ, but it looks as if I'm out of synch with the financial markets. How is all this monetization of debt not leading to inflation and inflationary expectations?

My possible explanation:

1. The gubmnt spends trillions.
2. The gubmnt has to borrow for that spending.
3. If they borrow from the non-bank public, there's no change in Ms or reserves: what's borrowed from the public is taken out of circulation but is put right back in when it is spent.
4. If they borrow from the Fed, the spending increase leads to an increase in Ms because an equal amt isn't removed from the Ms.
5. Ordinarily (well, historically, anyway), when the gubmnt borrowed from the Fed, all the gubmnt spending led to massive increases in Ms because the spending led to increased reserves and a multiple expansion of deposits (see 1976-82).
6. Now, however, since the Fed pays interest to commercial banks on their deposits at the Fed (their reserves), the banks don't create more money based on the gubmnt spending and their increased reserves. There is no multiple expansion of deposits. The Fed, by paying interest on commercial banks' reserves, has created a new type of liquidity trap. 
7. Conclusion: even though the gubmnt borrows from the Fed, the phenomenal increase in gubmnt spending doesn't set off a multiple expansion of deposits; hence there's only a small increase in the Ms, and, therefore, no inflationary expectations.
8. Implications and questions:

• If/when interest rates rise (as they will if inflation expectations increase), commercial banks will stop stockpiling reserves and start lending (i.e. creating money) at a rapid clip.... unless the Fed increases the interest rate it pays on reserves. There's a butt-load of potential liquidity sitting there in the form of reserves at the Fed.
• The major cost of the programmes, given this liquidity trap, is not so much inflation or inflationary expectations, but rather distortions and the deadweight losses from gubmnt intervention in the economy.

Covid Trends: Canada, the US, Ontario, and Quebec

The reported new cases per 100,000 in Ontario, Quebec, and Canada are shown in this graph:

The blue line in the above graph is Quebec, the brown line is Canada, and the barely visible grey line is Ontario.

 

There was a bit of a discernible rise in the number of cases/100K two weeks after Canada Day [July 1], but there was no rise and even a slight fall after Civic Holiday, the first Monday in August . 

 

Those big gatherings were nothing compared to September: Labour Day, School re-openings, and university/college re-openings. It's understandable that health professionals and politicians are concerned.

 

Locally, despite some blips early on this month, London Ontario's new cases seem to have leveled off back down at 2-3 cases/day [roughly half a case/day/100K], far fewer than the nation-wide or province wide cases/day/100,000.

 

Meanwhile, the US results help explain why Canada is loathe to reopen the borders for casual and tourist traffic.

 

 

To steal a phrase from my older son, David Ricardo Palmer, the US marches to the beat of a different harpist.

Gubmnt Profligacy

Recently, I spent three hours listening to brief speeches by members of group that includes urban planners and policy-makers, i.e. listening to the pleadings of elitist-interventionist rent-seekers. Here's a major portion of my feedback to the organizers, slightly edited. I apologize here for misspelling 'gubmnt' in the letter.

 

Dear _____

 

Let me begin by saying I recognize that I clearly come from a different discipline, with a very different outlook from that of everyone else in the organization....

 

Today's meeting really upset me. I heard politician after politician and urban planner after urban planner pleading for more money from the Federal government. And I heard lots and lots of stories about the importance and the "needs" of major urban areas. As I tell students, "when an economy's scarce goods are allocated on the basis of 'needs', the number and importance of needs multiplies a thousand-fold." This was little more than intellectual rent-seeking, for the most part, saying, "Here's why other taxpayers should help pay our bills."

 

Just because cities have lots of people in them and have lots of people working in them, that does not justify asking taxpayers elsewhere to support those bureaucracies. Self-purported 'need' doesn't make cities any more worthy of Federal support than it does farmers or Alberta oil workers or Maritime lobster fishers. All it does is create multiple layers of competing (and co-operating) bureaucracies, all trying to get a bigger slice of the take from taxpayers.

 

Furthermore, if every city got the money they want from the Federal government, they would, for the most part, be asking the Federal government to tax everyone in everyone else's city and then flow the tax receipts through multiple costly bureaucracies to their own cities. That is a negative sum game: each municipality may get more money, but that money has to come from somewhere. More money for the cities to spend doesn't come out of thin air, and not one single speaker addressed this point; all they said was, "We need it", and everyone else nodded their heads.

 

The other issue that bothers me is that many cities seem not to have saved very much in their reserves for unforeseen contingencies. This is especially troublesome for those cities which are legally restricted in their borrowing. 

 

Of course they didn't see this [the Covid-19 pandemic] coming, and probably didn't anticipate the seriousness of the Covid19 recession even in January. But that's what reserves for unforeseen contingencies are supposed to be for! You put money aside "just in case". You don't say, "Oh we'd rather pay for our pet projects that the voters 'need' instead of building up our reserves." 

 

Cities (and, indeed, all levels of government) have been profligates for a number of years leading up to 2020. Times were good, judging from GDP growth and declining unemployment rates. Those are the times when governments should be running surpluses and putting aside more funds in their reserves. Instead we saw government after government, at all levels, running up their deficits, spending as if the unforeseen contingencies would never happen.

 

Well, they happened. And now these same profligates, instead of losing their jobs, instead of resigning in shame, are begging taxpayers everywhere outside their own municipality to bail them out. It's morally reprehensible, but also from a practical point of view it's a perpetuation of fiscal ponzi schemes and negative-sum games that cannot continue. 

 

My summary take: 

1. If the Covid19 pandemic taught us anything, it should be that cities need to build up stronger reserves for unforeseen contingencies.
2. When you ask for higher-level government financial support, you are really asking other taxpayers to cover for you.

Addendum: Shortly after I sent this letter, I read this article, Just Say No to State & Local Bailouts, by former student, David Henderson. In the article he points out that mismanagement and capitulation regarding pension funds in states like California, Illinois, and New York are not good reasons to bail out those states. He and I are clearly in tune with each other, as evidenced by this sentence:

The most vocal advocates of the subsidy are members of Congress and/or governors of states with big budget deficits, such as California, Illinois and New York. Their budgets are in shambles. Do they have an argument beyond “we need it” and “it's a moral obligation”?

Confessions of an "Outside Agitator": I'd do it again

From September, 1965, until July, 1967, I attended The Chicago Theological Seminary and lived on the South Side of Chicago. During that period we participated in numerous civil rights marches and numerous anti-war demonstrations. At every one of those events, I was outside my neighbourhood and, in many cases I was in a different city. I was one of the many, many outside agitators. And I'd do it again.

On the civil rights front, our seminary was a hotbed for activism. We were a de facto base for Martin Luther King's civil rights activities in the summer of 1966, while Jesse Jackson was a student in the seminary (a year ahead of me). We marched in Skokie and Gage Park and other places I can't remember. I even trained to be a safety marshal on those civil rights marches. We were determined to be non-violent. We demonstrated for a break down of racial barriers in housing and jobs in particular, and we had considerable success along those lines legally and nominally (or so it seemed; I think we had far less success on the schooling front.). Yes, we lectured people about racism, but we had specific, achievable goals as well.

On the anti-war front, we traveled to Washington DC for an antiwar demonstration (only about 25,000 in total) in the spring of 1966, and we traveled to New York for a massive march against the war (hundreds of thousands) in the spring of 1967.

Also in Chicago at the same time, there were race riots, especially on the west side. We thought we understood much of the frustration of black people in Chicago and we hoped their actions would lead to more action on the housing and jobs fronts. We didn't condone the fires, looting, or the shootings, but we understood a chunk of the frustrations. That same summer, Detroit experienced devastating race riots, as did other cities.

While the two actions, marches and riots, were linked in their underlying causes, they manifested themselves very differently. King, Jackson, the SCLC, and all the civil rights demonstrations had specific goals: We may not be able to change people's minds and hearts, even though we wanted to, but we can at least make laws and practices combine toward providing more nearly equal opportunities and protections. We white people knew things had to change legally and governmentally to achieve the desired goals.

At Iowa State, from 1967 - 1971, we continued our activism, joining and participating in movements to end the war in Vietnam and to fight racism on campus.

How does that relate to today?

First, I present my background above in part, I'm sure, as virtue signaling, but also to draw what I think are some truly important contrasts between then and now.

I believe there is systemic racism. I had thought that by providing better housing, job, affirmative action, etc. policies, things had improved substantially for non-whites. I hadn't imagined the strength of the systemic racism until I saw black students cheering wildly when O.J. Simpson was found not guilty. I agreed the crown had not made its case, but their wild cheering made me realize there was a gulf to which I had been blind. I kept asking myself, "What has happened to these kids? They are cheering that he was freed because he was black, not because the crown didn't make its case." I realized I didn't understand. And I had no idea what it was I didn't understand.

Further, when I knew people were making decisions in the 2008 US election based on race, I knew there was endemic racism. It hurts. It hurts that it's there, and it hurts that it affects us all in so many ways we don't know or comprehend. And it hurts that it creates a gulf that I'm not sure we can entirely bridge.

Today's clashes remind me of the summer of 1966 but with one major exception. The protests back then had specific, achievable goals. I'm not sure what the goals of today's protests are, other than to impress upon us the extent of racism. When politicians in Canada (e.g. Stockwell Day and Doug Ford, inter alia) deny there is systemic racism in Canada, they are clearly out of touch. Ford understood it and backtracked, to his credit.

Here's a more direct goal for current protestors, then: If we haven't stopped extreme police brutality against non-whites, let's work to stop extreme police brutality. Let's limit police "qualified immunity"; let's maybe even make police pension funds liable for civil damages resulting from police brutality to create an incentive for police officers to police other officers. Let's roll back the phenomenal macho-brutalism in the police forces, and let's roll back the extreme militarism of the police forces. If police can't do these things at all, they can't do them to non-whites. My more recent Facebook postings point in these directions.

I'd like to add, "And let's have more discourse so we can try to understand each other," but that may be more pollyannaism than a real goal; I don't see it as a very successful strategy. I anticipate that the discourse that will likely emerge will be dominated by political posturing, playing the victim or race card, playing the law and order card, virtue-signaling, distortions of facts (see every headline in every media source, right or left), misuse of data, et cetera, et cetera.

I see it all the time on Facebook. Hell, I know I'm even part of it sometimes. People lash out with memes, misrepresentations, and ad hominems, et cetera, without addressing important issues fairly.

It is time for us to admit that there is systemic discrimination.

It is time for us to do what we can individually to try to overcome it in ourselves.

It is time for us engage in discussions and not arguments.

And it is time to try to address potential feasible solutions.

I'm lucky. I have friends from all over the place, politically, geographically, religiously, racially, LGBTQ-wise, etc. I am confronted by conflicting arguments and flame wars all the time. They upset me and disturb me, but I rarely unfriend or block anyone involved in these events.

And yet, they tear me apart inside.

How Serious Is This? Really.... Some Perspective, perhaps

Amid forecasts of anywhere from 5000 to 5 million deaths from Covid-19, how serious is the pandemic, really?

I admit it, I'm a little scared. I'm old, my wife is older and has other conditions that put her even more at risk, and I have several friends who are older and who also have many conditions that put them at risk. Most of us figure that if we get it, we'll likely die, be left to die,  or be triaged into death. One of my friends says he's unlikely to still be alive next year, even though the odds of his actually getting the virus are low.

Here's a perspective that might help address the fear and concerns, based on what I consider the worst case for which we might even have semi-reliable data --- Italy [I don't know what to believe about China's cases and data].

From Worldometer as of 11am today, data for Italy:

CLOSED CASES

23,809

Cases which had an outcome:

13,030 (55%)

Recovered / Discharged

10,779 (45%)

Deaths

 

 

Wow! 45% of all closed cases (recovered/discharged or died) were deaths! That doesn't seem very reassuring.

But look at the numbers per million in Italy,  Spain, and other countries near the top of the list ....

Country, Other	Total Cases	New Cases	Total Deaths	New Deaths	Total Recovered	Tot Cases/ 1M pop	Deaths/ 1M pop
Spain	85,195	+5,085	7,340	+537	16,780	1,822	157
Switzerland	15,526	+697	333	+33	1,823	1,794	38
Italy	97,689		10,779		13,030	1,616	178
Austria	9,454	+666	108	+22	636	1,050	12
Belgium	11,899	+1,063	513	+82	1,527	1,027	44
Norway	4,436	+152	31	+5	12	818	6
Germany	63,929	+1,494	560	+19	9,211	763	7
Netherlands	11,750	+884	864	+93	250	686	50
Portugal	6,408	+446	140	+21	43	628	14

Even Spain, which has the highest number of cases per capita of these relatively heavily infected countries, EVEN SPAIN has had only 0.18% of their population infected.... so far. What if the percentage infected where I live ends up even quadruple those numbers, what are the chances my wife, my friends, or I will get it and die? Probably not very high, especially since we are all pretty much self-isolating at the moment.

Still... suppose there's only a 0.5% chance of my contracting CV19. If I do get it, the odds are good that my wife and I won't survive it. And that is why we're being so friggn careful.

As I said in a previous posting,

This isn't a video game. We can't press the reset button if we don't like it.

When Will All of This End?

A wild guess for Ontario, though it seems roughly correct for other jurisdictions:

Restaurants and pubs will be allowed to open just before the May 2-4 weekend* but camping in provincial parks won't open until just before or just after July 1.

Why? The caseloads in countries that are well-along seem to be declining slightly and can likely be expected to decline more over time. Also, physical distancing seems to be slowing the spread.

We won't be over the pandemic by then, but the politicos will say things like,

"Don't go out if you even think you might have symptoms."

"Be careful, wash your hands and wipe down surfaces frequently."

"But we have to be mindful of all the poor businesses and their employees, too."

"Businesses are strongly encouraged to limit the number of people in their pubs and restaurants" (as if we won't do that ourselves anyway).

The traditional Victoria Day fireworks will be cancelled. Large, dense gatherings will still be banned until just before July 1, when the fireworks will proceed, but with dire cautions about physical distancing.

* The May 2-4 weekend was originally a national holiday to celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria. When I moved to Canada, it was called "Victoria Day" (who knows, maybe it still is, officially). But sometime after I moved here, it was moved to the somethingth Monday of May. People started calling it the May 2-4 Weekend because it occurs around May 24th and because some people consume lots of beer from cases, affectionately known as 2-4s here.

Jeff Jacoby on Bicycle Lanes

From his recent column called "Arguable", but I can't find a specific link to it (I subscribe).

---------

How bike lanes kill

As regular readers may know, I’m no fan of the relentless push in many towns — including the ones I live and work in — to make the streets more and more friendly to bicycles by making them less and less friendly to automobiles. I have nothing against bicycles, which are nimble, nonpolluting, healthful, and inexpensive. I also have nothing against rollerblades, Segways, wheelchairs, scooters, unicycles, or horse-drawn buggies. But none of them belong in the middle of crowded urban traffic.

Designated lanes for bicycles are a fine idea — where traffic is minimal or there is ample room to expand roadways. But the current mania for subtracting or narrowing already-crowded car lanes in order to benefit cyclists is terrible.

Inserting bike lanes into city streets disadvantages the overwhelming majority of drivers and passengers who rely on automobiles in order to accommodate the relatively tiny minority who bike. In a column last year I wrote: “The doctrine that cars, buses, and trucks should ‘share the road’ with bicycles sounds egalitarian and green, but it’s as impractical as expecting motor vehicles to ‘share’ urban thoroughfares with skateboards and strollers. The chief function of those roads is to keep people and goods moving as rapidly, efficiently, and safely as possible. Bike lanes unavoidably impede that function — often to the detriment of bike riders themselves.”

But taking away road lanes from cars in order to provide more lanes for bicycles isn’t just inconvenient. It’s also deadly, as Gary M. Galles, a professor of economics at Pepperdine University, shows in a recent essay for the Foundation for Economic Education.

He begins by noting that in the wake of implementing a new plan to bring down the number of people killed in Los Angeles traffic, the number of people killed in Los Angeles traffic went up:
 

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti created Vision Zero in 2015 in an effort to reduce non-driver traffic fatalities, especially pedestrian deaths. Its goals were to cut non-driver fatalities by 20% by 2015, 50% by this year, and 100% by 2025. Following that vision, the City Council adopted Mobility Plan 2035, a 20-year initiative to remove automobile lanes and make more room for bus and bike lanes to upgrade pedestrian and cyclist safety.

Results to date? Since Vision Zero was launched in 2015, according to the Los Angeles Times, the number of pedestrians, vehicle occupants, bicycle riders, and motorcyclists killed each year in crashes has risen 33%. (Fatalities surged in 2016 from 183 to 253, a 38% increase, and have dipped slightly since then.).

It isn’t hard to understand why cramming Los Angeles drivers into fewer driving lanes makes LA’s roads more dangerous, not less. And with the city planning to double down on its approach — a blueprint just approved by City Council would remove even more traffic lanes in order to make more room for bikes and buses — it seems obvious that congestion will only grow worse and fatal accidents more frequent.

Until reading Galles’s essay, though, it hadn’t occurred to me that there is another way in which increased congestion will cost lives. “More motor vehicles trapped in gridlock,” he writes, “cannot clear the way for ambulances or fire trucks responding to emergency calls.”

I tend to be skeptical of the “adopt-my-policy-or-people-will-die” school of analysis, but there is nothing theoretical about the outcomes to be expected when emergency response times slow down. When it takes EMTs longer to reach people suffering a heart attack, or becomes more difficult for fire trucks to reach a blazing building, the cost is paid in human lives. Galles quotes the Mayo Clinic’s Roger White, an expert in the treatment of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests: “A one-minute decrease in the call-to-shock time increases the odds of survival by 57%,” White told USA Today, while decreasing the response time by three minutes “improves a victim’s chance of surviving almost fourfold.”

Even backers of the new Los Angeles transportation plan agree that it will worsen traffic in many parts of the city. That is another way of saying that emergencies will be responded to more slowly. And that is another way of saying that more victims of heart attack (or a stroke or ingested poison or a shooting or a fire) won’t make it.

The numbers are jolting. If transportation economist Randal O’Toole is correct, for every pedestrian whose life might be saved by so-called traffic calming — i.e., by policies that deliberately slow automobile traffic in order to boost bikes and buses — more than 30 lives are apt to be lost due to delayed paramedics and firefighters. When Ronald Bowman, a scientist with the National Bureau of Standards, crunched the data for a plan to slow traffic in Boulder, Colo., he came up with an even more lopsided risk factor: 85 lives lost for each life saved.

To the militant and self-righteous bicycle lobby, of course, little of this matters. They want more bike lanes and fewer cars, they want them now, and they can be counted on to browbeat any objectors with loud insults and vehement sanctimony. But the objections are valid, whether or not they’re heeded. Bikes are terrific, but they don’t belong on the busiest city streets. The price of insisting otherwise isn’t cheap.

Housing Codes, Homelessness, and Affordable Housing

At the end of this month, I get to make a ten-minute PowerPoint presentation to an international conference about how stricter housing codes contribute to homelessness and reduce the supply of affordable housing. Seems like a no-brainer to me, but I expect few if any of the other participants will even agree that perhaps one cause of homelessness and the lack of affordable housing is strict housing codes, and even fewer will even consider the possibility that reducing the seriousness of housing codes might help to alleviate the problems.

Ten Minutes. PowerPoint. Helpful suggestions/criticisms welcome!

Below is a former convent that was converted to a rooming house and that met with great difficulties because the rooms were not up to code. I lived there in the fall of 1978 when I was down, out, and had little money.

Paper straws? Plastic straws?

I hate the new-styled paper straws that are increasingly becoming the only option in some fast-food restaurants (or cities or states?).

I haven't always hated paper straws, though. I loved the paper straws we had back when I was a teenager. I could pinch one end of the straw, poke holes in it, and play music on it, a la an oboe or some other double-reed woodwind. Actually I was distressed emotionally (0.0003 on a scale of 10.0) when plastic straws began to dominate the straw market. 

 

But over the years, I adjusted. I coped.

 

In 2007, I saw and used some straws at a place in Guelph, and I really liked them, so I called the straw manufacturer (Stone something) to see about buying several boxes of them. They pointed me to a distributor, where I stopped to pick up three boxes. I still have nearly two boxes of them left. 

Meanwhile all of the paper straws I'm seeing on the market nowadays are horrid:

• They fall apart when I try to use them with coffee, and
• They're thick and cannot be squeezed into pretend double-reed musical instruments. 

So now I stock up for the future whenever I'm in a fast food place with plastic straws -- I take one to add to my stash, just in case I outlive my current supply.

 

But TBH I still don't get the aversion to plastic straws. They use very small amounts of plastic (considerably less than is in so many other products, e.g. ready meals at the supermarkets), which can easily be added to landfill sites. And the primary reason plastic straws and other plastic waste finds its way to the oceans has to do with recyclers selling the plastics to companies and places that are less scrupulous about making sure not to pollute the oceans.

 

Actually, I think the aversion to (and the movement to ban) plastic straws is a symbolic gesture by people who love to criticize consumerism and convenience -- modern day stoics, ascetics, Victorians, etc.

Joe Stiglitz, a Bad Economist?

I have met both Joe Stiglitz and Stanley Fischer. I trust and respect Fischer. Stiglitz not so much.

Stiglitz gave the economics profession the theoretical framework called "asymmetric information", according to which sellers often have much better information about their products and therefore are in a position to take advantage of less-well-informed buyers. His solution? Gubmnt intervention.

The George Stigler (not Joe Stiglitz!) solution? Reputation matters, and people will learn who to trust and who not to trust. Joe Stiglitz criticizes that approach, arguing markets would do better with proper gubmnt intervention.

Stiglitz seems to believe that if only he and his ilk could make all the economic policy decisions, there would be no problems. And yet he has been so wrong so often, it's hard to understand why people pay attention to him anymore.

This is the point made very well in "Continually Mistaken, Chronically Admired: ... a study in elite myopia," an article published last fall but that I just ran across (h/t Bill Evers).

The article documents how Stiglitz:

• praised Venezuelan socialism
• praised Ethiopian demogoguery
• opposed the Trans-Pacific trade pact
• completely missed the Asian financial crisis
• opposed raising the minimum wage and then favoured it with arguments that had nearly everyone else scratching their heads
• completely missed the problems of risky mortgages in praising and defending the pre-crisis work of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Stiglitz is the quintessential elitist interventionist who loves to talk about market failures (with little acknowledgement that most of the failures he deals with are dealt with adequately in the market), but he rarely if ever acknowledges that gubmnt policies are made and implemented by fallible people.

Stiglitz never met an argument for gubmnt intervention that he didn't like. He really needs to study more economic history and more about gubmnt failure, along with all the reasons gubmnt interventions are often much worse than the alleged market failures they have been instituted to "fix".

Why do I mention Fischer in my opening sentence? Because Stiglitz incorrectly accused him of impropriety. It looks like pot-kettle-black to me, given Stiglitz's cozying up with so many socialist and other dictators.

As Harold Demsetz once wrote, it is important in economics to compare feasible alternatives. Stiglitz doesn't do that; instead he frequently rails against imperfect markets, arguing they can be improved with "perfect" regulators and policies. It ain't gonna happen that way, Joe.

The Moon Shots

In 1969, I was in gradskool in Ames, Iowa. I was pretty well on my way to drifting away from being an idealistic young socialist and toward becoming a small-gubmnt libertarian. That drift made me far less enamoured of the moon programme than many of my friends were. I didn't see the point of going to the moon (still don't, really; though as a stepping stone to Mars for future colonization... maybe). We (i.e. the US gubmnt) were spending billions and billions on the space race when there were so many competing "needs" on earth.

 

I was much more interested in ending the Vietnam war, in controlling and reducing pollution, and in controlling the beginnings of the horrid economic period that was emerging because the gubmnt wouldn't control its spending.

 

But we did go to a friend's place to watch it. I'm glad I did.

The Unique Fabric of Canadian Cultural Identity

There is little doubt in my mind: the film Strange Brew captures the unique essence of the Canadian Cultural Identity.

But even though this film was a minor commercial success, there are many people in the culture industry who claim they absolutely NEED subsidies from the rest of us taxpayers to help preserve the national cultural fabric, whatever the heck that is.

What is so unique about Canada that needs preserving? Hockey? Curling? Beer? Skiing? Songs by Anne Murray? Poutine? Tim Horton's? But all these things pass the market test very successfully and will continue to do so without subsidies from the taxpayers so long as they provide satisfaction to consumers who vote with their dollars.

What is definitely not unique to Canada, though, is allegedly high-culture stuff for the elitist bigots of the country. Shakespearean productions are not a part of the unique Canadian culture; neither are local orchestral productions of supposed "music" by Mahler or Schonberg, showings of ancient art at local art musea, etc.

These things are nice, maybe, for people who like them, but there is no reason for the rest of the taxpayers of Canada to support such extravaganzas. Just because they are performed or managed or produced by people living in Canada, that doesn't make them part of our unique cultural fabric.

Some people think we should help preserve our cultural identity by supporting the artists who write music and paint and write stories. I disagree. Most of the stuff produced by these self-proclaimed artistes is unwanted by the majority of Canadians; it comes from snobs to be consumed by snobs with average folk being asked to pay for it. This situation is highly unfair. Furthermore, if average Canadians don't want the junk enough to support it, I place little credence in the claims that it represents Canadian culture.

Let's face it. Most real people would probably rather visit a wax museum than sleep through a ballet. And a wax museum probably sounds better to most people than all the "cultural" activities in all of the prairies put together (by prairies, I mean from Kenora to the Rockies). Ask yourself this: which has more visitors per year -- the Niagara Falls wax musea or Winnipeg. I'll bet Winnipeg loses by a ratio of about 235 to 1.

And now ask yourself: which gets more tax dollar support for culture -- the Niagara Falls wax musea or Winnipeg? I'll bet Winnipeg wins by an infinite ratio.

The important conclusion to be drawn here is that Winnipeg needs, yes, NEEDS federal subsidies for its very own wax museum. Or else to subsidize the move of their entire city to Niagara Falls.

Meanwhile, let those who make their living by appealing for government grants to the arts do something useful with their time, such as set up a wax museum in London, Ont., or produce more good movies like Strange Brew that real Canadians can identify with.

***

People who know me understand that I'm an above average supporter of the arts in London, Ontario; I strongly favour private support for the arts. My objection is to taxing everyone to support the tastes, wishes, activities, of the pretentious (and, of course, non-pretentious) few.

What Is the Price Elasticity of Supply of Children? People Respond to Incentives

Not everyone responds the same way to changes in incentives, but some do. An example sent by my friend Jack:

Overheard at a shopping mall today:
Two  mothers, looking around 16 years old, one with three young kids about a year apart, the other with two.
The one with three says to the other  “ you should have another one. You wouldn’t believe how much more money you get.”

Some Random Thoughts on SNC-Lavalin and Justin Trudeau's Mishandling of the Situation

Many states in the US have something like nolo contendere, which I gather means the defendents admit they did it and they'll pay a fine, but they don't want a record of having pled guilty or of having been found guilty. This plea has cleared up a tonne of court time in the US, as I understand it.

 

The plea of nolo was very similar to what the Canadian ruling Liberal Party snuck into the budget. The fact that it was allegedly/apparently snuck into a budget bill is questionable, and possibly scurrilous; also it was apparently snuck in at that point to provide the this non-guilty option for SNC-Lavalin even though it was clearly ex post and should have been forward looking, not applying to past cases. I may be wrong, but that by itself is questionable, even if that plank of the budget had all kinds of language allowing the gubmnt to use nolo on cases that had not yet gone to trial. [nevertheless, I think "nolo" is an efficient addition to criminal law]

 

Okay, so why didn't the then-sitting Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould object then? A couple of possibilities: 

• She didn't see it in the bill and her staff missed it. Not implausible; it was a budget, not an attorney general bill after all.
• She approves of nolo but thought it would be forward looking.
• She approves of nolo but figured she could still prosecute SNC, that it would be her choice. I expect this would be what she'd say, even if it's not the case.
• She went along cuz she was a good Liberal party member and wanted to keep her job as AG and figured she deal with SNC separately.
• She didn't even consider the conflict.
• Maybe she did object and we don't know.

Those and many more possibilities.

 

So what happened? 

 

My guess is that JT thought it was all taken care of and that SNC would get off with a major hand-slapping but no criminal record, thus allowing them to bid on future gubmnt contracts (I gather the criminal conviction would bar this? not sure). But J W-R said "no".

 

As happens everywhere when people disagree, pressure was brought to bear. Nothing new here. You wanna know pressure? sit on a promotion and tenure committee; sit on a committee that decides to revoke someone's tenure; testify before city council that Uber should be permitted in town (the threats actually concerned me in a related situation many years ago); etc.  Pressure in a political situation is common, normal, to be expected. Especially intense pressure. What on earth did she expect? I expect she didn't believe they'd fire her. 

 

But then she didn't bow to the pressure. Why not???? I think this is an important question. Did JT apply inappropriate pressure?  Did she really have a moral position that SNC did it and should accept the consequences? [after all SNC apparently has quite the reputation for allegedly bribing mideast oil shieks --- someone on FB posted that this goes even further --- that the Saudis in turn provide SNC lots of business so long as JT and the Liberals don't complete a pipeline from the west to the east, thus keeping the demand for Saudi oil high.] 

 

Given her background as a prosecutor, did she just think the guilty should be convicted? If so, she wouldn't like nolo despite it's obvious efficiencies. But if that's the case, why hasn't she raised that as the issue.

 

And what really puzzles me: Why did JT try to cover it all up? Why didn't he go on record right away as saying that yes, the Liberals had lobbied strong and hard with J W-R but she wouldn't consider their positions and she had to be removed from the AG position? 

 

As someone [who???] once said [loosely paraphrased], it's not that JT and the Libs did it - it's the coverup that got 'em in trouble.

 

Whatever, I consider J W-R in Canada and Cohen in the US to be shining testament for small gubmnt.

 

Note 1: I ran across the plea of "nolo" when I was a grad student in the US doing some research on a paper about anti-trust violations. Tonnes of defendants for local silliness pled "nolo" and I had to look it up.

Note 2: That was nearly 50 years ago. Things have probably changed a bit.

Note 3: Apparently the past tense of "plead" is "pleaded", not "pled".

 

Confrontation, Responses, and (Bayesian) Priors

We all have reasonably strong views about the world, how it operates, and how we think it should operate. These strong views, or priors, affect how we interpret events.

So let me ask readers to pick an issue about which you have strong views. What would it take to get you to change your views?

Example:

One of my all-time favourite economics professors, the late nobel laureate Robert Fogel, was once a communist organizer. He became a Chicago-school near libertarian type economist because communism was wrong about the failures of capitalism.

Counterexample:

I have friends who are so strongly opposed to abortion, nothing would ever change their minds.

The former is a more scholarly approach; the latter is a more religious or moral approach.

So what would it take to get you to change your mind about ________?

For me:

• Minimum wages. I think they're wrong; I don't think that on average they help all the people they're intended to help; I think that in general gubmnt intrusion into markets inhibits economic growth and makes future generations of poor people much worse off than they would be if we had more economic growth. I'm nearly religious on this. I'm not sure I could be convinced to change my views (informed by the study of economics and the studies I've read about minimum wages).
• Global warming. I was skeptical about how much we're experiencing, but I'm beginning to shed that skepticism in the light of increasing data and information from some people I tend to trust. I'm still somewhat skeptical about how much is caused by humans. I'm not qualified to even try to understand the studies. I doubt that much we might do in Canada or possibly in North America will change things much. I do think we should prepare and help prepare to deal with it if, as, and to the extent we experience it.
• Coventry School and the the confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial. This incident is what prompted this post. What would prompt you to change your take on the situation? What if the boys had been from a secular school and carrying copies of Michelle Obama's book?

Seriously, for each contentious issue, I think it would be a good idea for us to ask ourselves, "Is it possible that I can be convinced otherwise?" If not, we're debating religion, which I'm willing to do in some settings [do we have a multi-verse with 11 dimensions? what caused the big bang? etc.]

and as I wrote [edited here] in a comment on my Facebook page earlier today:

I shouldn't do this, I know, but my views:
1. I'm anti-Trump, as I hope most of you know. But I'm probably anti-Trump for reasons different from those that many of you have. At the same time I know some very smart and caring people who are pro-Trump. My point? Don't use your or anyone else's views about Trump to judge a particular situation. Please.
2. I'm not anti-abortion, but I'm pro-adoption (my daughter was adopted). Colour me woefully ambivalent on the topic. My point: please don't use my or anyone else's views on abortion to judge a particular situation.
3. From what I've read and seen, the school the boys were from teaches stuff I strongly disagree with. That doesn't mean I hate these boys; that doesn't mean they were in the wrong at this confrontation.
4. I am not a fan of MAGA (I actually had to google it when the incident was first written about).
5. In this incident, no matter what you might think about the boys and their school and their hats, what did they do wrong in this confrontation? Especially I don't know what the one student did who was confronted by Phillips. He smiled or smirked, as we were taught to do in the Civil Rights movement; he reacted non-violently. 
6. If you condemn the boys for their behaviour in this instance because of their school, their hats, their parents, their politics, their views on abortion, etc. you've missed the point I was trying to make.
7. Like the writer of this Atlantic piece, I've held some wildly different, and (many would say) hateful or objectionable views over my lifetime. I have done some pretty uncaring things in my lifetime. But I hope people will not use those views or actions to judge me in any given situation. I know some do and some have, but please keep this in mind when writing about this particular situation. 

I'm sure I could write more. I probably will. I'm feeling so despondent though because of the comments I've read, both yesterday and today.😕

Addendum: Many of us can, and do, change our views on religious-type topics as well. I was once a conscientious objector to war. I think I may have been drifting away from that moral position but 9-11 sealed it for me. I was no longer a conscientious objector after that event. Also, I was once an atheist but cosmological questions turned me into a devout agnostic.

Is Canada's Prime Minister Anti-Jew?

Or is Justin Trudeau ignorant or maybe just afraid that if he mentions the word "Jews" he will be attacked by many Muslims and lose their votes? See this.  He failed to mention the Jews last year on International Holocaust Memorial Day.

It was an error, the government insisted. An embarrassing oversight. Lesson learned! Only … it wasn’t learned. This week, the prime minister dedicated Ottawa’s National Holocaust Monument with a plaque commemorating “the millions of men, women and children murdered during the Holocaust and … the survivors who persevered and were able to make their way to Canada after one of the darkest chapters in history.”

Notice something missing? Again?!

 Of course we know that gypsies and gays and others were also murdered during the Holocaust. But why has the Prime Minister failed to mention the primary target of the Holocaust murders, the Jews? And if not mentioning the Jews really was a mistake last year, what was it this year?

Vitamins for Puerto Rico?

Are there any major (or non-major, for that matter) generic or big-name pharmaceutical or supplement manufacturers who are donating vitamin supplements for Puerto Rican relief. The people on that island, from what I read, will be suffering from food and water shortages for quite some time. Relief organizations are doing what they can to provide water, water purification systems, generators, fuel, food, building supplies etc.

My reaction to the Puerto Rican crisis is straight-forward: do what we can.

I have hated the fiscal irresponsibility of the Puerto Rican gubmnts and their antipathy toward balanced budgets and more market-oriented ways of promoting economic growth. I even hold those things partially responsible for the problems faced in Puerto Rico after hurricanes Irma and Maria -- those policies and the Jones Act, which bars foreign ships from carrying goods between the US and its territories.

But now is not the time to withhold aid because of these views. Now is the time for people who care to do something. Ms. Eclectic and I have already donated to several organizations and will likely donate to more as we winnow the chaff from the effective ones.

Is it silly of me to ask about vitamins? I'd hate for a charitable organization to undercut the vitamin shops there, but for the intermediate-term, nutrition might be important. At the same time, I am concerned about the health and welfare of the people, especially the young children, who might suffer from malnutrition over the next year or so. Is this misplaced? Impossible to do anything about?

Iowa Election Futures Market Says Hillary Has a Nearly 90% Chance of Winning.

https://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_PRES16_WTA.cfm

Like it or not, when people put their money where their mouths are, they predict reasonably well and certainly better than polls, on average.

John D. Rockefeller Did More To Improve Human Existence Than Did Teddy Roosevelt

That's the point made by Don Boudreaux here, with his quotation and discussion of McCloskey's book on the bourgeoisie.

Lives spent trying to figure out what customers want and how to get the item to them in a nonruinous way and how to improve service and quality at lower cost, one could argue, lead  [sic] the bourgeoisie to ethical attitudes superior in some ways to those of a haughty aristocracy or an envious peasantry or a proud clerisy.  Or at least [Adam] Smith argued.

……..
……..
This Smithian-Montesquieuian-McCloskeyan argument is certainly correct.  How saddening and maddening it is, then, that so much applause, even from citizens of bourgeois societies, is reserved not for those who risk their own funds in efforts to try, peacefully, to better satisfy other people’s voluntarily expressed desires but, rather, for those who arrogantly order other people about using threats of violence.

For example, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., is to this day called a “robber baron” and is thought by many to have been an anti-social scoundrel as a businessman.  In contrast, Teddy Roosevelt has his face carved famously into a mountain and is widely celebrated as a great and “Progressive” seer.  How mistaken and backward!   During any one ordinary day of his business career J.D. Rockefeller produced more net good for humanity than Teddy Roosevelt did over his entire lifetime.  Indeed, the case is even stronger for Rockefeller: he was without question a huge net contributor to humankind; in contrast, T.R. was quite likely, on net, a wrecker.

Likewise, Sam Walton probably did more than a dozen leading social justice advocates.

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Who Didn't Think Trump Was/Is Like That?

I am disgusted by Trump's abuse of power and position... actually, I always have been. And the recent revelations of his abuse of women, not to mention his abuse of suppliers and others with whom he had financial dealings, just confirms my dis-ease with having that man as president of the US.

But given his history, his bullying tactics in the early primaries, his blatant lying, and his use of sexual innuendo and machismo so often during the past year and a half, who didn't expect it? This is a man who seeks more power and who will surely abuse it... blatantly.

Did the republican voters not see this early on? Why not? Because he would be "our bully" and would stand up to the rest of the world on behalf of us? I think they saw it and applauded it. Fortunately at least some are having second thoughts.

That's the voters I'm talking about. But what about the politicians and other people who publicly supported Trump? Does it take tapes of confessions of sex abuse to get them to see what a scary man he is?

There is no excuse for their continued support of Trump, and there is no excuse for their having supported him before the sex-abuse interview was disseminated.

Here's to people like Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, et alia, who refused to support Trump early on. As for the others? okay, they saw some virtue in party loyalty.... but that betrays a serious lack of integrity on their part --- a serious lack of integrity coupled with a serious blindness to what the man is like. Phhhht.

That having been said, Clinton scares me, too. She's a power-hungry person who will continue to sell favours and will continue to increase the size of gubmnt, with the effect of distorting incentives toward the seeking of gubmnt benefits and away from productive activity.

My choice: Vote for Johnson and Weld.

Political Realities and Economic Theory

This brief post by Don Boudreaux captures why I reject the economic theories that are used to justify big gubmnt:

The economic theory: the state intervenes in the economy in order to prevent free-riding – in order to internalize externalities – in order to better ensure that all private parties pay the full marginal costs of their activities, and that all private parties reap the full marginal benefits of their activities – in order to promote competition – in order to protect the weak from the strong.

The political reality: the state intervenes in the economy in order to promote free-riding – in order to externalize costs and benefits that the market has reasonably internalized – in order to better ensure that politically powerful private parties escape the full marginal costs of their activities, and that politically disfavored groups be stripped of much of the marginal benefits of their activities – in order to promote monopoly – in order to render some people weak who are then pillaged by the strong.

 Any economics course that teaches the economic theory without including something on public choice and the political realities is seriously deficient.

And anyone who wants bigger gubmnt to correct the evils described in the above "political reality" is living in la-la land.