Gary Gross was the first to post the following e-mail from King's wife, Barbara:

King had his gall bladder removed but needed the major incision for which his hospitalization will be prolonged until Thursday or Friday.

Apparently, it was very infected.

Barring complications, he will recuperate on the 4th floor of the hospital.

I’ll continue to keep you posted; meantime, what a blessing the Blogosphere has been. I can’t thank you enough,

Barbara

We are all extremely thankful and relieved at this good news, and wish King and his family the best.

Update April 30.

King is recovering satisfactorily. Thanks to all of you who sent wishes of a successful operation and healthy recovery. All your comments were copied and sent to his wife, Barb. If you care to post any more comments, those two will be forwarded.

Again, thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

UPDATE (11am): Many thanks to all of you. I just took the most tiring, most exciting 10-minute, 150 foot walk ever taken by this human being and found I had a wire for my laptop here. I am shocked beyond words at the outpouring of friendship shown me the last few days by you all on the comments, in other posts and people who've come by the hospital so far. I'm a little too weak to do lots of blogging, so this is all for today most likely. I'll tell you the rest of the story sometime. But when I tell people that virtual friends can be just as vital as those in real time, your comments, thoughts and prayers will be Exhibit A for the prosecution. God blesses me with your friendship. --kb

Update Thursday, May 1

King continues to do well. Most pain is gone. He's taking short walks. He gets solid food this morning. Toast never tasted so good! Again, thanks to all.

I am biased in favor of American soldiers. We have the best trained, most professional, caring soldiers in the world.

Having said the above, here are some quotes from an Aussie soldier regarding his experience with American soldiers in Iraq. You can go here for the full letter. I am comfortable that it's legit - the original source was Michael Ledeen at Pajamas Media a known specialist on the Middle East and Islamic jihadism. This says it all.

Gentlemen I am an Australian and my son is an Australian - as far as we are concerned there is not place on God's earth better than Australia, and there are no people better than Australians. My son and I just ended a long 'phone conversation and here are some of his comments, believe me this is what he said.

'Before I came over here I thought we (the Australian Army) were pretty .... hot..... was I ever wrong!....The Yanks (I hope you don't mind me using that word) are so professional from the top to the bottom that it is almost embarrassing to be in their company, and to call yourself a soldier....don't get me wrong, we are good at what we do but the Yanks are so much better.....they are complete at what they do, how they do it and their attitude is awesome....they don't complain they just get on with the job and they do it right.

Let's face it they don't have to be here, they could stay in America and beat the s*** out of anyone who threatened them, but they are here because they believe they should be here, and the Iraqis would be screwed if they weren't here.

The reason why I am sharing this with you is because I realize that you (as a nation) must get pretty ***** with all the criticism you receive by the so-called 'know it alls' who are sitting at home - safe. The reality is that they are safe, just as I am, because of America. If the world went arse up tomorrow ..... I know that the Americans would be there putting themselves on the line for others. That to me is the sign of greatness.

UPDATE: This is so typical. I posted this tribute to American soldiers, which praises their professionalism, their competence, their attitudes, and their willingness to sacrifice for others. The first response is a comment with not one positive word about our soldiers, instead changing the subject to bash President Bush and the American government. Such behavior is why so many claims to "support our troops" give the impression of hypocritical and cynical propaganda.

Labels: US Soldiers

To our readers: King is in the hospital at this time and won't be blogging for a while. We'd talked Saturday morning - he'd landed in the hospital then with some stomach problems. He's on a restricted diet so stomach issues cannot be ignored. He was feeling better and they could find no source of the problem. He came to the Twin Cities to do his afternoon radio show, drove back to St. Cloud only to return to the hospital on Saturday night.

Tests run today indicate his problem is his gall bladder. He'll wait for surgery because he is now running a fever and having heart palpitations. His St. Cloud blogging buddy, Gary Gross, has information here.

As of now, surgery is scheduled for Tuesday morning. King has received pain meds. I will keep readers posted. In the meantime, any thoughts and prayers for King and his family are welcome. Any comments you post will be forwarded to King's family. Thank you.

Update, Tuesday, 4/29

As of now, King rested comfortably. Surgery is this morning. After hearing results, I'll post. To those who left messages for King and his family, thank you! They are really appreciated!

This past Wednesday was beautiful - temperature in the low 70's, clear sky and, "Finally," we thought, "spring is here!" After all we had a rather prolonged winter.

Budding trees, the beginnings of flowers, shorts, t-shirts, etc. - all signs of spring were visible. We then experienced two days of rain (great for the farmers) and this morning, SNOW. It's April 26. Included are photos from the back of our house - you can see the green of lilies, iris, and other flowers through the dusting of snow.

Labels: global warming????

Many people are talking about Larry Bartels new book, Unequal Democracy. Paul Krugman talks about the differences in inequality between GOP and Democrat administrations, but he can't figure out why that happens. Dani Rodrik seems to accept Bartels' explanation of why voters still vote for Republicans when they keep giving us recessions and income inequality, which is that voters are myopic. (Russ Roberts calls the data into question -- well worth considering, but not my point.)

Alex Tabarrok makes the key point: We've known this result for some time.

In a nutshell, the theory of partisan business cycles says that Democrats care more about reducing unemployment, Republicans care more about reducing inflation. Wage growth is set according to expected inflation in advance of an election. Since which party will win the election is unknown wages growth is set according to a mean of the Democrat (high) and Republican (low) expected inflation rates. If Democrats are elected they inflate and real wages fall creating a boom. If Republicans are elected they reduce inflation and real wages rise creating a bust.

A certain economist wrote his dissertation on political business cycles in the 1980s and considered partisan cycles. I didn't have at that time the nice chart that Alberto Alesina and Howard Rosenthal (Am Pol Sci Rev, 1989) drew that Alex has updated, but I had noted what they note in their introduction. Democratic and Republican candidates have "polarized policy preferencs" in that Democrats have a higher tolerance for inflation and a lower tolerance for unemployment than do Republicans." (pp. 374-75) There are also economic frictions caused by the presence of wage contracts, that must be set during the period where we don't know whether the Republican or Democrat will win. Because these contracts can be rewritten after the election, most of the shock that occurs when one side or the other wins an election happens in the first half of the new administration; ergo, partisan cycles are the result of settling electoral choices. Unlike earlier political business cycle models, you can generate these results while still having completely rational voters. What they lack is only knowledge of how everyone else in the economy will vote.

Labels: economics, elections

So we've had the state house now pass cap-and-trade. Leo notes comments by Rep. Kate Knuth about the transformative nature of cap-and-trade.

"Cap-and-trade will change the jobs that we have in Minnesota -- I think it will change the jobs for the better," said Knuth, DFL-New Brighton. "It will bring clean-energy jobs."

CBO director Peter Orszag, commenting on federal cap-and-trade proposals, notes that this is simply giving revenue to those who get the allowances under the cap. Proposals currently exist in S. 2191 to give away allowances that CBO values at $145 billion. We don't have a similar number for Minnesota. And if the feds pass their cap-and-trade proposal, what happens to Rep. Knuth's bill?

Orszag's idea instead: Have government sell the allowances, and use the revenues to reduce taxes. Did anyone in the DFL legislature come up with this idea of reducing taxes? Naw, they're happy to give away your air rights for a better Minnesota!

Labels: economics, Minnesota

The same people who wanted you to use biofuels now are telling you they are bad. The worldwide shortage of food because of demand for a substitute leads to rising prices and, because in the short run you can't grow more rice, runs on rice supplies here and abroad.

I make part of my lecture on supply and demand a "second law of supply". Big shifts in supply or demand will lead to large initial changes in price. Elasticities are always greater in the long-run than the short, as some fixed prices become variable and some investment opportunities take time to build. When Ed Morrissey says,

Perhaps turning food into transportation fuel would make sense if massive amounts of grain spoiled every year from a lack of demand...

he's only half right. All surpluses are eliminated by falling prices, and all shortages are eliminated by rising prices, in a free market. The grain will spoil for one year, and then we grow less grain.

'Tis from this logic that the theory of cobweb cycles grew in the 1940s. Cobweb cycles make sense as a theory for the movement of corn prices if two conditions apply: There's a significant lag between the decision to produce and the delivery of the product (true for most agricultural products) and supply decisions are based on current prices. Of course, corn has a futures market. At the time of this writing, the spot price for corn was $5.77 but the price for delivery in December 08 is $6.07. That price is driving the decision to plant X acres as corn, valued in comparison to the prices of soybeans, wheat, and whatever else you might grow on that land. What happens after about June 15 to that market doesn't matter so much, as most corn is already in the ground by then in the Northern Hemisphere.

It is also interesting to note that, while the price of corn futures rises steadily, the price of ethanol futures declines as we go to more distant dates on the contract. The rising price of corn induces more corn into the market, which creates more ethanol and reduces its price. Prices adjust in the long run back towards the initial price. Far better than the Terror for allocating goods and services.

Ed continues:

Farmers love the higher prices that come from the new demand to fill gas tanks, but higher prices have consequences for poorer nations that have just begun to be felt. Morally speaking, shouldn’t we feed people before we feed cars?

Esther Duflo is also arguing that we need price insurance for the world's poor.

The traditional method used by developing country governments – maintaining large stockpiles of grain by buying when the price is low and selling when the price is high – has its share of problems. In India, it was said that at some point that there were enough bags of rice in those storage facilities to go to the moon and back. The losses in storage and to corruption were important. Alternatively, the governments can manipulate prices using taxes and subsidies. Or perhaps it is time to be creative and make the international financial services actually work for the poor: governments could provide price insurance for the poor (in the form of transfers to some when price are high, and others when price are low). Countries that are neither net sellers nor net buyers could do this internally, and countries that are either net sellers or net buyers should be able to sell this insurance on the world market.

But isn't this what speculators do? We have seen what public insurance in financial markets does: We get too-big-to-fail. We get political pressure overriding contracts and even the law, letting banks and brokerage houses skirt financial regulation because it would be too disruptive to let them fail. Should we trust those same mechanisms with our food?

Labels: economics, food

It's a great thing for St. Cloud area students to perform an original choral piece. Even greater that they are going overseas. And better yet, an oratorio about the Holocaust delivered at the site of a Nazi death camp.

But the title of the piece, From anti-Semitic hotbed to healing: St. Cloud area students to perform oratorio at Nazi death camps once again has some Twin Cities writer who probably spends NO TIME in St. Cloud using the swastika story to paint an entire town as a hotbed when the one student who admitted to drawing a swastika comes from a St. Paul suburb. Yet we had to be open and pro-active, and we continue to get this kind of press. Cui bono? Those who use the claims of "systemic racism" to further their urban racial political agenda.

Labels: higher education, politics, SCSU

Are the ones I'm wearing. John Palmer doesn't seem to like his so much. John, it took me more than a week for adjusting to the first pair (he doesn't say how long he's had his). I'm looking at a 20" screen right now and can see all without moving my head. My optometrist is also my golf partner, so I probably can't use John's suggestion of ordering glasses from China. But I do get free delivery of replacements ... at the first tee!

(Which reminds me, I need to fill my new prescription. This aging thing is not working for my eyes very well. Frame suggestions welcome!)

Labels: health care

Matt Abe has highlighted a dispute over tenure for Guillermo Gonzalez that is pretty darn juicy. A scientist supports the theory of intelligent design (ID) and comes up for tenure. Despite having academic publications in peer-reviewed journals far in excess of the tenure requirement, and without any evidence of poor teaching, tenure is denied. Using data practices act filings, Gonzalez gets copies of emails between his colleagues, showing not only a deep contempt for ID, but a campaign to get him to not apply for tenure "and solve us the potentially difficult issue."

What makes it juicy isn't that this is yet another debate over ID. It could be any of a number of issues where members of a department have a strong disagreement over the intellectual pursuits of one of its junior members. What's juicy about it is the debate over whether a department can vote against tenure of one of its junior faculty because they think someone's research is fundamentally flawed, to the point where it does not meet the professional standards of the discipline. (And I need to be a little careful here, because some departments are interdisciplinary, or non-disciplinary -- and I could even name a couple here that are antidisciplinary! -- and would need to find a substitute. Permit me to set that question aside.)

Without taking sides in the Gonzalez' case, let me argue that his department does have a responsibility to determine whether the research meets the professional standard. The department's own standards indicate that the standard isn't the number of publications but "excellence sufficient to lead to a national or international reputation." That judgment is subjective, of course. Matt notes in support of Gonzalez that:

Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Gregor Mendel, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo ALL approached science with the assumption that they were studying the works of an intelligent creator, God. Historians have observed that it was exactly this perspective that enabled the start and advancement of modern science.

But what if the profession had, after the many years since these great scientists worked, moved towards a different standard? What would the faculty at ISU uphold?

I would be interested in knowing the process by which Gonzalez was hired. There are in faculty interviews a number of things that form an implicit contract between department and junior faculty. It would involve more than the department's statement. Were there annual reviews, in which Gonzalez was told that his research in ID did not meet the professional standard in the eyes of senior faculty? The email that his supporters document seem to have an element of secrecy, even stealth, about them. (I have never seen such things written in my own department, but I don't find them very surprising.) That makes his case stronger. But a department should have some freedom to shape itself, guided by a commitment to free inquiry and the standards of its discipline. Just because it appears the two are in conflict in this case should not mean that the department is purely engaged in suppressing Gonzalez' academic freedom.

My guess is that the case will end up decided on whether due process for Gonzalez was violated. There are cases -- such as that at Virginia State (temp link) -- where administrations assert they are the holders of academic freedom rather than the faculty. But in most places an administration does not assert that it can decide whether a professor meets disciplinary standards, and I doubt it happens here either.

Labels: higher education

Hunger Stalks Millions of Poor Americans blares the headline in the Financial Times of London. The article itself, however, turns out to be a combination of rank speculation and advocacy journalism for more welfare spending, triggered by pending congressional consideration of the farm bill.

The real story behind the farm bill, of course, is this astonishing observation by Ronald Bailey:

The amount of food being burned because of government mandates and subsidies for biofuels would feed nearly 450 million people. [My paraphrase]

That’s right, folks. We could feed every person on the entire North American continent with the food we burn because of well-intentioned but foolish government intervention in agricultural markets.

Over at National Review Online, Deroy Murdock notes the resulting Global Food Riots: Made in Washington, DC occurring in such places as Haiti, Mexico, Egypt, Pakistan and the Ivory Coast. His excellent article pulls together a wide range of relevant factual information on the biofuels mess, linked to the sources.

Contrast the opening sentences of the FT story:

An escalating global food crisis could bring the problem of hunger home to the US and other developed countries. Millions of poor Americans risk going hungry if food prices continue to rise and food agencies struggle to cope with rising costs, dwindling resources and a huge increase in demand. Already more and more poor people in the US are turning to charity and government assistance as they struggle with rising food costs and soaring fuel bills.

The only factual information here is that the US has a social safety net, consisting of a variety of government programs and private charities that help poor people with food, fuel bills and similar problems. Food prices are up, and the social safety net appears to be doing what it is supposed to do. The rest is speculation.

All of the remainder of the FT article consists of quotes from “campaigners” who seek “to broaden eligibility for food stamps and increase emergency food provision”: the California Women Infants and Children Program Association, the Food Research and Action Center, the Cleveland Food Bank, the Greater Chicago Food Depository, America’s Second Harvest, and Martha’s Table.

It is neither news nor interesting analyis that such organizations want more of our tax dollars devoted to their government rent-seeking activities.

We used to subscribe to the Financial Times, the Economist, Scientific American and National Geographic, all of which once consistently published excellent material with analysis based on well-sourced facts. We watched with dismay as each began to devote more and more of their limited resources to shallow advocacy pieces like this. We canceled our subscriptions, one by one, with regret.

Labels: economics, Energy, food, Media

I will be speaking to a group of students at St. Olaf College tonight at 8pm in Buntrock Commons. The topic is health care and Medicare. "King, you don't know anything about that do you?" That's why I take these tasks on, to force myself to learn. I went through the positions on Medicare of the three different candidates. Short of it: None impressed me.

Labels: Media

A friend of mine challenged me to let five people know today about the Armenian Genocide.

I will refer you five (and let me hope there are more than five) to the writer I consider most reliable in assessing genocides and democides of the 20th Century, Rudy Rummel. He writes of the entire panoply of genocides, not just the largest one begun this day in 1915. My grandparents left Turkey -- grandfather to America with his older brother, grandmother to a Lutheran orphanage in Beirut -- before the Young Turks came to power in 1909. They were casualties or collateral damage of the massacres of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the last Ottoman leader. (A stub of the story is still up on my family website written several years ago. I've not gotten around to reposting the rest of it.)

I have many stories to tell about marking today, which is known among Armenians as Genocide Day or Martyrs' Day. But perhaps the only thing that matters is that it eventually led a great woman, my medz mayr, to come to Dover NH, to create a family that included my father, who used to sing songs to me as a child that were Armenian and German, which I could only understand by learning about her life. And through it the tragedy of her family, her dead husband's family (my grandfather died when my dad was four), and a family tree that I've spent the last ten years trying to reconstruct. The records are gone -- they were in the Armenian churches that we are now told never existed -- and the older ones who remember are mostly gone. Remembering the martyrs is not about remembering murder and destruction; it's about remembering where you came from.

Labels: Armenia

As you probably know, today is referred to as Tax Freedom Day. But, if you live in Minnesota, hold on for Monday. Our state and local taxes push Tax Freedom Day for us out to April 28 (see p. 7). Congratulations, Wisconsin, yours is tomorrow.

Meanwhile, you can learn a nice tune:

Labels: Minnesota, taxes

Tyler Cowen notes that Italy's largest electric utility is converting a power plant from oil to coal, in spite of Europe's stated intentions on reducing greenhouse gases. I forwarded that post to a student of mine in the energy industry, who notes:

I believe it was last year the German government passed a law decommissioning all nuclear facilities by 2020. As of today, roughly 30% of the German grid is supplied by nuclear generation. The other alternative to coal is natural gas but the problem there is the Germans, and virtually all of Europe, doesn’t feel comfortable becoming more dependable to the only supplier of gas in the region. That being Mother Russia herself. With the EU ETS getting over its honeymoon phase with serious haircutting to carbon allocations, this should cause some volatility in the carbon and power markets. Exciting times…

He's right about Germany. And decommissioning is expensive.

Labels: economics, Energy

Two nights ago Mrs. S started shouting to me down the stairs (where I was in NBA playoff bliss) "we need to buy more gasoline." I realized she meant to bank more gasoline. We keep an account at First Fuel, where we have approximately $1500 socked away, purchased at $2.699. The newspaper blared yesterday morning that we had struck a record. Mrs. S, I've concluded, is a momentum investor.

Humor aside, it's worth wondering what is going on right now. We know that records should be corrected for inflation and for changes in taxes, but that won't explain everything. The recent state tax increase should have added only $0.02 so far, and Federal taxes haven't changed. The tax proposals of some (including John McCain) to have a Federal tax holiday doesn't help that much, as Menzie Chinn points out. Half of that shifts back towards oil companies. I'm not looking to tax windfall profits, but there's little sense boosting their profits further at this time. And Chinn notes "to the extent the lower price spurs gasoline consumption, this should increase the petroleum and petroleum products component of U.S. imports, and thence putting further upward pressure on the price of oil..."

Another issue is that these reports come out every spring. Last year we were talking about gas boycotts around this time. Two years ago it was ethanol, another pitch of the tax holiday etc. Three years ago it was evidence of stagflation. Like first pitch, it happens every spring. Here's a chart to show what I mean:
The technical term for this graph is that it is the Census X-12 seasonal factor for the price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas (all formulations, source.) If it matters to you, I estimated it with EViews 5.0 and estimated it over 1980-2007. I'm only showing you the last three-plus years. For the layman, the vertical scale is the multiplicative factor set to equal 1 when the month is normal. 1.04 says the month on average has prices 4% higher due to the season it is; a 0.92 says the price is 8% below a normal month. As you can see, the high months begin every April, tending to peak in May and then coast to the fall, where they fall to a nadir in December and January. Naturally, that's when I put money in the fuel bank. Most of my friends know this by observation; I of course have to use an econometric package to get the same answer, proving I'm not smart, just methodical.

That same analysis also generates an underlying pattern of the trend and cyclical movements of the gas price. Now this picture should scare you if you're worried about gas prices, but it also puts the emphasis back into mid-2007, where I think it really belongs.
The vertical axis is cents per gallon. This process takes the noise out of series and the seasonality to look for shorter trends, and no doubt the trend is straight up lately. If you extrapolate that trend, even with the decreasing seasonality, a $4 gas price is just slightly less than a 50-50 proposition. I get $3.976 for a July forecast using this very crude estimate. The drop in late fall and winter will only have the price slide back to about $3.65 by December. Why that upsurge is happening isn't really so clear, though Jim Hamilton's contention that it's Fed policy feels pretty right to me. Not that I'm a gold bug, but the price of gold on a monthly chart has about the same pattern.I think that if you took the prices of all commodities -- which may or may not be simply a representation of a weak dollar -- and combined it with the gas seasonal factor, you go a long way to explaining the price of gas. And if you do believe this, you should take Mrs. S's advice. You're not likely to see a price at this level again until December at the earliest. And maybe not even then.

Labels: economics, gas

I've not commented on the Obama craze the past few months. I'm happy to let the Democrats duke it out among themselves. But, this San Francisco fundraiser displays such an incredible example of the hypocrisy of what the Democrat Party says it is that I decided to post.

The Democrats bill themselves as the party of the working man. I've even seen the old bumper sticker with words to the effect: I can't afford to be a Republican. I've got news for you - the billionaires are overwhelmingly Democrat - you can't afford to be a Democrat.

Most media moguls, Democrats;
Dot-com mega-millionaires and billionaires, Democrats;
Stock market honchos, Democrats.

These people, most of whom earned their mega-fortunes, have now decided they are smarter and better than the rest of us. They have their fundraisers at multi-million dollar mansions with their mega-rich friends, and agree with the condescending, snide remarks made about the rest of us peons.

What made America great was our environment that fostered, encouraged, and supported new ideas as well as the knowledge that with enough intelligence, hard work, and sometimes a few breaks, people could create and earn more than they ever dreamed. Most of these incredibly rich Democrats earned their money in our free-market system.

What happened to their attitude once they became so wealthy that money no longer meant anything to them? Did they put their efforts to encouraging others to repeat their successes? No.

Obama's behavior is that of a privately schooled, east coast educated elitist. He was at home with the San Francisco mega-money crowd. He and his super rich supporters do not understand that we Americans are capable of making our own decisions and we don't want others telling us what to do or how to think. This elitist attitude may well have cost him Pennsylvania tonight.

I don't want their money, I don't want their houses, and I surely don't want their arrogant, elitist attitude. What I do want is the continued opportunity to support the nation that gives people a real chance.

There will always be elitists - it's just that too many of today's elite Americans are far too socialistic minded. They are totally out of touch with the very people who buy their products and made them wealthy beyond belief.

Labels: Democrats, Obama

This week many campuses are seeing students protesting their inability to carry a concealed weapon while at school. The protests consists of students going about their business while wearing an empty holster (and one that is clearly seen as being empty.) The group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus have organized themselves for a second such protest (the first occurred last October.)

The two purposes of an Empty Holster Protest are:

1. To represent to the public that students, faculty, and guests on college campuses are left defenseless or, metaphorically, with empty holsters.

2. To start a dialogue with students and faculty members who may not know the facts of the issue.

Last Friday, the campus communications office sent out a notice telling us that this was happening here, explaining the protest with the link I used at the top and this:

Participants will be wearing t-shirts and EMPTY holsters and handing out flyers. The national organization sponsoring the protest has made it clear that students are NOT to carry anything inside the holsters. Students will not carry signs or banners and have made a commitment to avoiding any disruptive behavior. Behavior outside the promised parameters may be reported to Public Safety...

I must say that last sentence worried me. I have no recollection of any notice on our campus letting people know to report "behavior outside the promised parameters". Those parameters are determined by the letter that the group is having all the campus chapters use. In short, they can wear the empty holsters and t-shirts (which are a little too expensive, so the students here have said they would eschew them) and can speak to people who ask about the holsters, but they would not approach any groups or hand out literature.

To its credit, the administration issued a statement Monday morning that clarified that the students' speech rights were to be respected, from President Earl Potter under an email titled "Peaceful Protest This Week":

I recognize that this protest comes at a time when our sensitivities to safety on campus have been heightened by recent events. Nevertheless, I need to remind us all that while individuals in a university community may disagree with the opinions expressed by the protesters, we have the responsibility to be tolerant of their views and must not retaliate against advocates for these views. We must remember that these students have the first amendment right to free speech and the right to protest within university guidelines which prohibit disruption or interference with classes or other university business.

The flow of campus email, which over the weekend had faculty and staff looking for ways to stop the protest turned to decrying the students' insistence that they be allowed to advocate for guns, because guns are bad, or that guns are only desired by people who wish to do us harm. (Of course, articles like Arthur Brooks' in last Saturday's WSJ fall on deaf ears. Mitch, by the way, has an excellent commentary on that today.)

Some of the early comments included (direct quotes):

• how are we to know if the empty holster toting student’s intention is for safety or for terror?
• I would not feel safe having students walk into a classroom with holsters
• I find this disturbing at the very least. Brandishing what "appears to be a weapon" can constitute fifth degree assault

These were before the President's letter, and all were thinking that somehow it could and should be stopped. Afterwards, the comments turned to:

• It is unfortunate that people believe simple slogans like "Guns don't' kill people--People do" to answer complex questions about guns, freedom, and safety!
• the fact that there are people who are lobbying for the right to bring guns to a university campus -- into classrooms and university buildings, no less -- fills me with extreme terror.
• Nothing about these arguments so far even acknowledges that the tragedies at Virginia tech, Recori, columbine, and numerous others ever happened.
• I know that the opposition would say that "dangerous criminals and armed killers" would still be armed, but I like the odds better if fewer students are "carrying"--especially those young people whose good judgment is not yet in full blossom.
• I can just see it now: a grading complaint. Both the professor and the student put their guns on the table, and then begin the conversation.
  
• I accept the rights of the holster wearers to illustrate their opinions, but I hope our elected officials have the good sense to not change the laws to their liking. I’d be more comfortable if the holstered protestors also wore their marksmanship merit badges, military sharpshooter rankings, or any other evidence of requisite skill and composure.

I did not participate much in this discussion, as I realized how little I knew, but one would have to say that if the purpose of an Empty Holster Protest was to start a dialogue, they certainly got that. The question is, what happens after starting it?

Through students I knew on campus I was able to speak with two participants in this protest, Terrance McCloskey and Bill Jacobson. They agreed to meet me and another faculty member interested in First Amendment issues, Kathy Uradnik, in my office. McCloskey identified himself as a licensed firearms instructor, though so far he has taught only one class. Both came wearing empty holsters.
I placed the holster for my Treo alongside theirs; I then put my Treo in Bill's holster. It was a little small for the holster, but it was snug. As you can see from the picture, they are not obvious to anyone not looking closely, and any claim that they would be disruptive to the classroom seems a real stretch to me.

SCCC has advocated that each student group provide notification to the campus they are participating in the event. The SCSU students -- which they reported numbered "around 30" and included "a majority of the Student Government Association body" -- sent notices to Public Safety and to the student organizations group. They received a call about their "proposed" protest from administrative vice president Steve Ludwig, to whom they reported again that the holsters would be empty. They told me Ludwig expressed concern for negative emotional reactions to the holsters, which given the quotes above from faculty would seem well-founded. They also reported that they had a few students participate in the October protest as a test run. One student at that time had grabbed the holster Jacobson was wearing, "to check to see if it was empty." Other than that, there had been no reaction.

I asked if there was more reaction this time. Jacobson said that he had six people talk to him in the last two hours. McCloskey said he had not gotten any reactions today. They had had reported to them that one Public Safety sergeant had told a watch that they should be on the lookout and write up reports if any of the protesters got out of line, and one report was that a faculty member, well known to us, had started to approach them to talk but then backed away. Protesters are instructed not to approach anyone; I asked if they had literature to hand out if they were asked, but McCloskey replied that they had no money to print flyers.

We spent time reviewing other complaints and reactions. It is worth reminding people that the age at which one could get a permit is 21, so that some of the concerns of guns in the hands of "young people whose good judgment is not yet in full blossom" has been contemplated by the law already. We discussed restrictions on less-than-lethal alternatives like TASERs and pepper spray. Students can't carry TASERs either, Jacobson said, and the campus' student handbook extends the gun ban to "any other weapon."

Longtime readers of this blog know I do not own a gun. I haven't fired one since getting my rifle merit badge in Boy Scouts. I tried a handgun at that time, but not since. A couple of years ago Littlest wanted to learn about shooting a rifle, so we sent her to the classes and I went and watched her field class. She was 11. She was excited to try this, but she also was very respectful of a gun that day.

I share the fear many of my colleagues have of a handgun insofar as I am ignorant of their use. My conversation with McCloskey and Jacobson had one very strong impact on me: I was more aware afterwards of how little I know. I have no way of knowing, for example, how much a person trained to carry a concealed weapon would know about protecting the weapon from an attacker, the poise they have in dealing with intruders, the background checks one gets to be sure one is not a loony. I'm hopeful of changing that soon, to take advantage of one of my several invitations to learn how to handle and use a handgun. Not necessarily because I want a permit to conceal and carry -- how would I know if I wanted one? -- but in order to reduce my ignorance.

Which is why I got into this business anyway. Teaching in a university is supposed to put one in the ignorance reduction business. I suggest this as an antidote to the fear that the faculty above expressed: Yes, we should learn about campus safety and what we can do to increase it, but we should also overcome the fear that is borne of our ignorance about guns. We should practice what we teach.

Labels: free speech, guns, higher education, SCSU

The local Women's Center is having a Pay Equity Bake Sale:

Tuesday, April 22 from 9:00 to 2:00 p.m. (or until the baked goods run out)

Atwood Lobby Area (near MSS)

In recognition of National Pay Equity Day, Women’s Action is selling baked goods more affordable for women. Come join us for brownies, cookies, muffins and much more! The first 50 women will receive a $1.00 discount towards coffee or beverages of their choice at the local coffee areas in Atwood*

As FIRE noted a few years ago, affirmative action bake sales tend to draw more heat than pay equity bake sales. You can figure out why.

Labels: affirmative action, higher education

I wonder if the post on generosity could be expanded by some information from the Pew "Inside the Middle Class" poll. This paragraph I think tells us a great deal:

Some two-thirds (68%) of middle class respondents say that "having enough free time to do the things you want" is a very important priority in their lives. That's more than say the same about any other priority we asked about in this survey including: having children (62% said that is very important), being successful in a career (59%), being married (55%), living a religious life (53%), doing volunteer work/donating to charity (52%); and being wealthy (12%). Upper and lower class respondents give essentially the same answers. The demographic groups most inclined to say they highly value free time are the ones least likely to have it -- such as the employed, the middle-aged, and mothers of young children. In recent years, a number of public opinion surveys have documented Americans' growing sense of feeling rushed, and this perception tracks with the growth in the number of mothers who are employed outside the home and in the number of two-earner couples. However, recent research on whether Americans in fact have less leisure time has produced mixed findings. At least one major report, which relied on five decades of time use logs kept by different groups of survey respondents, found that no matter what most people may perceive, Americans today have more leisure time now than they did several decades ago. Other reports find that many middle class families have maintained their lifestyle only by becoming two-earner households, with all the attendant time stresses.

Notice where charity and volunteering rank on that list, relative to being wealthy. People jealously guard their time, perhaps due to the perceived stresses of having both parents work outside the home.

In short, what we are contemplating are long-run changes in labor supply. Real wages having been roughly constant, what else can be causing the labor-leisure tradeoff to change as it has. The intensive margin -- the number of hours worked per employee -- hasn't changed greatly in the US since 1980, but the extensive margin -- the share of the active population working -- has increased. So fewer people have time for volunteering, but everyone has the same (or actually a little more) time than before. (See this recent paper about aggregate hours across the OECD.) Perhaps we need models that involve joint optimization for two-adult households that choose to give volunteer time as well as work. I don't know any of those; sounds like a good thesis.

Labels: economics

Tonight, Star Parker spoke at two Catholic universities in St. Paul, MN, the University of St. Thomas (UST) and St. Catherine's (St. Kate's). Star is an engaging speaker. Her real life experiences are delivered in a manner that is riveting to most of the audience. She had had four abortions and with her fifth pregnancy, something made her uncomfortable. She started going to church and put her life together. Her talk at St. Kate's focused on poverty, what the left is doing to perpetuate the welfare system, and the five steps she used to get out of if.

1 - Take personal responsibility. Stop finding someone or something to blame. Regardless of background, it is possible for most people to improve their lot.
2 - Work at any job. A minimum wage opportunity is a start, not an end.
3 - Get educated. The left wants to manage and control who has access to what kind of education - they do not want vouchers. The media perpetuates this view.
4 - Save and invest money. Star favors private retirement accounts. Her mother lives on $700 social security a month. As Star said, "What if all the money my parents put into social security had gone into a savings account? My mother would have far more than $700 a month."
5 - Help someone help themselves. This is not a "do for" but rather provide real assistance.

Star's approach can be summarized as follows: Most people will succeed enough if given a chance. The welfare system is self-perpetuating and those perpetuating the system often have no clue as to the reality of the environment, how it saps an individual's self-esteem, and the problems that have arisen because of it. A recipient cannot save money, cannot get a job and can't marry - if the do, at least in CA, the welfare checks stop.

The students at St. Kate's were respectful. Unfortunately a significant number have bought into the blame someone mindset. Even when they heard real life events from someone who was trapped in the system, some simply refused to listen, use their minds. They have been so programmed that everything wrong is the result of someone or something else, they do not think. Even when confronted with facts, they refuse to acknowledge that there just might be another view.

Originally scheduled to speak at the University of St. Thomas (UST) , Star was denied access to the campus by UST officials because of the behavior of some UST students when Ann Coulter had spoken there a couple of years ago. Star was guilty by association because the same group that sponsored Ann Coulter was sponsoring Star Parker. Couldn't have that UST officials said.

In response, Star said she'd show up anyway. In the meantime, the College Republicans at St. Catherine's (St. Kate's), their president Renee Zeimer and their advisor, Dr. Terrence Flower stepped up and offered a venue. Star was scheduled to speak at St. Kate's when UST decided maybe they better open their doors to her at UST. (Could it be because the president of UST was meeting with the Pope on this visit?). You can read the report from UST here.

Labels: higher education

The housing boom hits much of Minnesota, but in a series running the last two days in the StarTribune the most dire area is Wright County, where there is see-through housing.

Some houses in the subdivision have been empty or unfinished for more than a year. Garage doors are missing, unopened mail clogs mailboxes, and dormant lawns have turned into tangled masses of weeds. Some homes are priced for $80,000 to $100,000 less than their original price.

"A lot of the prices that people were paying for property in Wright County had no basis in reality," said George Schmidt, a real estate agent with Remax in Anoka. "They were destined for foreclosure."

Blogger and frequent Scholars commenter 'bleak' argues that these homes in the exurbs had imaginary value.

What were the bogus justifications for the housing bubble? Prices only go up? No more land being made? (There's plenty of land in Wright County.) Baby Boobers were going to buy investment properties?

Humbug! Within a blink of the eye, all of that 'home equity' everyone was banking on is gone. It was never really there in the first place.

I have written articles locally about "the corridor", that area between Interstate 94 and U.S. Highway 10, which largely runs through Wright and Sherburne counties. It is an area that has filled in dramatically with businesses and housing as homeowners sought more room and escape from the tax burdens and land restrictions of the metro counties. Demographic estimates show an expected increase in population in these areas of 18-19% between 2006 and 2010. (The comparable number here in Stearns county is under 7%.) The answer to bleak's question of what justifications being made were "people are moving there". And not just from the east.

In the early days of the current housing crisis, the state implemented two new laws which placed restrictions on the mortgage market. No one is a fan of liar loans or the subprime market more generally, and everyone would like to require every one else's mortgage banker to be licensed under stricter laws. But the effect of these laws has been to signal that lending is to be restricted, and it is, and that is leading to difficulty of sellers finding buyers.

Undoubtedly, as the STrib stories tell you, there are stories of fraud (by sellers) and greed (by buyers). At least one of the buyers in today's story is holding on to his underwater properties because "if I can't get rid of these for a profit in five years, then I'm in trouble." There's enough blame to go around many places. But the value isn't imaginary. That area will eventually fill in. Cleaning up after this episode will mean that takes longer, as some land and housing is misallocated and the government continues to impede the unwinding of those positions. But it will unwind.

The STrib indicates that tomorrow's article will include the response of area cities and townships.

Labels: economics, Minnesota

A local DFL activist and Wellstone! award winner writes about the Democrats she knows as being charitable:

The Democrats I know live and promote the value of personal responsibility. They believe in hard work, honesty, persistence and self-reliance.

But the Democrats I know also understand the value of social responsibility.

They know that there are many areas such as transportation, public education and police and fire protection where responding as a community for the common good is more effective and efficient than only responding individually.

I can't remember who said this last week, but it bears repeating: Do you ever notice that when liberals want to justify government spending they always go to transportation and police and fire? At least Pat includes public education, for which there are private substitutes. K-12 education in MN consumes 39.9% of a $34.5 billion state budget; public safety only 5.4%. Transportation comes out of a different fund. Tell you way, Pat, let's make a deal. You restrict us to police, fire and transportation and even K-12. How about that part called "health and human services"? Ready to privatize that?

But I digress. What does it mean for her to be socially responsible?

These Democrats also know that for many in our society, the playing field is not level, and that if we believe in our democratic principles, we must live the value of social responsibility.

The failure of a market-driven health care system is one example where all of this comes together.

Personal responsibility alone will not solve that mess.

When you hear "level playing field", what you should translate that to is "egalitarianism", and often we are talking about ex post egalitarianism. I have more than you, so that's not right. And there's plenty to that the person alone could do. Bob Collins notes that 87% of people in a survey by the Northwest Area Foundation said they agreed that "I would like to do more to help people struggling in my community", to which Bob wonders, well, what's stopping you?

It would seem that if the 87% who would like to do more, actually did more, then not quite as many people would be struggling. Armed with only anecdotal evidence, I'm going to theorize that 87% of the people are not going to do more and a sizeable number aren't doing that much now.

...A closer look at the survey shows that a large percentage said they would be willing to get together to talk about ways to help. Others said they would be willing to talk to an elected official. Seventy-eight percent said they would take part in a church project to help someone. A somewhat smaller group said they would adopt a family temporarily if they were struggling. About the same number said they would pay another $50 in taxes.

Times are tough for a lot of people, of course, but could it be different if we did as we say? As individuals, what's stopping us, aside from our belief it won't make a difference? And what do you consider to be a definition of doing something?

I suspect for most of them it's the opportunity to get together and talk about someone else doing something. Learned Foot makes the point well:

...why on earth would someone volunteer time, money and / or effort when they can just vote for [someone] who will make them feel as altruistic. The only effort required is 5 minutes at a polling station, a pull of the lever for your local machine Democrat, and then you can go forth and proclaim to the world how compassionate you are. Giving feels good. To the feeble minded and selfish, feeling like you gave while doing nothing feels just as good.

And let's face it: in most cases that compassion is going to be extracted forcibly from someone other than yourself.

The takeaway from all this, I think, is that people are well-meaning, but lazy.

We refer to this as "self-interest", Foot. And the statements like those of Mrs. Welter are simply "cheap signaling". Anyone can be generous with OPM: Other People's Money.

Mrs. W then doubles down by assaulting the church-goers while reviewing the evidence of Arthur Brooks' study Who Really Cares?:

Conservative people are a percentage point or two more likely to give money each year than liberal people, but a percentage point or less likely to volunteer. And while conservative people do give more to charities and churches, when religion is factored out, charitable giving between liberals and conservatives is not distinguishable.

This shows only the most shallow reading of Brooks' work. He notes that religious people are more charitable towards non-religious charities than the secularist population. "A religious person is 57% more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person," he writes. And the last sentence seems to suggest that the only thing a religious person gives to is a church, and thus for reasons involving his or her own salvation, not to help the poor. There's nothing about conservatism or religiousness that would necessarily encourage one to go to the Red Cross, but according to Brooks' estimates, the amount of blood banked in America would rise 45% if liberals gave blood as much as conservatives do.

If they ever figure out how to tax blood, Heaven help us!

Labels: Democrats, Minnesota, politics

This afternoon, which is totally gorgeous, I was driving to meet a friend for coffee. The mini-van next to me had three political stickers on its rear bumper:

Klobuchar - DFL Senator elected in 2006
Sarvi - DFL candidate to take on Congressman, John Kline of MN's 2nd Congressional District

and the winner...... Bush Must Go.

Don't know about the awareness of the van owners but Bush has less than nine months, by law.

Oh, well.....

Labels: Democrats

This post covered the tax rally held at the Capitol in St. Paul, MN on April 12. I've included a few more photos, some on topics not directly related to taxation.

There are a number of people beginning to question the global warming mantra which has morphed into climate change. (see this post). It will again morph to something else after this year's election, depending which party gains control. We know humans have adapted in millenia past and we can again, with the right focus. Here's my question to those of you who wish to criticize those of us who remain skeptical about the sky is falling mantra of the leftist global warming crowd.

After spending all this time, money and effort trying to brainwash our kids to thinking the earth will be destroyed with global warming/climate change, how are you going to answer your kids when they find out what they've been taught is fear, plain unadulterated fear? How much credibility will you have with the next fear-mongering crisis?

Or maybe this explains why people get more conservative by the time they hit 30 - they realized so much of the fears they were taught as kids are not real.

Labels: taxes

The MAS annual dinner was attended by about 50 supporters. I saw a few people I haven't seen there before, like John LaPlante and Mitch Pearlstein, and some old friends who I normally get to see did not come this year. And of course the usual people who read here and are fans of the NARN; on behalf of the entire show, thanks for that.

Two students received awards for supporting rational discourse on campus. One was Amy Ledig from Macalester, who wrote a brave column against the creation of "gender-blind" bathrooms in the school's dorms. The other went to Rachel (? I missed the first name) Zeman from St. Catherine, who is also getting Star Parker to come to St. Kate's, with less folderol than her appearance at St. Thomas.

Peter Wood then gave his talk as I mentioned yesterday. He divides the aspiring reformers of higher education into two phylum -- those who would reform from within, and those who have the attitude of "let it burn". Once again, he argued that more conservative economists fall in the let-it-burn camp. I argued instead that some upheaval is needed to free resources for reform efforts, so some schools will in fact fail. But that should not be interpreted as burning down the house. It's renovation, just that it's renovation more than refinishing cabinets. Install new rooms, take out old. But the structure will still be there.

The resolution of this did not strike me as being at all radical, and I do not know how Wood sees the institutions resolving their fundamental issues. But clearly his vision is for internal reforms.

The group was apprised and afterwards concern was expressed over the coming crisis in student lending. That's worth a separate post, but consider this a teaser.

Labels: higher education

Janet and I will be at the MAS annual meeting tonight. Its feathered speaker is Peter Wood, the national association's new president, who was recently at the APEE meeting.

I rather suspect I am the only member whose academic credential is a Ph.D. in social anthropology. I joined APEE to attend its annual convention, held this year (and most years) in Las Vegas. And I stood out like a walnut in a game of marbles. Economists, at least APEE-style economists, speak a language of efficiency. The goal is to figure out how to conjure human behavior from a parsimonious set of premises. If all goes well, the marbles roll smoothly. Anthropologists, by contrast, spend their time examining the rough texture of human affairs, delighted if a pattern emerges from the crisscross purposes of culture, but never expecting it.

Brother Wood, welcome to my life in MAS. I have yet to meet a fellow economist in the group, and suspect I won't. Perhaps it is because the "parsimonious set of premises" we use, while allowing for the average economist to be a moderate Democrat, doesn't have people working daily in departments with people who have surrendered reason to emotion. There is no such thing as "post-modern economics" and I believe there never will be. So when I go to MAS or other such organizations, it is often to hear of departments and university administrators that seem to me a fiction.

Wood challenges me:

At least to me as an outsider, the participants in the APEE conference seemed quite frequently ready to put paid to ideas they found fallacious—simply by pronouncing a logical refutation. I tried without success to detect a spirit of combativeness that would carry the fight further. When I pointed out that Arizona State University had established a degree program in Sustainability and had appointed several economists to its faculty, an economist complacently replied, “But they aren’t in the Economics Department.”

That was a revelatory moment. I suppose all academics perform with a particular peer group in mind: a body of experts whose good opinion matters more than the views of other scholars and intellectuals. APEErs seemed to draw that circle fairly tightly.

But it's not just the more Austrian economists that do this. Where economists do participate more broadly in the life of the university, they are either the 5% of economists who are leftist radicals or someone who decided to chuck the whole notion of academic life and pursue administration. There was a sharp undertone of "told'ja so" to Larry Summers demise at the hands of the feminists of Harvard from his more academic economics brethren. (Oh yes, and "sisteren".)

But the language and culture of these Scholar meetings -- which I started attending around the time this blog was formed, and from which the blog's name is drawn -- are very different from the language of the meetings I attend with fellow economists. I just came back to home from a seminar in which a colleague (who reads here I believe) tried to analyze why movie studios keep making R rated movies when it's G-rated movies that sell well. The answer tends to have more to do with what foreign movie-going audiences purchase: they want Pulp Fiction, not Return of the King. Any talk of why they want that is not part of the discussion, as preferences are taken as a given. It's where we economists stop and where the anthropologists begin.

And I usually stay in my place, except for one night of the year. Which is tonight, so off I go to be a walnut.

Labels: economics, higher education

You haven't seen much of this in the main stream press but Italy is the 5th European nation to elect a prime minister who is friendly to the US in the past three years. Did we change leaders? No but the Europeans realize what is at stake. Berlusconi was elected Prime Minister of Italy last weekend - overwhelmingly. The Greens and Communists are out, as in gone, as in no influence, the first time since the end of WWII. Italy is on its way to a two-party system.

Five of the six biggest nations in Europe now have elected leaders who are supporters of the US: (Germany, 82,000,000, Angela Merkel); France, (62,000,000,000, Nicholas Sarkozy); the UK (59,000,000, Gordon Brown); Italy (57,000,000, Silvio Berlusconi); and Poland (39,000,000, Lech Kaczynski). The only outlier is Spain, (40,000,000, Jose Luis Zapatero), in which the mishandling of the Madrid bombings three days before the 2004 election led to a swing to the Spanish Socialist Workers Party.

Why won't we hear much about these successes? Oh, the mainstream media doesn't want us to know - they might have to admit that the USA is not the big, bad ogre they would like to make us out to be.

Labels: elections, Media

Kent Gardens Elementary school in Fairfax County, VA has banned tag on the playground announced principal, Ms. Robyn Hooker (why am I not surprised?).

She made her decision because the game has gotten out of hand. This refusal to let kids play because: someone might get hurt; someone plays too rough; someone might lose; etc. is the result of a catch-22 situation educators and parents have developed in the last 35+ years.

Over the past decades, when parents with the perfect child were told their child misbehaved, they began accusing teachers and school administrators of picking on their child. They threatened to sue the school system. The schools, wanting to avoid costly lawsuits, began hiring risk averse administrators, people who would find a way to avoid any conflict with parents, etc. The "perfect" Johnny or Susie learned that his/her parents would excuse their actions and behavior just got worse. Parents abdicated any responsibility for poor conduct by their kids.

Couple this avoidance mentality, "It's not my kid's fault" with the "nobody can lose" mindset, we now find ourselves in a situation where schools cannot discipline and kids can't play at recess anymore. They can't run, can't play ball, can't play tag - just tell me, what is a young child with energy to do? Oh, we put them on Ritalin. Excuse me people. Our schools need to be able to set behavior standards (not feel-good, nobody is bad pabulum) and be able to punish kids who go too far, then provide an environment where normal active kids can run off steam.

Active girls need recess but boys even more. They must be able to release energy, not be drugged to the point where they are zombies. I taught 4th, 5th, and 6th grades for nine years. The real fidgety ones were given extra classroom space. Recess provided all kids with a means of letting off steam and made it much easier for them to concentrate on academic matters.

Heck, if we let kids be kids but give them boundaries and enforce the boundaries, we might even be able to extend the academic school day because we could teach more.

Labels: education

I will be filling in tomorrow morning for Dan "The Ox" Ochsner on Newstalk 1450 KNSI, 8-11am. Live streaming (but no podcast) available from the link. I will be with Dan's usual co-host Mike Landy; we anticipate a discussion starting at 9 about government waste.

Labels: KNSI, Media

The first was a picture Krugman drew yesterday of median family income in the Midwest vs the rest of the nation:
The other comes from a 2006 Midwest Economy entry from the Chicago Fed:I'm going to say those two are related. Is it any accident that the convergence of the midwest's median income the the nation coincides with the beginning of the slide in manufacturing? The question is, what can be done about it?

Labels: economics

From this morning's St. Cloud Times,

Local single family home sales were down 4 percent in first quarter 2008 compared with first quarter 2007, according to data released this week by the St. Cloud Area Association of Realtors.

That's a slightly larger drop from last year around this time, when first-quarter home sales decreased 1 percent from first quarter 2006.

Local home sale prices have dropped almost $20,000. The median price of a home was $143,000 in first quarter 2008 compared with $162,650 in first quarter of 2007. And the average number of days a home remains on the market is now 111, according to first quarter 2008 data. That's six days longer than first quarter 2007.

Here's the sales report. Homes were discounted more than $6000 from their listing prices, and 13% fewer homes were listed in the first quarter of 2008 vs first quarter of 2007. It appears the mix of homes sold had something to do with the downturn, as single-family home prices fell 10%, but more condo, townhouse and patio home sales occurred this year than last.

Meanwhile, local gas prices hit a high. It happens every spring, as we change blends for the Clean Air rules, but it's hard to argue with $115 oil.

Labels: economics, housing, St. Cloud

I will be on The Ed Morrissey Show around 2:30p CT. Click the link to see the show at that time (if you go early, you get nice pictures of Michelle Malkin, hardly a bad thing.) Of course, by 2:30 everyone will have turned away from the show after the distaff half departs.

Listeners to our segment will hear me talk again about this post from yesterday on the trade positions of the candidates.

It will be my pleasure to join James Joyner on Outside the Beltway Radio to talk about the three presidential candidates economic plans tonight at 6pm CT. I'm also n Hot Air tomorrow at 2:30 with Ed Morrissey but I don't know that that will be the topic. Separately link for that tomorrow.

Labels: Media

I've mentioned the book, which on Monday got its cover design (thank God my co-editor is a visual thinker). I'll reveal it when we get back the mock-up in a month or two, because I think it's a neat idea that Bryan had. My role was "looks good!"

One of the chapters is on the various ways in which we measure governance and what these mean. A basic theme of the book is that the measurements are amalgamations, atheoretical and often ill-considered. Measuring governance seems to be one of those areas.

So two posts around a World Bank conference this week got my attention. First, Larry Summers is provocative:

Mr. Summers’s predecessor at Treasury, Robert Rubin, ventured that “effective government” was the key for growth. But Summers wasn’t buying that one either. Government are often seen as effective because the countries are growing fast, he said. Then when they stop growing, the governments are dismissed as lame and corrupt – Indonesia under Suharto, for instance.

The first three words out of my mouth were "Lee Kuan Yew". How does one classify Singapore's governance? If you say "must be good, look at its growth", Summers is right. If you say "horrible, it's authoritarian", you have a harder time making the link between governance and growth. Take a sheet next to your desk and write a 2x2 matrix. Along one dimension write "growing" and "stagnant"; along the other write "good governance" and "poor governance". Pick about 20 countries at random and put them in one of the four boxes based on what you know. Now since many readers will know some economics they probably get the growth/stagnation classifications roughly right. But watch how you decide the governance question.

At the same conference I think, and somewhat relatedly, the maddeningly brilliant Dani Rodrik writes,

So good governance is both an end and a means. It is a key goal of development, broadly construed, and it is also an instrument for achieving better policymaking and improved economic outcomes. Any sensible discussion of governance must be clear about the distinction. And it must clarify in which of these two senses governance is “the problem” we are trying to fix.

I make the following points below. First, economists have very little useful to contribute to governance-as-an-end. Second, while they have more to say about governance-as-a-means, what they do say is often not what they should say. Where economists can be useful is in designing institutional arrangements for specific policy reforms targeted at relaxing binding growth constraints--what one might call “governance in the small.” This agenda differs quite a bit from the broad governance agenda on which much ink is being spilt. And third, there are sometimes tradeoffs between governance-as-an-end and governance-as-a-means which policymakers and advisors need to be conscious of.

I have to read the paper to see what those tradeoffs are, but I'm going to guess that they relate to Summers' observation.

Labels: economics

Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies has a neat tool that looks at the voting records of Congresspersons to determine their stances on trade issues. It's neat because it divides their records between votes for trade barriers and trade subsidies. Those voting for low barriers and no subsidies are free traders. There are those who are for low barriers but subsidize domestic producers -- these are classified as "internationalists" and not free traders. I have written down the results for the three presidential candidates remaining, plus for Senator Norm Coleman:

• Clinton -- very much the interventionist. She only opposed nine of 29 trade barriers in her Senate career, and only one of seven trade subsidy bills.
• McCain is more the free trader. He opposed trade barriers 35 times out of 40 votes on such issues, and eight out of ten votes were against trade subsidies. The latter fits his profile as a crusader against government waste, as most trade subsidy programs are corporate pork.
• Obama, 36% of votes opposed trade barriers (4 of 11). He only voted twice on trade subsidies and supported them both times. An interventionist, though there's not as much of a record here as you might like to make that call.
• Coleman is the internationalist. He is very much for keeping trade barriers at a minimum, voting 16 of 22 times to keep barriers down, but has supported trade subsidies in four different votes (two were farm bills, the other two for the Byrd Amendment.)

Wellstone! by the way was the closest thing to an isolationist as we've had.

P.S. This opposition to trade subsidies should also be applied when thinking of tax breaks to dissuade airli