An interesting idea over at Planet Gore:

...why not go one step further and put nuclear reactors on military bases? With enough reactors, we could make the entire military and Federal government energy independent, as well as add much needed energy into the economy. As for who would run the reactors, that's the easy part. We have the most successful nuclear reactor operators in the world at our disposal: the U.S. Navy.

I'm not sure about having the DOD/DOE run electrical utilities, but I think this is an idea that's worth keeping in mind. By the time that wishful thinking about breakthroughs in "alternative energy" meet up with cold reality, it's possible the USA will need some real power, real fast. If this plan is NIMBY-proof, so much the better.

As Adam M. Guren, a new Harvard graduate who will be pursuing his doctorate in economics, put it, “A lot of students have been asking the question: ‘We came to Harvard as freshmen to change the world, and we’re leaving to become investment bankers — why is this?’ ”

It's called "growing up."

Who do these professors think they are, encouraging young people to go into "public service" rather than business? I suggest they put their money where their mouths are. If they see a need for public service employees, why don't they give up their salaries and absolute job security (aka tenure) for a $30k job as a "community organizer?" Fat chance of that happening.

Global Warming's High Priest demands punishment for the infidels.

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming ...

Full article here. The man has gone from crackpot to dangerous crackpot.

"So I doubt this time Obama will weigh in on Imus's latest"

You're dreaming.

Good grief. Paul Krugman agrees with me.

The only way speculation can have a persistent effect on oil prices, then, is if it leads to physical hoarding — an increase in private inventories of black gunk. This actually happened in the late 1970s, when the effects of disrupted Iranian supply were amplified by widespread panic stockpiling. But it hasn’t happened this time: all through the period of the alleged bubble, inventories have remained at more or less normal levels. This tells us that the rise in oil prices isn’t the result of runaway speculation; ..."

Perhaps it's time to change my opinion? Via N. Gregory Mankiw. He also links to a bit on Obama blaming speculators.

Tab, dinner for one, couple of beers and an entree:




I remember when you could get a beer for under 50 million. Sigh. A billion ain't what it used to be. Stolen from here.

About a month ago I had a post regarding John McCain's global warming plan. I calculated that McCain's plan to cut emissions to 40% of 1990 levels by 2050 meant that we would need to produce each unit of GDP with 1/15-th the amount of carbon dioxide. It turns out that Barack Obama's plan calls for cuts down to 20% of 1990 levels. So each unit of GDP would need to be produced with 1/30-th the C02, an even more preposterous proposal. Bill Clinton weighs in:

"Because I believe so strongly in this, I favor Senator Obama's position, which is to go to 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gasses over Senator McCain's position, which is to go to 70 percent," he said. "But that's light years ahead of where Republican's have been."

Now Bill Clinton has always seemed like a pretty bright guy, and I suspect he has a better mind for this sort of analysis than either McCain or Obama. So the question in my mind is if he really believes in these numbers. His statement certainly seems to indicate that he does, indeed he implies that 10% is significant. If McCain promised to fund development of a car that could go coast-to-coast on a thimbleful of gas, would Clinton come out suggest that an Obama plan for a 1/2-thimble car is so much better?

I think he would, though he would think it nonsense. My guess is that Clinton is playing pure politics here.

The previous post on tax incidence made the usual assumption of a competitive market. In some sense this is an extreme assumption, since markets are rarely completely competitive. What about if we make an assumption at the opposite extreme? Suppose that we have a monopolistic supplier of oil. Suppose also that the cost of producing oil is relatively low, so we can approximately describe the supplier's behavior as trying to maximize his revenue. (I've heard it said that it costs Saudi Arabia $2/barrel to pump oil.) Let D be the demand as a function of price p. Since our idealized supplier can determine the quantity supplied and can set the price, he seeks to maximize his revenue R as a function of p and the tax rate t:

R=(p-t) D

Taking the derivative with respect to p and setting the result to zero gives the equations

D+(p-t)D_p=0

t=p+D/D_p

which the supplier can use to determine p given t. Here the subscripts denote differentiation. How does p change with a change in t? Treating t as a function of p in the last equation, and taking another derivative with respect to p gives

t_p=1+(D/D_p) _p

p_t =1/(1+(D/D_p) _p)=1/(2-DD_pp/(D_p )²)

where p_t is the rate of change of p with respect to t. If we assume that the slope of D is increasing (D is convex down), then D_pp>0 so the last equation tells us that p_t >1/2. We conclude that at least half of an increase in tax will show up as an increase in price. How big can p_t be? There is no limit. It is possible for p_t to be greater than one, so for example an increase in the tax by $0.10 may result in an increase of price by $0.20. Here is an example of such a situation. The demand curve here:

looks pretty ordinary, and indeed has pretty tame elasticity:

The price increases with the tax thusly:

With p_t everywhere greater than one:

If the current price is $4.40, we can expect an increase in price of about $0.17 if the tax is increased by $0.10. So what's the overall conclusion? Beats me. I have no idea which model is appropriate. Does anyone? Can it be tested? See the reference to Jim Manzi's recent article below.

Carpe Diem is one of my favorite econ blogs. In part, because he always seems to be able to find the kind of data that I search for without success.

Today, he posted a graph from the Brookings Institute (generally considered an organization of the left). The x-axis is the year, the y-axis is income. On the chart are 4 different segments of the population: 1) no high school diploma, 2) high school diploma, 3) college diploma, 4) advanced degree.

Here's the graph:



What is really astonishing is that people who only have a high school diploma or less, have seen their incomes remain stable or drop (I'm assuming that the data is inflation-adjusted, but I don't see anywhere in the original Brookings' document any statement of this--a major omission, if you ask me.) (Steve says: It says "2004 dollars" on the graph, so it looks like inflation is accounted for.)

Another undeclared element is whether government benefits and subsidies are counted towards the "income" statistics. Does the data reflect the receipt of food stamps or Section 8 housing assistance? If you look at 1997 on the graph, the year welfare reform was enacted, the income of both the high school drop outs and those with a high school diploma continued to rise until around 2000. One of the key components of the reform was to limit life-time welfare benefits to just 5 years. So, reform enacted in 1997 would start hitting hard in 2002, as people were kicked off the welfare rolls for overstaying their welcome.

To me, this should mean that after that point we should see incomes rising, as more people leave welfare for work. Unfortunately, that is not what the data show.

However, there were rather a lot of other factors which would have affected the income of most people: 1) the end of the tech boom eliminated a large source of capital in the economy, 2) the end of the tech boom cause a slight downturn in the economy, 3) the downturn was exacerbated by the events of September 11, 2001.

I would suggest that these factors account for the decline in incomes from 2000 onwards, since those declines were across all educational levels. PhDs' income fell as well, as college graduates, as well as high school graduates. Those are people who were unlikely to have been thrown off of welfare.

However, the declines in income at the lower education levels began in the early 70's in the case of the poorly-educated, and in the early 80's for the high school graduates.

The decline of manufacturing employment and the rise of economic output first in Japan, and more lately in China and India may account for much of the decline. More international competition hits the lowest incomes the most.

It would be interesting to see the income graph combined with two other graphs: that of union membership (as a proxy for low-skilled employment) and legal/illegal immigration (since competition for low-skilled jobs has increased with the increasing levels of immigration--thus driving down wages.)

In the end, it is probably all of these factors and more that have caused these incomes to fall. (Including the overall decline of standards in education. A diploma just isn't worth much any more, since people seem to be able to get them who barely know how to read.)

Let's do some tax-incidence analysis a la EC10. I'm rusty, maybe this will do me some good. Let p^d be the per unit price consumers pay for oil, let D(p^d) be the quantity of oil demanded as a function of price, let p^s be the per unit price suppliers get for their quantity supplied S(p^s), and let t be the tax per unit that the government collects. It doesn't matter if it collects it from suppliers or consumers. In order to reach equilibrium in a competitive market, we need demand to equal supply:

D(p^d)=S(p^s)

and payments by consumers to equal receipts by the suppliers plus receipts by the government

p^d=p^s+t

What is the effect on p^d of a change in the tax? Substituting p^d-t for p^s in the first equation, taking the derivative with respect to t, and solving for dp^d/dt, we get:

dp^d/dt=1/(1-D'/S').

Here D'=dD/dp^d (the slope of the demand curve, as seen from the p axis) and S'=dS/dp^s (the slope of the supply curve as seen from the p axis). So when D'=0, meaning D doesn't change much when p^d changes, dp^d/dt =1, so the increase in tax just increases the price to consumers by that same amount. Consumers foot the bill. The situation is similar to this:

Ignore that stuff about shifting S. Not sure what that's supposed to mean. On the other hand, as S' goes to zero, dp^d/dt heads to zero. In this case, a tax increase will be paid by the supplier. The situation is similar to this:

So which graph represents our oil market? Probably neither. But politicians who want to raise taxes on oil companies or at the pump better hope it’s not the first. I got these images from here.

Jim Manzi has written a very nice article in National Review, "Science Without Experiments."

The trend since the 1950s has been that policy-relevant science has become increasingly resistant to falsification testing, because it tends to address scientific questions of integrated complexity.
...
The science that informs public debate increasingly can not use experiments to adjudicate disagreements, and instead must rely on dueling models. We wouldn’t purposely expose randomly selected groups of people to lead paint, and couldn’t build parallel full-size replicas of earth and pump differing levels of CO2 into them.
...
Serious scientists in fields dominated by integrated complexity are constantly trying to develop methods for testing hypotheses, but the absence of decisive experiments makes it much easier for groupthink to take hold. A much larger proportion of scientists self-identify as liberal than conservative, so when scientific questions of integrated complexity impinge on important political questions, the opportunities for unconscious bias are pretty obvious. Hasty conservative political pushback (e.g., “global warming is a hoax”) naturally creates further alienation between these politicians and scientists. The scientists then find political allies who have political reasons for accepting their conclusions; consequently, many conservatives come to see these scientists as pseudo-objective partisans. This sets up a vicious cycle. Unfortunately, that’s where we find ourselves now in far too many areas.

I think he's right. Further, the fact is that not all science is created equal. For example, the social sciences generally don't have, and likely never will have, the same grounding in repeatable experiment that physics and chemistry have. There are exceptions of course. Is Sociology really any more scientific than Economics is? Unfortunately, much of political policy is based on these softer-sciences. Unfortunately, much of climate science seems pretty soft. I suspect that the general public understands this, and that much of its skepticism stems from this understanding.

---

Ann says: As for social science studies, they are often statistics generated. Do a poll, research demographics, etc. But few studies actually include a professional statistician as one of the people setting up the study. This was the problem with the famous Mann Hockey Stick graph that really set off the global warming scare. It was a badly designed statistical analysis, that a highly-trained statistician would have caught.

Of course, then you have flagrant invention of data, such as the famous study of gun ownership in Revolutionary War times by Michael Bellisles. He claimed there were few guns back then, but conveniently, claimed that much of his original sources were destroyed in a flood. When people tried to replicate his data, the couldn't. It took several years before his study was roundly accepted to be a fake.

One of the greatest and disastrous fads in academics has been the move to post-modernism. Basically the idea that nothing has any inherent meaning, that facts aren't really facts at all, just artificial constructs one can choose to accept or reject. This, of course, leads to the converse: the acceptance of non-facts as a higher and greater truth.

There is a famous case--famous probably because of the resulting, frivolous lawsuit--of a liberal, but old-school, professor at Wellesley coming down hard on Afro-centric "history".

[ TIME ] Lefkowitz's book is an amplification of a controversial article she wrote for the New Republic in 1992, after learning that Afrocentric "myths" were being taught as fact on her own campus. Students called the author a racist for publicly challenging the assertions of an Afrocentrist guest lecturer. More shocking to her was the silence of colleagues who, though they shared her opinions of Afrocentrist teaching, refused to speak up lest they be judged politically incorrect.

The real problem with Afrocentrism, Lefkowitz concludes, is not that its "truths" about Greece and Egypt are false. More dangerous is the underlying attitude that all history is fiction, which can be manipulated at will for political ends. The enthronement of this view on campus, Lefkowitz warns, means the death of academic discourse as we know it. Sadly, that seems to be happening. Better for all if Not Out of Africa stirs an equally fierce--and fair--polemic from the other side.

---

Now think about two items posted on Powerline today:

"Not Ready for Late Night Infomercial Time"

Repeatedly through the campaign so far, Barack Obama has demonstrated a troubling lack of familiarity with American history, especially diplomatic history. Obama's cluelessness about diplomacy has raised troubling questions about whether he is qualified to be President.

and "He can't be serious"

Jennifer Rubin catches Barack Obama in what looks like a serious misstatement about his telephone conversation with Iraqi foreign minister Hoshay Zebari. According to Obama, Zebari didn’t raise the issue of Obama’s troop withdrawal plans. But Zebari's account, as presented by the Washington Post, paints a different picture: “My message. . .was very clear. . . . Really, we are making progress. I hope any actions you will take will not endanger this progress.”

The first of these shows a general lack of knowledge of even recent history. The second that Obama's words and honesty are not exactly closely correlated.

In other words, both show a disdain for facts, for the artificial construct of the truth. We may be about to elect a president who has lived in the world that the post-modernists have created all of his life--there is no truth, so why try to adhere to it? There are no facts, so why try to learn any?

An ignorant man, more inexperienced than any other candidate in decades is about to be our next president. Joy.

Right now, the guys playing in the upper levels of professional golf are doing a number of things:

1) Worrying about their friend Tiger, as he pulls out of the rest of the season.

2) Celebrating the fact that now they will have a chance at winning something--Tiger has won 6 of the last 7 tournaments he's been in.

3) Shaking their heads that this guy beat them despite having a broken leg--and I don't just mean the knee. He played the Open with a stress fracture in his tibia.

Like many, I was watching the Open. It is always timed to coincide with Father's day--and this was Tiger's first as a father himself.

One moment stood out for me. On Saturday, after playing 53 holes of golf, it was clear he was really hurting. Walking off the 17th green and on to the tee shot at 18, Tiger was walking very stiffly, hands in his pockets; walking like every step was painful and like he was dreading the drive he was about to make.

But a stroke or two later, all that changed. Walking to the green on 18, he was striding. Walking like he hadn't a care or a pain in the world. I thought: Here's a man who, despite being in pain, would never, ever walk onto the 18th green at a major tournament showing any kind of pain or hesitation. He wouldn't do that to the fans, and he wouldn't do that to himself. Then I thought, "There's Earl Woods' son."

That stride onto the 18th green was a great testament to a great dad.

Victor Davis Hanson wields the paddle quite effectively.

Buchanan's thesis, that WWII was unnecessary and could have been avoided if we had been nicer to Hitler's Germany is laughable. Pat Buchanan continues to be an embarrassment, and often presented as a spokesman for Conservative America. "Paleocon" is generally the term that is used for him. Maybe Pliocene-con would be more fitting.

Continuing from the previous post, we see McCain countering Obama's lack of boldness with a strong attack. Not wasting any time, he plumbs the depths of his own misunderstanding:

There is the further problem of speculation on the oil futures market, which in many cases has nothing to do with the actual sale, purchase, or delivery of oil. [...] [W]e all know that some people on Wall Street are not above gaming the system. When you have enough speculators betting on the rising price of oil, that itself can cause oil prices to keep on rising. And while a few reckless speculators are counting their paper profits, most Americans are coming up on the short end -- using more and more of their hard-earned paychecks to buy gas for the truck, tractor, or family car. Investigation is underway to root out this kind of reckless wagering, unrelated to any kind of productive commerce, because it can distort the market, drive prices beyond rational limits, and put the investments and pensions of millions of Americans at risk. Where we find such abuses, they need to be swiftly punished.

Breathtaking! The man has come to play ball, giving 110% percent and taking it one game at a time. Extra credit for that bit about "productive commerce." The good old "labor theory of value" is always a winner.

How exactly does speculation in the oil futures market drive up the price of oil? Suppose I bet you that oil will be over $300/barrel next June. I am not buying any oil. Neither are you. I agree to pay you the difference in dollars if oil is under $300, you will pay me the difference if it's over $300. One of us will likely come out on top next June, but will our demand for oil change? No. Will a third party's demand for oil change? No. Will the quantity of oil supplied change? No. Will prices be affected by our bet? No. Please enlighten me John McCain, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill O'Reilly. Explain to me the mechanism, then maybe I will be willing to continue listening to your blathering.

Speculation in real estate and stocks (not in futures) is not the same thing, because in these cases speculators actually go out and buy houses, land or stock. If enough people do this, demand increases. The market becomes a seller's market, and the price goes up. But speculation in oil futures does not involve going out and buying oil, sequestering it in a tank somewhere with the plan of selling it later. If that were how it worked, then yes, it would affect the price. But that's not the way it works.

I wonder if McCain et al. believe that betting on a horse increases its speed. I wonder if they think buying homeowner's insurance boosts burglary rates. I'm afraid that they might.

Obama:

"Globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers," [Obama] said, and a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably.

What fun! The presidential candidates are in a contest to see who is more economically ignorant. Obama opens with a classic Luddite platform, with a bit of socialism thrown in for flavor. Not a particularly bold opening strategy, but certainly a safe one. Once McCain counters, there will be plenty of opportunities to pull out the really inane ideas. National Industrial Policy perhaps? Let's wait and see!

Found via Instapundit.

* Ann comments: It dumbfounds me how, with a population of 300 million people, we ended up with these two as our only choices. They are both awful. We should be able to do better than this.

In "Singing in the Rain", neither the female nor the male lead are the ones to watch for the really fantastic dancing. Gene Kelly might have been the star and lauded for his dancing abilities, but just put in the disk, forward to "Moses Supposes" and see whose dancing draws your attention most. Donald O'Connor has greater grace and fluidity--and even style--in that routine. You can also tell that the filmmakers knew it. You see, through most of the really difficult bits, O'Connor is the one on the left of the screen. All else being equal, that's the side most people's eyes are drawn to (probably because we read left to right and we are hard-wired to look first to the left.) So, traditionally in dancing, you put your best dancers on the audience's left. You've gotta think that even Gene Kelly knew that, and knew which of the two of them should get the prime placement. This speaks a lot for Kelly, that he knew a better dancer when he saw one and wasn't such an ego as to place himself always in the prime spot.

After you've watched "Moses" a half dozen times, find the "Make 'Em Laugh" routine to see a dancer putting his life on the line for a fantastic routine. Pick any of the great wow-dances from Astaire (eg. dancing with a hat rack, or on the ceiling) and put it up against "Make 'Em Laugh" and my guess is most people would pick O'Connor's choreography and death-defying antics. Astaire couldn't have done that routine, and I doubt Kelly could have either. According to the IMDB:

For the "Make Em Laugh" number, Gene Kelly asked 'Donald O'Connor' to revive a trick he had done as a young dancer, running up a wall and completing a somersault. The number was so physically taxing that O'Connor, who smoked four packs of cigarettes a day at the time, went to bed (or may have been hospitalized, depending on the source) for a week after its completion, suffering from exhaustion and painful carpet burns. Unfortunately, an accident ruined all of the initial footage, so after a brief rest, O'Connor, ever the professional, agreed to do the difficult number all over again.

As for Debbie Reynolds; the 19 year old actress had never danced before being cast in "Singing in the Rain". For a complete novice, she did a pretty good job holding her own between O'Connor and Kelly.

But to watch a great dancer once again stealing the spotlight from Gene Kelly, go to "Broadway Melody" and watch Cyd Charisse. Lithe, lanky, and beautiful, she steals the show. I can't think of any other dance from the golden age of the MGM musical as dramatic and sensual as Cyd's work in her only scene in the movie.

Sadly, Cyd Charisse died on Tuesday here in Los Angeles.

Here's Astaire commenting on Charisse:

"When you dance with Cyd Charisse, you've been danced with."

Now I'm going to pop in one of her movies and enjoy a great dancer in her prime.

I was surprised to come across a mention of Grinnell College on National Review's website...in an article by Thomas Sowell, no less:

[ Measuring college outputs ] One of my own favorite measures of output— the percentage of a college’s graduates who go on to get Ph.D.s — was not used by either set of evaluations.

Small colleges dominate the top ten in sending their alumni on to get doctorates. Grinnell College, which was not among the top ten on either the U.S. News list or on Professor Vedder’s list, sends a higher percentage of its graduates on to get Ph.D.s than does either Harvard or Yale.

The college I went to is right smack between flooded Des Moines and flooded Iowa City. So, naturally, I was worried about the condition of the campus. Turns out, there was no need to be worried. (Background info: about a third of the campus of Grinnell College is on the opposite side of a set of railroad tracks from the rest of campus--at times, you'd have to wait for the train to go by to go to class.)

[ Grinnell College ] As much of Iowa and the Midwest battle rising waters, we are fortunate in Grinnell to confront only storms, waterlogged gardens, and wet basements. When the Rock Island Railroad identified "the summit of the divide between the Skunk and Iowa Rivers" to intersect their tracks, then J.B. Grinnell established his "colony," and then trustees relocated the campus in 1858, it assured the College — figuratively and now literally — would stand on solid ground.

Shows you they were a smart bunch of folks back then.

I love this.

[ London Mayor Boris Johnson on deciding to wear a helmet:] As I cycled around, I felt a surge of bonneted righteousness. I was socialised; I was showing a proper sense of community, and that is why I turned around on my doorstep, and within another three seconds I would have gone back to get my helmet, and I would have fastened the chinstrap of social obedience … except that for some reason I didn't. After weeks of helmeted conformity, I had a spasm of rebellion - and it is hard to say exactly why.

[On the other hand...] I have also brooded on the results of some study in Australia, which showed that making bike helmets compulsory deterred so many people from cycling that there was a rise in obesity - and more people ended up dying of heart attacks than were saved by the head-gear.