Self Defeating Environmental Policies.

Eli,

The Boston Globe article "Our Russian ‘pipeline,’ and its ugly toll," is pretty good. I wish it would focus on another self-defeating "environmental" policy: NY State's ban on hydraulic fracturing. If NY allowed hydraulic fracturing it would lower prices to consumers, particularly the poor, result in high-paying manufacturing jobs, if displacing coal result in lower carbon emissions as well as displace the gas from the Russian suppliers.

Oh well.

Bill

Eli,

The whole article on automation and job losses is pretty smart. An excerpt:

While automation may be a question of engineering, job loss is even more a question of economics. A key part of the agriculture story is that people were unwilling to purchase all of the food that farmers were capable of producing, even though food was getting cheaper. But not all industries share this with agriculture.

Suppose that the automation in agriculture had only been for chicken farming and not for any other food production. Chicken would have gotten cheaper relative to beef, fish, vegetables, fruit, etc., and that would have caused people to buy more chicken and less of other types of food.

Many — even most — of the extra chickens produced would have been purchased by consumers, and there would have been less need to reduce employment in chicken farming.

The most dramatic job losses would have occurred in the food industries like beef and fish that were not automated and that compete with chicken. In other words, jobs that are difficult to automate from an engineering perspective may be exactly the jobs pushed to extinction by automation because they cannot compete.

It all depends on the competitive landscape and how willing are consumers, encouraged by lower prices, to absorb the extra output made possible by automation.

Trucking is a modern example, because engineers are predicting that machines will soon do a lot of the driving formerly done by trucking employees. But the result may be more jobs for people in trucking and fewer jobs for people in railroads, airlines and shipping that compete with trucking (unless they also get more productive at the same time that trucking does).

Bill

Maybe we should all start smoking

Eli,

This Times article was interesting, "Preventive Care Saves Money? Sorry, It’s Too Good to Be True: Contrary to conventional wisdom, it tends to cost money, but it improves quality of life at a very reasonable price."

I like this part:

Does spending on prevention save the country money over all?

A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests the answer is no. The budget office modeled how a policy to reduce smoking through higher cigarette taxes might affect federal spending. It found that such a tax would cause many people to quit smoking — the desired result. In the short term, less smoking would lead to decreased spending because of reductions in health care spending for those who had smoked.

In the long run, all of those people living longer would lead to increases in spending in many programs, including health care. The more people who quit smoking, the higher the deficit from health care — barely offset by the revenue from taxing cigarettes.

Maybe I should take up drinking again also.

Bill

Same as it ever was

Eli,

I loved this illustration from Thomas Hazlett's "The Political Spectrum," a history of the FCC and its regulation of radio/TV and other forms of communication.

We like to think our problems are unique, but most of them aren't.

Bill

Trump as Leeroy Jenkins

Eli,

Ben Domenech has a fairly standard view of the shutdown politics. I love this part:

The only rational explanation for this shutdown error was Democrats’ belief that President Trump would not be able to resist the urge to intervene and worsen the situation – either by making some base-splitting promise or saying something objectionable. This is not an entirely unreasonable bet, of course – but President Trump manages on occasion to avoid behaving like Leeroy Jenkins for 72 hours, and he absolutely did so here.

Definitely watch the video of Leeroy Jenkins destroying a carefully planned attack with his unplanned, self-destructive, counter productive foolishness.

I share with many the fear Trump will one day pull a Leeroy Jenkins when it really matters.

Bill

Eli,


I think this kind of sums up my thoughts/feelings:

I wasn’t a Trump supporter. I am now.

What she leaves out as his accomplishments are defeating ISIS and I think responsible for the progress with North Korea.

If the election were held today, I'd vote for him.

Bill

Pats Win! Pats Win!

Eli,

Here's my fantasy:

Pats win Super Bowl
Trump invites them to White House
They all go.
National Anthem plays
Everyone sings the lyrics with hands over their hearts
MSNBC spontaneously combusts.

Bill