It's only June but I'm comfortable certifying that as the Quote of the Year.When assessing Quinn’s sense of the [decline of Washington D.C.'s wine-and-dine scene], we should also have a firmer sense of what the culture was actually like. Here is one scene from Quinn’s inculcation into the Washington elite:Washington writer Sally Quinn told of a 1950s reception where: “My mother and I headed for the buffet table. As we were reaching for the shrimp, both of us jumped and let out a shriek. Senator Strom Thurmond, grinning from ear to ear, had one hand on my behind and the other on my mother’s. As I recall, we were both quite flattered, and thought it terribly funny and wicked of Ol’ Strom.”Once Washington was a happy place where a girl and her mother could be groped simultaneously in good fun by a white supremacist.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Quote of the year
Jon Chait on bipartisanship, Washington culture, etc.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
More reasons to love America
The UK wants to reduce immigration dramatically so they are raising standards arbitrarily to exclude the spouses of many English people from immigrating. The whole story is here.
The U.S. has a minimum income requirement which I think is terrible, but it is far below the UK level of 25,800 pounds AFAIK. I don't know what the PPP median income is in the U.K. or much about the social safety net but I suspect that number is set far above what is necessary to ensure immigrant spouses don't become wards of the state.
The U.S. also issues probationary green cards like the U.K. proposal includes and I think lengthening the probation period to 5 or even 10 years might be reasonable because if the marriage is in good faith, what do you have to lose. But the policy isn't costless. If the couple has kids then the parent should be allowed to stay even if the marriage dissolves. I don't know if it is like that on the books but most people would agree that is how it should be. A longer probationary period increases the incentive to have kids as insurance against the marriage dissolving the foreign spouse losing his green card. It also creates the preserve incentive where a woman might cheat on her husband, he would normally get a divorce, but he'd lose his green card and this makes the choice more difficult if he is still on probation.
The "test of attachment" is retarded.
I'm pretty "hawkish" on immigration policy. I hate birth tourism, don't believe the 14th amendment covers people visiting or tourist visas or illegal immigrants, favor English as the national language, and believe the citizenship of "dual citizens" should be revoked. But these regulations strike me as pretty bad across the board with the one exception.
The U.S. has a minimum income requirement which I think is terrible, but it is far below the UK level of 25,800 pounds AFAIK. I don't know what the PPP median income is in the U.K. or much about the social safety net but I suspect that number is set far above what is necessary to ensure immigrant spouses don't become wards of the state.
The U.S. also issues probationary green cards like the U.K. proposal includes and I think lengthening the probation period to 5 or even 10 years might be reasonable because if the marriage is in good faith, what do you have to lose. But the policy isn't costless. If the couple has kids then the parent should be allowed to stay even if the marriage dissolves. I don't know if it is like that on the books but most people would agree that is how it should be. A longer probationary period increases the incentive to have kids as insurance against the marriage dissolving the foreign spouse losing his green card. It also creates the preserve incentive where a woman might cheat on her husband, he would normally get a divorce, but he'd lose his green card and this makes the choice more difficult if he is still on probation.
The "test of attachment" is retarded.
I'm pretty "hawkish" on immigration policy. I hate birth tourism, don't believe the 14th amendment covers people visiting or tourist visas or illegal immigrants, favor English as the national language, and believe the citizenship of "dual citizens" should be revoked. But these regulations strike me as pretty bad across the board with the one exception.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
It isn't common sense: David Brooks edition
David Brooks tells us that
When you look at the history of sovereign default it's clear that it is a relatively recent phenomenon, tied to, as Brooks mentions, modern medicines, technologies, and welfare programs.
[a] huge reason [previous generations avoided massive public debt] is that [they] were insecure. They lived without modern medicine, without modern technology and without modern welfare states. They lived one illness, one drought and one recession away from catastrophe. They developed a moral abhorrence about things like excessive debt, which would further magnify their vulnerability.Of course, it's common sense! When people are poorer they are more risk averse.
When you look at the history of sovereign default it's clear that it is a relatively recent phenomenon, tied to, as Brooks mentions, modern medicines, technologies, and welfare programs.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
It's not common sense
(This is a follow-up to my post about Duncan Watt's book. I hope to make it recurring.)
Some doctors wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about how to solve the primary care doctor shortage. In short, they think too many doctors are becoming specialists and too few are working in primary care. They propose to fix this by taking away the (roughly) $200,000 subsidy for learning a specialty.
That sounds like common sense. If you don't want so many specialists then stop paying $200,000 to encourage people to become one. But if you read the article you'll see the authors take hundreds of words to articulate this idea. The authors are doctors so they aren't idiots. The insight took years of research and hundreds of carefully edited words because it's NOT common sense.
Some doctors wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about how to solve the primary care doctor shortage. In short, they think too many doctors are becoming specialists and too few are working in primary care. They propose to fix this by taking away the (roughly) $200,000 subsidy for learning a specialty.
That sounds like common sense. If you don't want so many specialists then stop paying $200,000 to encourage people to become one. But if you read the article you'll see the authors take hundreds of words to articulate this idea. The authors are doctors so they aren't idiots. The insight took years of research and hundreds of carefully edited words because it's NOT common sense.
Monday, May 28, 2012
College dropouts in low demand
Investor's Business Daily reports
They also report
Unemployment for those 25 and up with some college but no degree was 8% in April compared to 6.6% for the age group, measured on a more volatile seasonally unadjusted basis. In the same month, the jobless rate was 7.7% for 25-and-up high school grads with no college and 6.2% for those with a two-year college degree.That is really surprising. You would think that employers would be looking for people who have demonstrated . . . disinterest in hard work by dropping out of college?
They also report
Out of 9 million unemployed in April, 4.7 million had gone to college or graduated and 4.3 million had not, seasonally adjusted Labor Department data show.Since (based on numbers in the article) it is implied that there are about twice as many college graduates and drop-outs as people with a HS diploma who never attended college, the implied unemployment rate for college attendees is half of the other group. But that wasn't worth mentioning.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
End the FDA
Opposition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) practice of using randomized trials to determine the safety and efficacy of treatments is picking up steam.
On the right, Tea Parties oppose the existence of government regulation in an industry and claim that randomized trials are a con spiracy or something promoted by the liberal elite. In a letter to Sen. Thad Cochran one constitution wrote that "a real man knows when he feels better and when he doesn't" while "the spineless at Harvard use people as guinea pigs" to decide which pills to take.
On the left, those traditionally in favor of heavy handed government regulation that drives up prices for corporate cronies and protects consumers, have shifted to opposing randomized trials. They note that sometimes unsafe pills make it through trials or harm people during the trials. They argue that, as with the death penalty, if one innocent person ever dies as a result of a drug innovation policy then the policy is unjust. Critics have noted that, as with the death penalty, if drug innovation saves more lives than it eliminates then a reasonable analysis would consider the costs and the benefits but liberals have responded by covering their ears and shouting "I'm not listening."
On the right, Tea Parties oppose the existence of government regulation in an industry and claim that randomized trials are a con spiracy or something promoted by the liberal elite. In a letter to Sen. Thad Cochran one constitution wrote that "a real man knows when he feels better and when he doesn't" while "the spineless at Harvard use people as guinea pigs" to decide which pills to take.
On the left, those traditionally in favor of heavy handed government regulation that drives up prices for corporate cronies and protects consumers, have shifted to opposing randomized trials. They note that sometimes unsafe pills make it through trials or harm people during the trials. They argue that, as with the death penalty, if one innocent person ever dies as a result of a drug innovation policy then the policy is unjust. Critics have noted that, as with the death penalty, if drug innovation saves more lives than it eliminates then a reasonable analysis would consider the costs and the benefits but liberals have responded by covering their ears and shouting "I'm not listening."
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