8/5/14 Today's Inquiries

Good morning.

The Links:

A bird pooped on Vladimir Putin in the middle of a speech and he just kept on like nothing even happened.

A map of all the causes of death that are kept out of the "official" statistics. Wake up sheeple!

And, man plays a trombone to his cows:



Whatever happened to the Minute Men Militia mindfully monitoring Mexicans making movements? Mostly a meltdown.

The Dallas Morning News reports on what it's actually like to get from central America to the US. As you might expect, it's much harder than the conspiracy theorists think. No Obama shuttles to ship people en masse to our southern border.

In celebration of John Venn's birthday yesterday, here's the first Venn Diagram ever published:

Perhaps you heard that the two Americans being treated in Atlanta for ebola are receiving an experimental treatment? Maybe you've seen on the Facebook that it's all a conspiracy to kill Africans or to make a cure just to sell it at exorbitant prices? Sometimes reality is just as pernicious. What drug company is going to make a drug for a disease that pops up every few years, kills hundreds, and then vanishes again? What government is going to conduct clinical trials on ebola patients? Which ones get the sugar-pill placebo? I mean, what are the ethics of studying a disease that kills 60% or more of it's victims in days? Ebola gets a different rulebook and the people decrying the experimental treatment ought to consider that its use is precisely so that its effectiveness can be gauged. If it is effective, I bet we will see it produced and shipped to Africa on the government's dime.

Matt Yglesias thinks Tyler Cowen is presenting a false choice when it comes to inequality and globalization.

 Tyler Cowen responds.

Extending unemployment benefits during the rescission helped prevent more than a million foreclosures. This is also a good way to think of unintended consequences. If these people lost their homes that would be bad for them. Also, it is clear that communities were hurt by the drop in home prices and wave of foreclosure. But, with people being subsidized into staying in their homes through various means, does that lengthen the real estate crisis? How many of these people lost their homes anyway because the unemployment insurance ran out? Since the money transfers of unemployment insurance are going into paying mortgages on homes, isn't this just another backdoor subsidy to the banks?

Storyline is running a series on long term unemployment. What it's like to help the unemployed to find work. It ain't pretty.

In interviews, the question is: Why have you been looking for so long?
That question really is: What’s wrong with you?

The Wall St. Journal asks, how hard is it really to get a home? I mean, people complain but you just need money and a good credit score.

Wage earners who have decent credit, stable and easy-to-verify incomes and who are seeking loans on simple single-family dwellings can qualify for FHA-backed loans with the minimum 3.5% down payment.

Again with the government subsidy in the form of loan guarantees.

Who really bought cars in July? Apparently new car sales aren't linked to new car registrations which means the figures don't always match up with reality.

More proof that the government is not expanding at federal or state levels. As a percent of GDP, government spending is smaller now than under Reagan.

And, how austerity (shrinking government) wrecked the recovery. It's the economy stupid. See that blue line lower than all the other lines? That what happens when the feds and every state fire workers like crazy.

White House Press Secretary shot in assassination attempt dies.

More about that guy at National Review who hates nerds and has targeted NdT and Nate Silver among others in recent editorials.

So, this post is kinda wonky but I think it's worth reading. Basically, the value of money differs based on it's marginal utility to the person earning it. $10 to a poor kid who needs a meal is more important than $10 to you or me. That same logic applies to nations. The argument becomes, therefore, that rich nations don't need to chase growth so much because paying for social programs and healthcare is more important than the marginal utility of the next $1 trillion (or whatever sum) added to the economy.

Some common sense about when those damned kids are going to move out of their parent's basement. Guess what the answer is? When they can afford to.

Arnold Kling presents some other ways to think about the effects of gentrification. I took two things away. 1. Hospitals and Universities are major drivers of gentrification because they attract wealthy professionals. 2. Poor people move to suburbs. Also, he wrote a haiku.

See! This is the shit I'm always talking about! It's not the elite colleges that are truly driving the student loan bubble because they leverage their endowments to give pretty much everybody tuition grants. Amherst, for example, has had a nearly flat net cost since 2000.

Barney Frank thinks that Democrats will win the support of corporations. I agree but not for the reasons Frank cites. 1. The big banks love Hillary Clinton because her husband was so very good to them in the 90s. 2. Companies hate uncertainty. They especially hate regulatory uncertainty. The republicans are so hell bent on undoing every legislative act of the Obama years that it's creating more uncertainty. For example, imagine being a health insurance company right now. You just spent years figuring out how to do Obamacare and then SCOTUS and the GOP start picking it apart.

Religious Conservatives Embrace Pollution Fight. More evidence of sea-change among the religious right? We can only hope so.

The British sure know how to have a memorial. To mark the 100th anniversary of WWI, they are placing a single red ceramic flower at The Tower of London for ever Briton or colonial soldier killed.

Image credit: Jim Crossley, via flickr.