2/24/15 Today's Inquiries

So apparently snow and ice means a water shortage.


The Links:

Great article on the failed libertarian experiment that is the deep web.

A similar paranoia appears to be even more endemic on the hidden internet, where anonymity is built into the architecture of social interactions. When Sicilian Mafiosi deal with each other, they do at least know each other and can retaliate, often in horrible ways, if they think that they have been cheated. This allows them to maintain a wary peace for much of the time. On the hidden internet, by contrast, people do not know the true identities of those who want to buy or sell.

More about auditing the Fed. I think I found the author's problem:

I’ve been trying to understand why any sensible person would think this is a good idea.

This part is also very important:

If we did want to see a lot more inflation for the U.S., Paul’s bill would be the way to get it. The main effect of the bill would be to give Congress an additional tool to exert operational control over monetary policy. The political pressures will be very strong not to raise interest rates when the time does come to start to worry again about inflation. And when the Fed does get to raising rates, it will mean extra costs for the Treasury in paying interest on the federal debt– Congress isn’t going to like that. The primary effect of the legislation would be to give Congress one more stick with which to try to beat up on the Fed when the Fed next does need to take steps to keep inflation from rising.

In fact there’s a pretty dependable historical correlation– the more political control over monetary policy that a country gives to the legislature and the administration, the higher the inflation rate the country is likely to get.

It looks like Scott Walker is getting economic advice from people who make a career out of being wrong.

Huckabee says the 2016 southern super primary is a gift from God and apparently God wants to elect Mike Huckabee. I have a feeling that the God crowd will be getting behind Walker.

Grifters gotta grift: The Mitt Romney Connection. Though the bit about the treasure hunting business seems unrelated.

Copper King Mine had raised millions of dollars from investors, including from Mitt Romney’s son Josh Romney, who had been lured in with the promise of extraordinary returns. The mine was touting it had the potential to become the largest of its kind in the world. Unfortunately, the operation would soon collapse into bankruptcy taking millions of investors’ dollars down with it. (Unlike most investors, Romney got most of his money back.)

Game theory figures out that the state of nature is exactly as Hobbes thought.

Press and Dyson’s new solution to the problem, however, threw that rosy perspective into question. It suggested the best strategies were selfish ones that led to extortion, not cooperation.

Competing for Jobs: Local Taxes and Incentives. Count me among the critics. Seriously, look at the Kansas Cit,y MI vs Kansas City, Kansas race to the bottom.

State and local governments frequently offer tax incentives to attract businesses to locate in their area. Proponents view these incentives as a valuable tool to encourage economic development. Critics, on the other hand, argue either that incentives have little effect on business location decisions—and hence are wasteful giveaways—or that their benefits come at the expense of reduced economic activity in other areas. A key element in this debate is distinguishing what is best from a local versus a national perspective.

Did you know there's an early retirement movement? I didn't. Apparently one proponent goes by the handle Mr. Money Mustache. So that's great. Also, it's not quite the get rich and then retire early on your bed of money. It's more about how we're super rich in the developed world and even a poor life on a fixed income is wildly wealth compared to being poor anywhere else.

Strangely, the highest rates of default on student loans are on the loans with the smallest balances. Why? I guess I'll have to wait for the next post.

the highest default rates, at nearly 34 percent, are among the borrowers who owe less than $5,000. These borrowers made up 21 percent of the 2009 cohort. The default rate among the borrowers who leave school with more than $100,000 in debt is almost 50 percent lower, at 18 percent.

Tyler Cowen comments here.

dropouts have less debt and also less income. But while the debt rises proportionally with years of education the income rises in less than proportion. As I said in Launching, students who drop out after 2 years get less than half of the gains from completing a four-year degree (the sheepskin effect). Thus the 40% or so of students who dropout see their debt rise faster than their income so burdens are higher and default rates increases

Acute affluenza strikes! Thoughtful response.

My family's household income is $250,000 a year, but I promise you I am middle class. I live in a $2 million dollar house, but I promise you I am still middle class. It has one story, doesn't have a pool or its own movie theater. It is a modest three-bedroom, two-bath.

Aiming for diversity does not mean sacrificing quality or productivity.

Getting a better than base proportion of women isn't impossible, but it does require more work, often much more work. This extra effort reinforces the rarity, if people have difficulty finding good people as it is, it needs determined effort to spend the extra time to get a higher proportion of the minority group — even if you are only trying to raise the proportion of women up to 30%, rather than a full 50%.

Feminists are quitting the internet and writing in general because harassment has become so prevalent and fierce. Glad to see we're making progress.

Techies behaving badly.

A jury is about to hear claims by the now-interim chief executive of the news and social-networking site Reddit that a high-flying Silicon Valley venture capital firm made her a victim of its culture of sexism when she worked there.

Women are leaving the tech industry in droves.

Some have called the growth in healthcare jobs a "female path to the middle class" which is misguided. Lots of men are entering healthcare. I'd say that we're due for a shock, though, as healthcare workers see an overabundance of graduates who then can't get good jobs. What's interesting is that about 25% of our consumer spending is going to be on healthcare by 2020, so 5 years from now.

The inmates are in control of the prison. Well, I'd use inmates loosely because they;re mostly undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation hearings. So, maybe we ought to call this a concentration camp or something.

Citizenfour and Laura Poitras win a well deserved Oscar. I hope they give the statue to Snowden.

More Simpsons theories: Springfield is in the southern hemisphere. Of course if it's all in Homer's mind, then the moon could be completely irrelevant.