1. Those who leave vs. those who stay.
2. Cass Sunstein paper on mandatory labeling for GMOs.
3. Did the Scalise shooter almost cause a constitutional crisis?
4. Is there an oversupply of American restaurants?
5. Rollback of Medicaid provisions in the GOP health bill (NYT).
6. Excellent Eduardo Porter piece on the costliness of America’s energy transformation (NYT).
For what possible reason does one need to go through this? ‘Please complete the security check to access http://www.aei.org‘
It is a public facing web site, which is found also found with a fairly up to date archive here – http://web.archive.org/web/20170622083140/http://www.aei.org/
Is this the sort of reflexive need for some form of hiding that so marks many such freedom loving sites, this one most definitely included.
They want to ensure the Putin hackers have stolen a valid US citizen identity?
3. “No Congress for months would have meant martial law or its equivalent.” Or improved social outcomes.
+1
I dream sometimes about a capitol hill press conference where a senate or house majority leader, in response to a question, actually responds to a quip by stating, “and what would you do without us?”
Quipper: “challenge accepted”
+1 came here from the link to say that. Should have known not to click on AEI link.
#1 – can we stop with this whole “What’s the matter with Kansas” stuff?
+1
Exactly – what’s wrong with Virginia? After that, sticking with an East Coast theme, what’s wrong with Vermont?
A Vox article, shudder.
You could hear the author smelling his own farts in the article. Ahhh, soo good.
https://autophiliac.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/south_park_smug.jpg
Appalachia is a definitely “a group that has gotten their fair share of privilege in this country.” Trump won because racists, okay?
Speaking as a Kansas native: no.
Kansas is a cautionary tale.
Re Kansas:
1. Per capita personal income is almost precisely the national mean, and has been for 70 years
2. Employment-to-population ratio is 0.643. The national mean is 0.597. The seven states which have higher ratios than that of Kansas are other cautionary tales in the Plains and Mountains.
3. Net migration (2010-15) = -0.1%
4. Violent crime rates: 9% below national means, property crime 7.4% above. Homicide, 22% below; robbery, 55% below.
5. Has 0.9% of the national population. Awards about 0.75% of the degrees in natural sciences, 0.75% of the degrees in computer science, 1.25% of the degrees in engineering, 1.35% of the degrees in business, and 1.2% of the degrees in health professions.
Terrible hell hole. How fortunate you got out.
Art, there are a million datapoints that you could cherry pick. All five of your points are based on demographic factors, so you’re making apples to oranges comparisons that don’t answer the questions about what is or is not wrong with Kansas.
All five of your points are based on demographic factors,
The term ‘demographic factor’ does no mean what you fancy it means. The first two are economic variables. Demographics has little influence bar some small variation derived from the age-pyramid. Kansas’ age pyramid differs from the mean only marginally. (And, note also, the employment-to-population ration uses the population over 15 as its denominator).
The fifth variable is a function of investment in higher education, public and private. It might reflect differences in the age pyramid, but those differences are unimportant. (And, in any case, the share of the population of Kansas in the college-age cohorts is ever so slightly lower than the national share).
The fourth can be influenced by demographics. Again, the age pyramid of the Kansas population differs little from the national means. The balance between urban and rural and between different subcultures are what make a place attractive and unattractive to particular market segments, by the way.
so you’re making apples to oranges comparisons that don’t answer the questions about what is or is not wrong with Kansas.
The term ‘apples to oranges comparison’ does not mean what you fancy it means, either.
It’s not terribly difficult to discern my meaning, though it has eluded you: regarding things that people commonly care about, there’s nothing wrong with Kansas that isn’t wrong with a generic location in this country. You might not like the climate or the scenery or people’s manners, but those are matters of taste, about which economists have nothing of note to say.
anon: Art, there are a million datapoints that you could cherry pick.
With Deco’s arguments, it’s not what he says; it’s what he ignores that’s key. In addition, he is either unable or deliberately unwilling to understand colloquial term usage, common idioms, metaphors, and allegories. Worse, for someone so deft with statistics and quantitative data, he’s unable or unwilling to recognize second- and third-order effects and the relationships between seemingly otherwise independent factors those effects represent. He has an extremely simplistic understanding of cause and effect and zero capacity for lateral thinking which precludes him from extrapolating the big picture from all his precious little data points.
I used to think he was Asperger’s/autism-spectrum, but then realized he enjoys pissing people off, being a rude asshole, and belittling anyone who doesn’t agree with him too much to be that genuinely and innocently obtuse.
At the state level, all true. Take it down to the county level.
What’s buoying those statistics are the Kansas City and Wichita metropolitan areas along with the handful of college towns scattered around the state. Most of the rest of the state continues to, at best, tread water.
Why is Kansas a cautionary tale? Because, until recently, the reactionaries and libertarians that dominate the state’s politics relentlessly supported economic policies that exacerbate the very demographic and cultural trends they bemoan. They say they want the small town, Main Street economy and culture of the 1950s back, but they keep voting for politicians and policies that accelerate Main Street’s decline. Meanwhile, their best and brightest continue to move to Wichita, Kansas City, Denver, or further away to get decent-paying work.
There is no future for small town Kansas. The recent budget battles all had to do with how well their schools and transportation systems were to be subsidized by the metro areas. They are simply not economically productive or competitive. It is a lesson for economists and policy makers that despite lower prices for labor, land and regulation that there is no incentive to move production to rural Kansas. Such is the effect of globalism.
What’s buoying those statistics are the Kansas City and Wichita metropolitan areas along with the handful of college towns scattered around the state. Most of the rest of the state continues to, at best, tread water.
About 42% of the state’s population lives in Johnson, Wyandotte, or Sedgwick County. Personal income per capita in comparison with the whole varies from year to year, but it’s generally 33% above state means in Johnson County, 11% below state means in Wyandotte County, and 4% above in Sedgewick County. Collectively, its about 15% above the state mean in those three counties and 11% below the state mean in the other 102 counties taken together. Personal income per capita in those three counties exceeds the rest of the state by 29%. Nationally, the personal income per capita of metropolitan commuter belts exceeds that outside such belts by…31%. There’s nothing abnormal about the intramural income differentials in Kansas.
Why is Kansas a cautionary tale? Because, until recently, the reactionaries and libertarians that dominate the state’s politics relentlessly supported economic policies that exacerbate the very demographic and cultural trends they bemoan.
The state’s economic metrics are, if anything, slightly better than those of the rest of the country, as demonstrated. It doesn’t penetrate your noggin because your remarks on this subject are a function of your self-image and your contempt for your relatives.
There is no future for small town Kansas.
You may not want there to be, but others have other ideas. Outside of the six metropolitan counties, about 1/2 the population lives in counties with declining population and 1/2 with increasing population.
The declining counties are currently losing at such a rate that you can expect a decline of about 12% of their population over a generation, on average (similar to certain troubled Rustbelt metros). In some cases, this has been going on for 90 years. Without delving too deeply into it, it’s a reasonable wager that the driver of that decline has been the shakeout of employment in the agricultural sector, the counties in question having had farms and towns providing services to farmers. The counties in question are remote from large population centers so the housing stock is unsuitable for residences for exurban commuters. Public policy may have made that situation worse or better, but the social dynamic in question is technologically-driven and not really attributable to anything any political faction did do or did not do any time recently. You can complain the areas in question were overspecialized and failed to develop urban settlements with a more diverse industrial mix, but that horse left the barn some time between 1860 and 1930.
Eventually, you’re going to hit bedrock with the farm population. The question at hand is whether or not demographic implosion will continue after that.
About 42% of the state’s population lives in Johnson, Wyandotte, or Sedgwick County. Personal income per capita in comparison with the whole varies from year to year, but it’s generally 33% above state means in Johnson County, 11% below state means in Wyandotte County, and 4% above in Sedgewick County. Collectively, its about 15% above the state mean in those three counties and 11% below the state mean in the other 102 counties taken together. Personal income per capita in those three counties exceeds the rest of the state by 29%.
Thus illustrating my point.
Wyandotte County is Kansas City, Kansas and its immediate environs. KCK, as its locally known, is more characteristic of a deindustrialized urban core than a suburb. In Kansas City’s metro area, you’re conveniently leaving out the exurban counties including Miami, Douglas, Leavenworth, Franklin, and Jefferson. In the Wichita area, you’ve left out Butler and Harvey counties. For completion’s sake, also include Shawnee County which is where Topeka and its immediate suburbs are.
Nationally, the personal income per capita of metropolitan commuter belts exceeds that outside such belts by…31%. There’s nothing abnormal about the intramural income differentials in Kansas. […] The state’s economic metrics are, if anything, slightly better than those of the rest of the country, as demonstrated.
Stop being deliberately obtuse. Stop trying to move the goalposts. The differentials relative to those in other states isn’t relevant. The absolute differentials between urban/suburban and rural counties is.
The core of the dominant Republican voting bloc in Kansas is, like you, reactionary. They want those differentials reversed. They want the economy and culture of the 1950s back. They want the small towns back.
They want Main Street back. They want mom-and-pop retail back. They continue to vote for Republican politicians who promise their economic policies will do all that or at least move significantly in that direction. The problem is such policies exacerbate the very trends those voters want to reverse. Nevertheless, those voters continue to fall for the con. Instead of sobering up and taking steps to adapt to economic reality, they remain blinded by nostalgia and naively vote against their own interests.
Instead of wasting time and capital, both financial and political, on the pointless, quixotic crusade to bring Mayberry back, Kansas voters and the Kansas establishment could strive for greater investment and economic development. The opportunity cost is both staggering and depressing as hell.
It doesn’t penetrate your noggin because your remarks on this subject are a function of your self-image and your contempt for your relatives.
Half of my relatives fled Kansas before I did. The ones that stayed encouraged me to leave for greener pastures and have a lower opinion of the state’s current condition than I do. The majority of people I grew up with who still live there feel the same way.
As to my relationships with them, I have so much “contempt” for them that I go back multiple times per year at significant personal expense to spend time with them and am in contact with some of them nearly daily via social media, phone, and e-mail. So go fuck yourself, you snide, ignorant shitheel.
You don’t know me. You don’t know my relatives. You don’t know the people I grew up with, what they think, or why they think it. You’re not their tribune or their champion. You’re in no more position to speak for them or claim to know their minds than I am to speak for the attitudes and worldview of upstate New Yorkers.
FUBAR007, when you say they should be pushing for greater economic investment and development do you have any particular suggestions? Curious as a fellow Kansas native, but one that decided to stick around.
FUBAR007 just crushing it here.
Thus illustrating my point.
I doesn’t illustrate your point. It refutes your point. The economic distinction between urban and rural in Kansas has precisely the same diemensions it does in the average state. Kansas City and Wichita are not ‘carrying’ the state any more or any less than similar cities elsewhere. And, of course, the state’s income levels are perfectly average.
Stop being deliberately obtuse. Stop trying to move the goalposts. The differentials relative to those in other states isn’t relevant. The absolute differentials between urban/suburban and rural counties is.
Your state-wide average is the national mean. The ratio of metropolitan incomes to non-metropolitan incomes is actually slightly lower than what you’d see elsewhere. Conclusion: non-metropolitan zones in Kansas aren’t abnormally economically depressed. They’re like non-metropolitan zones just about anywhere in their general level of affluence The goalposts haven’t moved. You’re just having difficulty und erstanding the import of ordinary descriptive statistics I can explain something to you. I cannot comprehend it for you.
The rest of your remarks are irrelevant chaff. Let’s see: arrogance, innumeracy, deceit, and prolixity. We get it. You’re a lawyer.
FUBAR007 just crushing it here.
No obscene remarks under one of your other sock-puppet handles? You’re getting tired.
What I’ve gleaned is that Art’s point is if its bad in Kansas, and there are many who say so, then it is bad everywhere in similar circumstances. Kansas gets the scorn because of Brownback and how he tried to fix it, but the rural-urban divide itself is all over the country and not particularly bad in Kansas. I expect that this divide is a rough proxy for Trump voters as well.
What Brownback’s tax cuts provided evidence for is that even with lower taxes, lower regulation and low cost of living there still wasn’t incentive to move industry and business to Kansas. Have any of the serious people pontificated on why this is?
HL: FUBAR007, when you say they should be pushing for greater economic investment and development do you have any particular suggestions?
Nurturing existing “green shoots” would be a good start. For example, with Boeing long gone, the local business leadership in Wichita has finally figured out it needs to diversify the local economy. To re-energize the manufacturing base, there’s talk of appealing to the aerospace and defense firms. KC metro has a toehold in the tech space with Cerner. Johnson County, Overland Park in particular, should capitalize on that and work to attract other tech companies the way Denver and Austin have. They should redevelop the area around the Sprint HQ campus along the lines of the Denver Tech Center.
Long-term, the foundation stone is the big state universities. The objective should be to grow KU into a “public Ivy” a la CU-Boulder and the University of Michigan and to grow K-State into a top 30 tech/engineering school e.g. Georgia Tech. Wichita State is already a top aeronautical engineering school, and it needs to stay that way. Make the big Kansas universities nationally competitive, not just regionally competitive.
Tourism is another area they need to invest in hard. Kansas has a rich history, particularly from the Civil War-era and Indian Wars, and a slough of historical sites that just kind of sit there. Western Kansas has lots of beautiful scenery and strange geological formations, but they’re all miles off the interstate and major highways. Kansas City metro has an old and deep arts and music scene that needs nurturing–I think there’s enough there to grow KC into a Midwestern counterpart to Austin, culturally speaking. Kansas is where the Midwest meets the Southwest, and they could seriously capitalize on that.
There’s lots more, but I’ve only had one cup of coffee this morning.
The ingredients for growth and greater success are there. I firmly believe that. But, Kansas has got to up its game and re-brand in order to attract the investment necessary to bake the cake.
Whoops. That last one is from me, HL. Cut and paste error.
As I said, only one cup of coffee so far.
What I’ve gleaned is that Art’s point is if its bad in Kansas, and there are many who say so, then it is bad everywhere in similar circumstances.
It isn’t bad in Kansas in any comparative sense in brute economic terms. Kansas is a place with average incomes in one of the world’ most affluent countries. There are features of quality of life that do not show up in national income statistics, of course. It makes little sense, though to complain about violent crime in Kansas City and strip malls around Salina and then tell me you’re decamping to LA because you’re just better than all that. LA has ample populations of strip malls and hoodlums.
No clue what Gov. Brownback has to do with the phenomenon under discussion, bar that FUBAR’s brain seems to toss a dozen different things he does not care for into a blender and then hits puree. Politicians come and go. Most don’t make a discernible difference, whatever their ambitions are. Some who do (e.g. Coleman Young) are memorable in ways most conscientious people would prefer not to be.
Art, you are flat wrong about me. I don’t sock puppet or post as you, that tiresome ‘cuck’ idiot is someone else. I don’t need to bother with that nonsense to run circles around you here. Just ignore that idiot like the rest of us do.
1. I left, and probably would have done better had I stayed, since I’d have less student loan debt. Also, I support Trump and was exposed to plenty of “diversity” both as an undergrad and a grad student–it’s not “ignorance” or “fear” that motivates the desire to put one’s own first–that kind of thinking is part of the Left’s “medicalization of dissent.”
1. Indeed, one could easily spin it as those who leave are less likely to be loyal to their families, communities, spouses, or nations. Or perhaps the anti-Trump forces are trying to turn the tradition that makes patriotism and loyalty to country and people a necessary virtue, and instead make oikophobia fashionable, to hide their tolerance for treachery and class warfare, under the guise of intelligent cosmopolitanism.
Nobody is under an obligation to be loyal to family, community, nation, class, or ethnic group, as none of those relationships are voluntarily entered.
Nevermind that many people have had severe objective harms inflicted upon them by their families, communities, countries, etc.
Life is pretty meaningless if you are only obligated to yourself. Are you obligated to be loyal to the children you voluntarily have? What about their kids?
I rather doubt Hazel will have any kids. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m MGTOW.)
You did notice the word “voluntarily” right? Obviously you can voluntarily undertake a duty to spouse, children, or (say) by taking a job such as police officer, which imposes a duty to expose yourself to risk rather than taking innocent life.
There are many, many duties and obligation you can have, it’s just that you have to be allowed to choose them.
“I love you, Dad”
“I share a voluntary obligation to provide you until adulthood, Son”
Touching.
Again, Hazel, outside of your wife and kids, and your job responsibilities, is anyone else supposed to matter to you? Siblings, grandkids, parents, cousins, neighbors, countrymen?
Whether something matters to me, and whether I’m under an obligation to feel like it matters to me are two different questions.
Are you under a moral obligation to care for a dying parent that sexually abused you?
Are you under a moral obligation to fight for a country that oppresses you?
Hazel, you are reaching here. It’s a free country so you can love or not love, care about or not care about, whomever you want. Most humans experience love and obligation differently from you, and you can’t argue them into your way of thinking.
t’s a free country so you can love or not love, care about or not care about, whomever you want.
That’s exactly my point.
You’re not under any obligation to love and care about your family, community, country, or anything else. If you don’t care about them, for whatever reason, that doesn’t make you a bad person.
I need to add, I do get your point. We are not OBLIGATED to care about our country or neighbors, but most of us do.
“If you don’t care about them, for whatever reason, that doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Yeah, it actually does. Whether or not you “chose” to enter into many relationships, you often have benefited from them in some way. If you only treat relationships as one way, that way benefiting you, then most people would consider you a bad person.
Yes, there are the extreme examples you give of an abusive parent or nation. But for the most part, that doesn’t happen. Most people benefit from their relationships with family, community, etc., even if it is just the basic benefits of food and shelter.
@Ted Craig,
So are white people born in America under obligations towards black people because they benefit from racial prejudice?
Again, Hazel, only focusing on your comment about being a bad person, I would say that if you don’t feel an obligation to make the world a better place for everybody, then many people would consider you bad person. But, hey, nice reach for the race card. It’s useful when you have nothing else.
@Ted Craig,
You sidestepped the question. Different people have different ideas about what makes the world a “better place”.
Maybe I think the world is a better place if people aren’t going around telling other people that they are under positive duties to others that they never chose.
The argument you made was that because you benefited from something (even without your active choice in the matter), that creates an obligation to reciprocate, or compensate others for the benefit.
If so, then what about progressives’ argument that white people’s ability to benefit from racial prejudice (i.e. white privilege) imposes an obligation on white people to compensate black people for the effects of that prejudice?
Now please note that I am not endorsing that argument. I am simply stating that IF benefiting involuntarily from other people’s actions make you obligated to repay those benefits , THEN you can apply that logic to all sorts of other situations.
Why does life have to have meaning? I have taken the hedonistic approach and have no worries about whether what I’m doing will make much of a difference. I enjoy my relationships with people, good food, travel, art, etc. I don’t act out and follow the rules so that society can function to make these things available to me.
What about peppermint mini-skirts, what happens to them? Can we just agree that the unraveling by George Packer was weak at best.
Catacombs, Hazel is throwing stones, selling news and MSGKING bought lunch. For free, yes he did.
OK, but for a lot of us, we know these people, good people, they cared for us, fed us, clothed us, guided us, protected us, raised us into reasonably competent and decent human beings.
To many of us, this process creates a set of obligations. But it’s not a burden, it’s reciprocity and the idea that there is something bigger than me.
You act like this is all a social construct that we can cast off and start with a fresh piece of paper. But I look at all the atomized up-and-comer go-getters living a thousand miles away from their families and think that doesn’t sound so good, especially when they start a family themselves and realize they have no fucking clue what they are doing or organic support system, and then later they have to go visit Ma in a home because everyone moved away.
I look at all the atomized up-and-comer go-getters living a thousand miles away from their families and think that doesn’t sound so good, especially when they start a family themselves and realize they have no fucking clue what they are doing or organic support system, and then later they have to go visit Ma in a home because everyone moved away.
I honestly don’t see what’s so bad about any of that. Lots of people deal with way worse things than starting a family in a new place without relatives around to babysit for them. Lots of people don’t have choices about those things.
fucking first world problems. First world white people problems.
So, you had a crummy family. Sorry about that. Lots of people didn’t.
Stories of sojourners and sacrifices, families torn apart involuntarily due to the dictates of the almighty dollar are part of the fabric of the American story going way back. Here’s a story along these lines contemporary to our times:
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/13/492860463/born-in-the-u-s-raised-in-china-satellite-babies-have-a-hard-time-coming-home
What gives such stories their poignancy is the fact that family matters and is extremely important for a lot of people, which I suspect is completely lost on you.
First world white people problems indeed.
I’m pretty sure people of all pigmentations have these same problems.
Where do you get the idea I had a crummy family?
There’s a difference between saying “My family sucked an I hated it” and “Nobody is under an OBLIGATION to care for or be loyal to their family”.
Maybe my interest in this is not because *I* had a crummy family but because I know and sympathize with other people who did. EVEN if your family was awesome, I would still say don’t let that stop you from moving 1,000 miles away to go to an Ivy League University, pursue a career you desire, etc. You may only get one shot.
And no parent, should really think their kids are obliged to stay and care for then rather than pursue their life goals. That would make you a bad parent. At least you, the parent, CHOSE to have children, the kid didn’t chose to be born to be your nursemaid in old age.
I want my kids to be out there making the most of their lives. That’s my obligation as a parent.
Yeah, your own history is beside the point. It’s just that I grew up in a normal, boring home with good people around me, and it’s the most natural thing in the world for ME to feel an obligation to THEM, whereas you can only see obligations as things imposed by THEM on US.
I’ve been both a child and a parent. As a parent, I do not impose any obligation on my kids to take care of me in my dotage, but I hope if I’ve done my job decently that they feel some obligation toward me, just as I do toward my own parents.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”
I’m a parent as well, and I would really, really NOT want my child to feel an obligation to give up a spot at an Ivy League university, or a promising career, to stay in their home town and live with me. That’s what we’re talking about here. People who leave their home towns and people who stay, out of loyalty to their parents – say because their parent becomes ill and they feel obligated to stay home to care for them. I would NOT want my children to do that. I’m objecting to the idea that staying in one’s home town rather than leaving to pursue a career is a good thing because it shows family loyalty. Cournot’s original comment is that people who leave are being disloyal to their families and communities.
Do I want my kids to visit me and send me Christmas cards? Sure. But I definitely don’t want them stunting their own careers just to live near me. They don’t owe me anything.
Sam Wainright > George Bailey?
In real life, Bedford falls is in a natural state of decline due to economic forces beyond George’s control, not an evil banker. I would not say either one is morally a better person, but that George’s belief that he was obligated to stay was mistaken. He was always free to pursue his own goals and was wrong to feel compelled to act against them.
cournot: Indeed, one could easily spin it as those who leave are less likely to be loyal to their families, communities, spouses, or nations. Or perhaps the anti-Trump forces are trying to turn the tradition that makes patriotism and loyalty to country and people a necessary virtue, and instead make oikophobia fashionable, to hide their tolerance for treachery and class warfare, under the guise of intelligent cosmopolitanism.
It’s not oikophobia. It’s economics.
Not all of us come from places with robust economies replete with opportunity. The population of the county I grew up in has been shrinking since 1940. Counties in other parts of my home state have been declining in population since 1890. Those of who’ve left did so because we had to–the jobs just aren’t there. A sizable percentage of my former classmates moved to the nearest cities and their suburbs where the jobs are. A few of us have migrated much further afield.
This is hardly a new phenomenon. In the case of my family, I didn’t grow up where my father did. He didn’t grow up where my grandfather did. My grandfather didn’t grow up where my great-grandfather did. My great-grandfather didn’t grow up where my great-great grandfather did. Many if not most of us aren’t from families wedded for all eternity to a particular patch of dirt.
We go where the work is. That’s just life.
1. Isn’t collecting all of your data from “High school” reunions pretty terribly biased data. Aren’t you self selecting from the group of people that most enjoyed high school. Roughly 20-30% of a given class attend a high school reunion. This is not a representative sample.
“that kind of thinking is part of the Left’s “medicalization of dissent.””
Precisely.
From the article:
“So when they published these polls, the narrative seemed pretty clear: Staying in your hometown makes you insular. You aren’t exposed to other people, other cultures, other experiences — and that otherness scares you. This fear aligns with Trump’s worldview.”
The narrative is not clear from the polls. The author is crafting a narrative.
Indeed it’s not even true to say “Staying in your hometown makes you insular. ” The direction of causality is quite possibly in the other direction. It’s just as likely that “Being insular make you stay in your hometown”.
This is typical Voxsplaining, where an article crafts a narrative and presents it as the only possible explanation and dresses the whole thing up with graphics.
The study specifically said that the ones who never leave are less likely to attend the reunions. Exactly the opposite of your speculation.
“The study specifically said that the ones who never leave are less likely to attend the reunions. Exactly the opposite of your speculation.”
I didn’t make that speculation, try re-reading what I wrote.
Still a biased sample, either way.
Agreed.
Choosing to leave my hometown was not strictly a way to become more successful, It was more of a way to exchange some of my economic power for for culturally desirable surroundings.
The two best choices available on graduating were:
$150k in my hometown, live in a mansion, have a frustrating job at an older company, town is nothing but strip malls.
$95k in silicon valley, live in apartment forever, but have a way more interesting job at a company full of people like me. town is somewhat more bikeable and interesting.
“at a company full of people like me.”
People move to cities to reduce diversity. Telling.
Unambitious Loser With Happy, Fulfilling Life Still Lives In Hometown
CAMDEN, ME—Longtime acquaintances confirmed to reporters this week that local man Michael Husmer, an unambitious 29-year-old loser who leads an enjoyable and fulfilling life, still lives in his hometown and has no desire to leave.
Claiming that the aimless slouch has never resided more than two hours from his parents and still hangs out with friends from high school, sources close to Husmer reported that the man, who has meaningful, lasting personal relationships and a healthy work-life balance, is an unmotivated washout who’s perfectly comfortable being a nobody for the rest of his life.
“I’ve known Mike my whole life and he’s a good guy, but it’s pretty pathetic that he’s still living on the same street he grew up on and experiencing a deep sense of personal satisfaction,” childhood friend David Gorman said of the unaspiring, completely gratified do-nothing. “As soon as Mike graduated from college, he moved back home and started working at a local insurance firm. Now, he’s nearly 30 years old, living in the exact same town he was born in, working at the same small-time job, and is extremely contented in all aspects of his home and professional lives. It’s really sad.”
http://www.theonion.com/article/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfilling-life-still-33233
I wonder if Tyler would classify him as complacent.
It’s possible to have a happy fulfilling life, and ALSO be ignorant, backwards, and insular.
The question is, do you only care about your own happy fulfilling life, or do you care whether other people around the world have happy fulfilling lives too? Does it bother you when other’s people happiness and life fulfillment perturbs your insular little town’s ethnic makeup?
Wait a second, this is contradicting your post above, Hazel. You have no voluntary relationship with those other people around the world, why should you care?
I would say my only duty is to NOT interfere with their pursuit of happiness. I don’t have to help them get there. I just have to not take positive actions to stop them. You can have negative duties, but not positive ones (unless they are voluntarily assumed).
The “negative not positive” stuff is a very unnatural moral system. It’s not a meaningful difference to most people, so good luck building a society on it.
You don’t see a “meaningful difference” between murder and not jumping in a river to save someone who is drowning?
Hazel those two scenarios are closer morally than you think
Where do Swiss bankers who did banking for Nazi Germany fall under this moral spectrum.
The easiest way to “have a happy fulfilling life” is to be, and remain “ignorant, backwards, and insular.”
Probably true. Ignorance is bliss.
Deppressives like to convince themselves it’s their (supposed) intelligence that causes their depression.
We get it, Hazel, you’re a better person than everyone else.
I try to be.
Do you aim for tediousness, also? Asking for a friend.
The effort to excuse the insularity, backwardsness, and ignorance of the entire Trump movement’s worldview is what is tedious.
I have trouble believing that you would even recognize tediousness- fishes in water and all that.
Literally your entire output is trite, frankly uncultured whining.
Just curious here. What percentage of your gross income do you give to charity?
On number 6, one thing that could significantly alleviate the need to all those storage systems is keeping part of the old grid power supplies operational. After-all the capital is already spent, and the CO2 emissions would be fairly small if the nat gas CCGTs were only fired up during shortages not all the time, fuelled by LNG (which can be stored indefinitely). The idea you have to eliminate all CO2 emissions to prevent global warming isn’t held by anyone serious (most people seem to assume stabilising them would be enough). Of course this kind of grid would be significantly more expensive than the current one, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern of the green lobby, in-fact a selling point.
“After-all the capital is already spent, and the CO2 emissions would be fairly small if the nat gas CCGTs were only fired up during shortages not all the time, fuelled by LNG (which can be stored indefinitely).”
I think that approach is the right direction, but it fails to deal with over peak conditions. Not only does the electric grid have to deal with lulls (the valleys) in wind and solar it also has to deal the peaks. You either find away to store that excess energy, let it go to waste (extremely wasteful) or you cap your wind and solar at minimum normal usage.
On demand Natural gas power plants can deal with the valleys but they don’t help with the peaks. For that you need power storage, batteries, Pumped Hydro, thermal storage, etc.
If the energy is worth storing then it is worth storing, if it is not worth storing, then it is not a waste to lose the extra energy.
Of course if it were left to the free market, this would all sort it’s self out without us having to second guess things.
“If the energy is worth storing then it is worth storing, if it is not worth storing, then it is not a waste to lose the extra energy”
Agreed, but if you aren’t capturing the economic potential of the extra energy it will lower the economic benefit of the intermittent energy source. IE the cost of renewable energy per kWh is higher if you lose the peak because you spread the capital cost among fewer effective units of energy.
“Of course if it were left to the free market, this would all sort it’s self out without us having to second guess things.”
100% agree.
On #6: the critique has 21 authors, mentions “econom–” 15 times in a short article, and the number of economists in the team? Zero. Neither the original paper and the critique cannot be taken seriously. They are not doing pure science research , they are doing science & economics.
#1 “Staying in your hometown makes you insular. You aren’t exposed to other people, other cultures, other experiences — and that otherness scares you. ”
I have acquaintances who are both from the urban progressive and hometown Trump camps.
One big difference I notice is that the successful progressives who are seemingly more open to outsiders, don’t have to actually live next door to, go shopping with, and work with working class people from other cultures and other experiences.
It’s one thing to mingle with successful foreigners within your same advanced professional and educational class. It’s quite another if you are of the “white working class” mingling with outsiders who are also working class.
People talk a lot these days about the white working class, but what about the attitudes of the black working class? I’m reminded of the time I was riding the train after work, sitting behind two black men who, by their attire, appeared to be manual laborers. Two Hispanic men, also in laborer attire, entered the train speaking Spanish and sat down in front of them. One of the black men said to the other, “Look at that. They’re taking over.” Now that was amusing.
Some people express this fear of outsiders by voting for Trump. Others through zoning, school boundaries, and nimby-ism.
“One of the black men said to the other, “Look at that. They’re taking over.” Now that was amusing.”
They have a valid point. If you’re a black male without a high school degree working in construction for $15 per hour and illegal immigrants start moving into your area and they are willing to work for much less money, you don’t have a lot of choice. Someone that’s highly intelligent with a degree has a lot of flexibility and can respond by moving into another field. A manual laborer is probably going to just agree to either work for less money or take up a more dangerous occupation.
The common intellectual answer is retraining and/or relocation. However, people without the capabilities to complete high school aren’t going to be very successful in retraining programs. And relocation is risky for such a person. They don’t have money to handle a graceful move or a long job search. They often don’t even have reliable vehicles. When they move they lose their local support network, which may include free baby sitting and someone to help out when their vehicle breaks down or some other emergency happens.
An illegal immigrant often is moving from somewhere of destitute poverty and almost anywhere in the US is going to be an immediate substantial jump up in standards of living. This is worth a large risk. A working class American who has to take a pay cut from $15 to $12 per hour on the other hand, can’t assume that moving to another location will guarantee a better quality of life. So, in many cases it’s rational to just accept the diminished standard of living and stay where you are at.
Even worse… if you live where there’s a $15 minimum wage, not only are you beat out by somebody with more hustle, it’s illegal for you to negotiate a better deal while you try to improve your hustle or adjust your skills.
“people without the capabilities to complete high school aren’t going to be very successful in retraining programs. And relocation is risky for such a person.”
Makes you admire how so many black people migrated to industrial cities in the north way back. Certainly not low risk. I can’t even imagine the courage that took despite the incredible incentives to leave.
“Makes you admire how so many black people migrated to industrial cities in the north way back.”
They were in exactly the same boat as the illegal immigrants from today:
“An illegal immigrant often is moving from somewhere of destitute poverty and almost anywhere in the
USnorth is going to be an immediate substantial jump up in standards of living.”Not “exactly” the same boat, depends on the immigrant’s skin color.
“Of course if it were left to the free market, this would all sort it’s self out without us having to second guess things.”
So how’s the free market working out now? A “free market” without regulatory oversight is an oxymoron. Stop worshipping at the altar of false gods.
#1 it happens, but lots of times it’s not a choice. People stays to take care of an elder parent, a younger sibling, disabilities and problems happen. It’s a bit naive to think stayers are only the ones that settled down and got married.
On the other hand: youth sports. Early specialization is great for the 1/10K that becomes pro-athlete, for the rest this specialization is a career dead end. Parents have lower expectations of sports success for girls compared to boys, perhaps this is good in the long term……girl goes to college, boy becomes a failed pro-athlete.
+1
Want to know why people don’t move to the opportunity? Try raising a baby in a two-income household with no grandparents, aunts or uncles in proximity. I don’t care if we can make $15,000 more by moving three states over. Losing the ability to sleep in on Sunday and having a couple nights a week where Masha and the Bear isn’t on full-repeat blast isn’t worth it.
Too often conventional economic advice is dispensed under the assumption that family doesn’t exist at all. Let alone being one of the most important components of the human experience.
That was exactly our situation – to a tee. Two kids, 4 years apart. Both my wife and I worked. No family anywhere near us. There were times when it was an issue, but we made do. Kids turned out fine (knock on wood.) There were literally two jobs in my hometown for somebody who does what I do.
It was worth it to us – I can’t speak for other people.
+1. Very good points about the stayers.
5. ““Could you imagine tomorrow if finally we had a Zika virus vaccine, and that vaccine costs $50K a dose?” said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University. “Would you not want every woman of childbearing age to be immunized?””
There are 2000 cases of Zika in pregnant woman in the US. There are 61 million women of childbearing age. So the cost of immunizing every women of childbearing age is about $1.5 BILLION per Zika case.
So to answer Sara’s question, no, I don’t want the government paying more than a BILLION DOLLARS per life.
Transferring responsibility for medicaid expenses from the federal government to the states would ideally prevent exactly this sort of stupid, feel good spending.
+1
Lets also talk TSA expenditure per saved life.
There’s a highly educated person with absolutely no understanding of economic opportunity costs.
If you don’t want to spend X billion dollars per life saved you must either hate science or be heartless, or so I’ve been told.
Why does the vaccine cost $50K per dose? Is it super difficult to manufacture? Or is part of that the patent monopoly to reward the inventor with a period of monopoly profits?
Since a vaccine does entail a lot of R&D to discover and then figure out how to mass manufacture, some of that hypothetical cost would be justified on the grounds that you want companies working to invent new vaccines (not just for zika but also other diseases). So your cost benefit analysis fails to account for the fact that some of the cost is really to pay for future drugs rather than the benefits of the vaccine itself.
“some of that hypothetical cost would be justified on the grounds that you want companies working to invent new vaccines (not just for zika but also other diseases). So your cost benefit analysis fails to account for the fact that some of the cost is really to pay for future drugs rather than the benefits of the vaccine itself.”
The drug exists because of the pre-existing incentive of patents. Your argument is like saying that part of the value of a future building is that I haven’t stolen your current building yet. True, but bizarre, because we presume property rights, we don’t stipulate them based on future values. If we instead presume incentive instead of property rights, then for any given value, a failure of incentive should lead to seizure. Yikes.
IE: If we allow property rights because it is effective at X, Y, or Z, that is a recipe for expropriation.
Say the vaccine costs $50K per dose but once the patent runs out and it becomes a generic the price drops to $10 per dose. Then $49,990 per dose for the period of the patent was really the reward to the inventor. Presumably the inventor would have a lot less incentive to have invested in the effort if he couldn’t get that reward AND the fact that today the zika inventor gets a reward of $49,990 other inventors are plowing away at other vaccines and drugs in the hope that they might strike paydirt.
“The drug exists because of the pre-existing incentive of patents”
Not entirely. Suppose before the zika vaccine someone invents a good ebola vaccine. But instead of being allowed to sell that for $50K a dose as a monopoly Trump declares the patent shall be void and the inventor can just sell it for $10 per dose in a generic market with lots of competitors.
Now you are going before your board and asking them to approve spending $1B to work up a zika vaccine. They are going to say “yes there’s clearly an incentive for us to fund this since many pregnant woman will want to use it and will demand insurance pays a lot for it…..but how do we know one morning Trump isn’t going to void our patent in an angry tweet? ”
The reason the drug exists is not just the pre-existing incentive of zika patients but the general incentive of other types of patients. Killing profit in one drug carries over to kill incentive in other non-yet-existing drugs. Likewise the opposite exists….profit in one new drug today increases incentive for other new drugs not yet invented.
Yes, I agree that the patent increases the value of the vaccine and thereby incentivizes future research. I don’t understand why I shouldn’t look at each medicine incrementally with its patent. This seems like a rhetorical trick that could be used to argue that no current medicine pricing is justified except by future medicines as opposed to being a just reward.
I don’t think it’s a rhetorical trick. This began with the claim that the cost of the above hypothetical is $1.5B per prevented zika case. That’s not entirely accurate, we are paying for multiple things in the hypothetical:
1. Assurance….if 1M women get vaccinated for zika then you have 1M cases of assurance that they don’ t have to worry about it. Even if only 2000 women out of those 1M would have been impacted absent the vaccination, absent the vaccine or cure 998,000 women would have some measure of worry about the risk.
2. 2000 cases of zika prevented.
3. 4000 cases of parents of zika child prevented (assuming mom and dad here…to keep it sane I’ll avoid adding extended family and friends).
4. Social costs of 2000 zika cases from childhood all the way to grave.
5. Providing incentive for people to do research in general to find solutions to all other types of diseases etc.
I agree this doesn’t automatically mean any price is automatically worth it. If instead of a private company we had the military doing research to try to find a zika vaccine (say zika was easy to weaponize) they wouldn’t have an infinite budget. Such a R&D program would compete with everything else from better drones to missile defense. Just saying there’s more elements in play to the equation than just how many cases you prevented.
Also the # of cases prevented isn’t quite good by itself. There’s only a few cases of zika in the US because people were exposed when they went to South America or maybe because a small number of infected mosquitos have made their way to the US. Since it isn’t easy to control mosquito populations there’s a real risk that many more infected mosquitos will appear in the US and if that happens the # of cases can increase very quickly.
1. I left. But I did return for my (I believe) 20th high school reunion (a long time ago). I was curious about those who stayed and looked forward to talking with them. Not a chance. They had little or no interest in talking to those who left. No, I don’t believe it had anything to do with them feeling inferior; indeed, my observation was that they didn’t care what those who left had done with their lives, where they lived, or what they had accomplished. As for the Vox study, comparing San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and LA to rural and small towns is not a fair comparison. Why not compare a city like Atlanta or Houston or Phoenix to rural and small towns. I think I’d take rural and small towns if that’s the choice. But that’s just me, since I think Atlanta, Houston, and Phoenix (among other fast growing cites where most of those who left end up) are Hell holes.
“I was curious about those who stayed and looked forward to talking with them. Not a chance. They had little or no interest in talking to those who left.”
Or perhaps they weren’t interested in talking to lawyers that talked down to them and told them the areas they had visited and liked “are Hell holes”.
It’s absolutely amazing to me that you could believe that 1st world metropolitan cities such as Atlanta, Houston, and Phoenix where millions of middle class Americans lead perfectly happy and successful live are “hell holes”. It’s quite obvious that you are delusional.
Though the weather can be brutal at times in all three of them.
Like this?
https://jalopnik.com/phoenix-cancels-more-than-40-flights-because-its-too-ho-1796271450
Ha ha – Houston is the very definition of a “hell hole.”
I just had friends who moved from Houston to Palm Springs. Why? Because Palm Springs is cooler…
4. The section on the death of the mid-level restaurants leaves out income stagnation as a factor. It also explains why restaurants that specialize in breakfast are doing well: it’s often the most bang for your buck.
For me breakfast is cheap because I don’t order wine.
Paraphrasing NPR host this morning: “yeah, but those who leave their family to chase a career still put their family first, right?!”
NPR listeners need to be protected from any criticism. You can put family, community, and career first! Sounds a lot like my 5 year old on his favorite toy; “all of them”.
1. Tl;dr, liberals congratulating themselves for moving from one White/Asian neighborhood to another.
“6. Excellent Eduardo Porter piece on the costliness of America’s energy transformation”
Kudos to the NYT’s for publishing this. Jacobson’s original paper was clearly an example of wishful thinking, but it’s somewhat surprising that the NYT’s is willing to point it out.
The article on future energy development was interesting. But I was surprised that it did not say a thing about the price of oil.
For example,the real price of West Texas Intermediate is now about double where it was around 1970 before rising oil prices became an issue..
If real oil prices remain around current levels for another 25-50 years the cost of alternatives would be too high. But if real roil prices double again, the economics of alternative energy would be very different. Do we have enough tight oil to supply our energy needs for decades at roughly current real prices? I do not know, but without that information any projections of future energy supplies is rank speculation.
Why should I pay any attention to an article that does not bring this up?
The discussion is mostly about the electricity sector, where oil doesn’t play much of a role.
Electricity is just converting one form of energy to another. The price of electricity is strongly influenced by the price of hydrocarbons. Note how cheap natural gas prices are changing the economics of the electricity industry.
#5) Every US taxpayer and Medicaid recipient is also a taxpayer and resident of a state (or DC or other territory). So, shifting Medicaid from the federal government to state governments doesn’t actually reduce the taxpayer base available to support those benefits. The $800B in federal savings represents $800B less in either current or future federal taxes, which states, if desired, could recover by increasing state taxes to pay for generous Medicaid benefits. Empowering each state to optimize its own Medicaid spending and taxes would seem to be a gain. After all, why should a blue state like California be dependent on Donald Trump and a Republican Congress for determining its Medicaid policies? So, what is the objection here, just a desire on the part of some states to use other states’ residents’ taxes to pay for their own Medicaid?
Even in welfare-friendly Europe, there is much resistance to “fiscal union”: using one country’s taxes to pay another’s welfare benefits. Many US states are comparable in size to European countries and, thus, have similar scale for implementing social welfare. One can view returning power over welfare benefits from the federal government to state governments as undoing aspects of fiscal union that even welfare-friendly Europeans wouldn’t want.
“Even in welfare-friendly Europe, there is much resistance to “fiscal union””
Which is why the U.S. is much more durable than the Eurozone. It is also much easier to move between states in the U.S. than it is to move between countries in Europe.
The federal government has never forced states to participate in Medicaid; it is just that all of them eventually decided to opt in (I believe Arizona was the last to do so). The politics of scaling back federal contributions to Medicaid are complex. Ideological conservatives and libertarians will embrace it, of course, but swing states like Ohio and Florida (with its large elderly population and no state income tax) oppose it.
#1. Was basically do you want to go to college or not where I was from. Guess which group did better.
4 – I have eaten what Americans call food. An American restaurant is one too much.
I have seen what Brazil considers a toilet.
A place where attend to some of their natural needs, but we do not eat at them.
Is there any square foot of Brazil that is not considered a toilet?
Most of the country is not a roilet, nd the toilets are good and clean.
Useful information. At my age and enlarged prostate, I spend inordinate time in close vicinity to toilets, public and otherwise. While it is far superior to the alternative, getting old stinks.
I left with my wife and kids for a dozen years, including moving to three different states for completely different jobs – all new employers, not simply new assignments for the same firm – and moved back to my hometown recently for one very simply reason. My elderly and recently widowed mom needed me…and I’m not thinking about leaving again while she is still alive. It wasn’t easy for the wife and kids but it’s worked out for the best.
I think people who come back for reunions need to let go and focus on the friends they currently have. If you haven’t seen anyone for at least 10 years, then it’s over. Move on. And you don’t need to hear a bunch of strangers telling you how well they’re doing. Stop living in the past.
When I was in high school lots of people did not want to hang out with me because their parents had cash and mine didn’t. I did not know that at the time, I know it now. I could not afford to live in my home town after college because the houses were only affordable for rich people, or people with connections to the few good jobs within commuting distance. I had to move far away. When I went to my reunion everybody was nice, and interested in how my life had unfolded. I never once thought it was their fault (‘their’ being the possessive pronoun relating to the people who got to stay) that they had been raised the way they had been raised or that they were luckier, economically, than I was. And I know that not one person in a thousand can completely resist, while young, the temptation to ostracize those poorer than themselves, at least if the poorer person is not extremely attractive (I wasn’t) or funny (I was, but only if you were the sort of person who could get my humor). I can’t resent people for doing what 999 out of 1,000 people would do. So thank you for the “move on” and “don’t live in the past” advice, but it is not good advice for me, and thanks in a more general way for doing something kind for your kind mother. I would be really impressed if you were doing that for a below-average slatternly mother, the kind of mother so many people have (and don’t get me started on the sloppy drunk fathers who so often go along with the below-average slatternly mothers – sorry to be rude, but at least I care enough to notice) but I am still impressed that you are doing it for someone who was kind and generous when she was young. By the way, do you ever have those dreams where you go back to your home town and you are your own age (let’s say mid-30s, which is what I guess your age is) but the people who were just a year or two younger than you are still waiting to graduate? In those dreams, do you ask why? I figured out why a couple weeks ago. If you have a lot of people in your life you undoubtedly know people who are different from the rest of us because, unlike most people who comment and read posts on the internet, those people have been in the land of the dead (that is, actually have died, or have had near-death experiences – by age 40 that is generally one out of 30 people, just counting people who made it to 18 … sorry to sound like an actuary or an accountant….) And if you remember dozens of people from high school, when you are sleeping and dreaming, that fact (that some of them have not graduated yet) just seems like common sense. Sitting at the DMV, commuting to work, finding caffeine at a starbucks, it all seems implausible. But dreaming we know we are in the hands of a powerful and loving God. (Run-on sentence follows, it makes sense if read out loud, not so much on the page) ….And even Hello Kitty says something wise every once in a while – not specifically referring in her case to people we have not seen in a while, well God knows Hello Kitty has no experience of re-meeting people who could have been her friends at decade-measured intervals since the previous failed opportunities – anyway, as Hello Kitty says, Every Day is a Good Day to make a friend.
Thanks, appreciate the thoughtful response.
Actually, I am in my low-to-mid 40s – graduate school, then marriage, then work in hometown for a few years before taking off to other states/jobs, kids born in different states, as described above.
Mom is a piece of work and is not easy on my wife either, but my dad was the closest thing to a saint and he took excellent care of her (and us) while he was alive…so I feel it’s my duty to do the same in honor of my father…and I hope someday my kids will reciprocate even if I’m only half the dad that he was.
My older brother is not a family man, though he has one, and he keeps trying to re-connect with people in his past, as if he’s trying to fill the void in his life that his own family doesn’t provide. He’s pathetic if you ask me, and I don’t look up to him as a brother.
You are welcome. I very much like the way you expressed the thought that we need to see others the way good people who cared for them saw them. In my own large family there are several former rage monkeys – it is no small thing to have been a small child in a house with rage monkeys – and after all these years I have completely (and absolutely, believe me, without hesitation) forgiven them but I can’t help but wonder what went wrong – did they, before they were born, volunteer to be born into the type of circumstances that later enraged them and made them ridiculously unkind and cold-hearted – not that they wanted to be, just that they took the risk, perhaps having an excess of love in their hearts before they were born, to volunteer to be born into the type of circumstances that sometimes produce rage monkeys? And perhaps those of us who are not rage monkeys are no better, because we declined to volunteer to take the harder road, back before we were born, when we had the option of taking on others’ more difficult burdens, and declined to do so, because we did not want to risk turning into a cruel unliked person (it happens) (even if the reward on offer was the spectacular gratitude for taking on those hard initial circumstances out of love and the desire to keep those we loved from having to face those harsh realities – what could be better than that)? Anyway, thanks for your interesting comment, your parents are lucky people.
Regarding #1:
How do these studies handle the fact that non-metro areas often turn into metro areas over time? Coweta County, Georgia is now considered part of the Atlanta Metropolitan area. Would it have been considered part of the Atlanta metro areas in 1970? Almost certainly not. It’s nearly 40 miles from downtown Atlanta to the Coweta County Court House.
Far flung exurbs experiencing rapid growth turn into “metro areas”. Far flung farming towns that aren’t close enough to an urban core to experience exurban growth stay as “non-metro areas”.
This isn’t trivial for analysis either. The fastest growing parts of the country are the exurbs of major cities. By 2025, the population of the exurbs will exceed the population of urban cores.
From 2000 to 2010, Atlanta city proper added roughly 4,000 residents. Over the same period, the Atlanta metro region added 1.1 MILLION residents.
4. Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods will make a bad situation for restaurants worse, as Amazon lowers grocery store prices making it more economical to eat at home. My father was a chef and owned restaurants, back when people ate meals not fast food, so I am sympathetic to the restaurant industry and owners of restaurants. As for mid-level chain restaurants, I suspect their fate is the same as the fate of Sears. Not mentioned in the linked article is Charleston, SC, which is one of the best cities for very good restaurants. I’m amazed at how many restaurants have opened in that city in the past five years. And these are not plain storefront restaurants, but very expensively built-out and equipped restaurants. Thing is that even in Charleston the failure rate for restaurants is very high. For readers who are considering leaving their day job and opening a restaurant, consider three things: the long hours, the failure rate for restaurants, and the landlord lien for unpaid rent. I repeat, the landlord lien for unpaid rent, a lien that attaches to all of the tenant’s assets. The tenant’s assets. Do I make myself clear?
All clear about restaurants, especially those opened by a good hobby chef who never worked in a restaurant. However, since this is an economics forum, I am a proponent of restaurant owners not renting, but owning the buildings.
Argument for is the lock in of costs, just like buying a house instead of renting. Argument against is that perhaps, if the restaurant were not profitable under market rent, it should not be in business.
What is clear however, is that if you have a fantastically successful restaurant, there is a strong incentive for the building owner to grab a chunk of the profits when the 5 or 10 year lease expires.
Why would Amazon lower prices? If Amazon wanted a budget store, they’d have bought one.
Perfectly rational comment. After all, most firms that buy another firm to increase its efficiency do so in order to increase profits. Amazon is not most firms. Its efficiency to lower costs is applied to lower prices not increase profits, and in doing so increase market share. But aren’t profits the whole point of being in business? Not for Amazon. The rules don’t seem to apply to Amazon.
6. I have the impression many people in the US don’t understand that new renewable capacity is, in general, cheaper than new fossil fuel capacity. As a result, renewable generating capacity is being built in the US and will continue to be built where ever electricity markets exist.
This is definitely the case in Australia. It is currently mostly coal powered as far as electricity is concerned with about 77% generated from coal at the start of this year. It has low cost to extract coal deposits and is the largest coal exporter in the world. And will never build another coal power plant because its simply not competitive. Part of the reason is because the banks will fund new wind and solar capacity, but not coal because it’s seen as a bad risk.
Similarly, coal generation in the US will be eliminated and natural gas use will decline.
None of the so called “green” power is sustainable and require massive subsidies to survive. It is a failure propped up by tax money. The reality is that all the coal will be mined and burned eventually and all the oil and NG will be sucked from the ground too. There are no other viable options.
Before tax or subsidy, the median rooftop solar system in Australia is being installed for around $1.20 US a watt. With our retail electricity prices that is definitely cheaper than mostly coal generated grid electricity. And wind and solar is now competitive with new coal capacity and new gas capacity. While Australia is not the world leader in low cost wind energy that the United States is, its cost has fallen a long way with the lowest cost wind farm has been bid in at around 4.1 US cents per kilowatt-hour. Large scale solar has long been more expensive than rooftop solar in Australia, but has finally become competitive with wind and its construction is now taking off.
The lowest cost solar farm I am aware of was bid in a around 44 US cents per watt in China last year, using polysilicon panels of at least 16.5% efficiency. That is less than half the cost of Australia’s cheapest solar projects, but I don’t see any reason why we can’t at least approach China’s costs. Interest rates are, technically at least, lower in Australia, and while labour costs are higher that’s only a small portion of the total cost of a solar farm.
Wish it were true. They have just become better at hiding the subsidies and deceiving to the public. You need to look closer to find the truth.
So there are hidden subsidies that don’t appear in the Australian Federal or State budgets that are making solar and wind power cheaper that we don’t know about? So how do I know the coal industry isn’t also receiving these “black” subsidies? How are these hidden subsidies being funded? Secret heroin sales?
On what basis can I make an informed decision when information this important can apparently just be hidden from me? For example, to me, it looks like our national health system is far more cost effective than health care in the United States, but is that an illusion that only appears that way because of hidden subsidies? Am I being misled here as well?
What about Australia’s life expectancy being three years higher than the United States? Is that true or is it the result of the truth being hidden from me and I have to “look closer”?
I assume you are in the United States. It is my belief from Power Purchase Agreements that have been signed that the US has the lowest cost wind power in the world. Are you able to “look closer” and provide links showing that there are subsidies that make that not actually true or am I just supposed to take your word for it? If it’s the latter, then if you tell me the moon landings were faked or vaccines cause autism, should I just take your word on that too? Because I should let you know I’m not going to do that.
If that is what you believe I can’t change your mind. Don’t look for the deceit and you won’t get your little bubble burst.
You can’t change my mind because you haven’t provided any evidence. I have evidence that the subsidies for US wind are low:
https://energy.gov/savings/renewable-electricity-production-tax-credit-ptc
If you can’t provide evidence there are other subsidies I am unaware of then I will assume they exist only in your mind because I have no reason to believe you.
If you tell me the truth is out there but can’t even provide a link, then I’ll put this in the same category as Bigfoot and flying saucers.
The EIA projects that on-shore wind farms coming online in the next five years have “levelized costs” before subsidies that are about equal to natural gas power plants and less than nuclear. People keep on circulating outdated talking points from 10 years ago without checking on the latest developments. Wind power does work best in places like the American Midwest where winds are strong and fairly reliable but the notion it cannot compete without subsidies is no longer true.
You have been deceived/cucked. Keep believing that propaganda like a good comrade.
Obviously, you are too uninformed to contribute anything of substance.
Ricardo is correct. And he makes an excellent case for eliminating Federal subsidies for renewable power
‘I have the impression many people in the US don’t understand that new renewable capacity is, in general, cheaper than new fossil fuel capacity.’
No, they really don’t, in much the same fashion that they don’t understand that America’s cell phone infrastructure would actually be considered inadequate in many countries that still don’t offer much in the way of landline service.
1. In Tennessee and Kentucky, two states I can vouch for, there is racism towards outsiders and there is sexism but they were not the primary drivers of Trump’s rise. He showed up. He didn’t talk down to them. He portrayed himself as a working man. Please stop beating a dead horse.
2. Voluntary labeling makes much more sense. I worry more about pesticide residues than GMOs.
3. I am biased against think tanks in general, but he makes a good point.
4. Yes, crappy ones serving American food. Even the Mexican, Chinese, and Thai is dumbed down.
5. There go all those gains from the US versus Canada mortality inequality paper. Maybe more Republicans should read your blog. 🙂
6. Change will not come overnight. All options must be on the table until we figure out the optimal combination for each region. Americans have become so risk averse that it is impeding progress. Some of the greatest discoveries have come from failed experiments. If we keep hemming and hawing things will not move forward. Let’s do this already!
‘He portrayed himself as a working man.’
And they bought it, for no apparent reason based on actual facts – even his most ardent supporters are fully on board with Trump being a billionaire and TV star, like so many other working men. This might, just maybe, lead one to question whether Trump actually appealed, ever so slightly of course, to something more than merely fellow feeling among working men. As for not talking down to them, well, some people pander more convincingly than others, but nothing new in that observation – and even using the term ‘pander’ is already loading the dice, obviously.
1. Yes, if there’s one thing Trump is known for, it is his humility, followed closely by his respect for voters’ intelligence. “How stupid are the people of Iowa?”
I live in TN and have talked with people who attended a Trump rally. They confirm exactly what Evans_KY is saying.
“How stupid are the people of Iowa?”
So stupid that they keep voting for people who win elections.
#1 The study missed out one category, smart Yankie ladies dig real Aussie blokes ..
https://medium.com/migration-issues/why-americans-are-leaving-for-the-land-down-under-75bad6dfba39
“”””Women in their 20s grew by the largest amount from 2001 to 2011″””
For example former Aus NSW state premier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristina_Keneally
“””Keneally was born Kristina Marie Kerscher in Las Vegas to an American father and an Australian-born mother. She lived briefly in Colorado but grew up in Toledo, Ohio,[10] where she attended high school at Notre Dame Academy.[11] While at Notre Dame she was twice awarded most valuable player (1985, 1986) in the Academy’s soccer team.[12]”””
Cass Sunstein claims there are GMO foods that “taste better”. Can anyoen direct me to an example?
Not entirely sure, but there is an orange blight going around which only the GMO oranges survive. So I could imagine that non-blighted oranges taste better than the blighted ones.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140914-florida-orange-citrus-greening-gmo-environment-science/
Same with other crops. It’s possible that healthier plants produce better tasting foods.