The dead zone: implicit marginal tax rates on the working poor

A look at our awful system:



Mises Daily explains:

At A, the marginal tax rate is quite high, essentially because of the generosity of the package of cash and noncash benefits provided to those on welfare. At B, the marginal tax rate is relatively low (!) because of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). From B to D, we (or, rather, the working poor) are in the Dead Zone, with implicit marginal tax rates mostly exceeding 100 percent.

How stupid and evil must our elected representatives be to do this to the working poor! Actually, this being a democracy, there is nobody to blame but the electorate. Especially the left-liberal do-gooders. Since Milton Friedman developed the negative income tax, waaay back in the 1950s, there can be no excuse for any educated person to not be aware of the fact that taxes and means-tested benefits destroy the lower classes' positive incentive to work.

At C, the implicit marginal tax rate is momentarily "only" 75 percent. This is because, in the face of losing other means-tested benefits while the federal income tax kicks in, the children of the household still qualify for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The lull in the onslaught is momentary, however, ending as soon as that prop is removed from the household.

At D, the family is finally done with jumping through the hoops to qualify and remain qualified for the give-away programs. Now all it has to concern itself with is paying taxes. But there is no rest for the weary because, at E, the child tax credit phases out.

In the above scenario, I describe the effects of the tax and subsidy programs of the government with respect to a hypothetical family of three, consisting of one adult and two minors, with a focus on the working poor. I could just as well have talked of a middle-class family with one or more children of college age, and how means-tested financial aid programs such as the Pell Grant and federally subsidized loans make fools of those who save for college; or how Medicaid's rules for nursing-home eligibility make those who save for retirement into fools; or how bringing back the pre-Reagan tax rates will make utter fools of families in which the wife and husband both work.

Everywhere, the government's desire (meaning the left-liberal do-gooders' desire) to be generous to the poor is destroying the positive incentives to work and to save that are so necessary for a well-functioning economy. What they have done to Detroit, and are doing to New Jersey, they will do to the entire country.

(via Marginal Revolution)

And now, a history of the Internet

(via LGF)

Link blag

Conor Friedersdorf knows how to fix the Right. Now if only they were listening...

Larison has smart things to say about the Crist-Rubio Florida Senate Primary.

Pelosi was smart to pass cap and trade early.

The physics of free-throw shooting.

Researchers have found a way to grow new organs by grabbing cells, spraying them onto a protein frame, dunking them in "growth-stimulating compounds," and then sticking them in an oven. Naturally, they're using this technique to grow new penises.

Nicole LaPorte was a Twilight virgin.

A headline to appreciate: "Madonna to meet Jesus's parents".

New poll shows 100% of grandsons are talented...

ATLANTA—A Zogby poll of 1,542 American grandparents published Monday found that grandsons were described as "very" to "extremely" talented by 1,542 of the respondents. "Participants in the poll were emphatic in their descriptions of the talents of grandsons in fields as diverse as advertising and sales, choral performance, baseball, talking, crawling, making their beds, video games, and instructing their elders on proper cell-phone use," pollster Tom Waterton said. "In addition, an overwhelming percentage of grandchildren were described as outgoing, sharp, and looking just like Uncle Andy, you remember Uncle Andy, he was always up to something, too bad he passed so young, he would have loved the grandchild in question." Sources at Zogby admitted that the survey was incomplete, as several hundred pollsters are still unable to get their assigned grandparents off the phone.

The shape of things to come

Old prejudices die hard.

(via Yglesias)

Tear down that..wait, what?

A pretty silly cartoon if you consider the amount of money his administration poured into stabilizing the financial sector, or how many government appointees are Goldman Sachs alumni.

Afghanistan to get McChrystal light

Shadow Government:

[..] President Obama has made his decision on Afghan Strategy Review 2.0 and is preparing for a roll-out sometime around the 19th or 20th of November. Senior officials are clearing their schedules, giving heads-up to allies, and generally girding their loins for a major public relations push. But a push for what?

McClatchey reports that, as expected, the president will split the difference between his warring advisors. He will embrace the counterinsurgency approach recommended by General McChrystal and other military advisors. He will reject the narrower approach favored by Vice President Biden and other political advisors. But he will not authorize the upper-bound of military resources McChrystal requested. If the McClatchey report is accurate, the final choice comes close to resembling the option dubbed "McChrystal light," but probably not light enough to avoid a political battle with the anti-war faction at home.

100 million dead

If you haven't read Matt Welch on The Unknown War, do so today.

Blaming the president for unemployment

Megan says bugger off:

The president has very little control over employment in the economy. The stimulus undoubtedly kept the economy from losing even more jobs than he did. But the economy is undergoing a hell of a deep structural adjustment: from debtors to savers, from housing-and-finance led growth to . . . well, if we knew that, the recession would already be over. Those adjustments need to happen, because the previous situation was totally unsustainable. But they definitionally imply higher unemployment and less consumer demand in the short run.

A third stimulus might lower the unemployment rate a little, at least from where it would otherwise be. But it would not put us back at 5% unemployment, and it would have a lot of other costs, including further risking our AAA bond rating. Stimulus is at best an incredibly blunt instrument. And it is made blunter by all of the procedural checks we've accumulated over decades of government growth, not to mention very powerful public sector unions. FDR could tell his government to go out and hire people to paint hallways or build dams. The current president needs Environmental Impact Statements, public review periods, and the okay of ACFSME.

The fact is, most of the time, the best the president can do is avoid making things much worse. And though I have many disagreements with the specifics of Obama's policies, I'd say that largely, he's kept from making stuff worse, and eased the worst of the damage on hurting families. We could be doing more with more generous unemployment benefits or other income assistance, less with atrocious auto bailouts. But the economics of recession is truly a dismal science, and demanding that the president cure the recession is about as effective as expecting him to cure Hep C.

Agreed on all counts.

But this won't stop me from gawking at the laughably rosy scenario Obama's economic team painted to sell the stimulus last February:



Though I suppose reassurance is part of the president's role, so as to avert greater panic. Don't worry people, everything is gonna be just fine!

Comparing Western Europe

Over at the League, Koz commented:

Liberalism should be seen as an unmitigated failure by anyone under 30.

To the extent that it isn’t, part of the reason is that American prosperity seems to them as a fact of nature. For anybody with any historical consciousness of the modern industrial state for the last thirty years or so, the rules are pretty simple: low taxes/free markets = prosperity, bloated welfare state = corrupt dependence on the state.

That's some pretty run-of-the-mill conservative boilerplate, which I think misses half the story. Hopefully my response is more interesting...

Koz, I deplore welfare and love myself some low tax rates and free markets as much as the next libertarian--but you should note that Western Europe's welfare states are doing quite well, in no small part because their governments (parliamentary: executive makes policy, legislature approves) and tax systems (consumption tax: VAT) are more efficient than the American model.

You ought to check out Bruce Bartlett's The New American Economy; he offers some good clear-headed explanations of the economic side of things.

My own thesis, in a nutshell, is that the better governance and taxation in Europe is what makes their welfare states politically palatable and attractive to their peoples. Whereas America's bad governance and absurd tax system are what make higher rates and more welfare politically unpalatable and unattractive to Americans.

I believe that if America kept its relatively-low welfare and tax rates but improved its governance and tax system, it would be better off.

And I believe that if Europe kept its good governance and tax system but reduced its welfare state and taxation rates, it would be better off.

Alas, the politics don't seem conducive to either outcome, because good governance/taxation seems to make people tolerant of the welfare state, whereas maintaining enough popular outrage against state expansion seems to depend on having inefficient governance/taxation like America's.

20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

A man waves to his relatives on the other side of the Berlin Wall, August 1967.

November 9th marks the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Built with barbed wire and concrete in August of 1961 by the Communist East, the 30-mile Berlin Wall was a Cold War symbol separating East and West Berlin, preventing people from leaving East Germany. According to the “August 13 Association” which specialises in the wall's history, at least 938 people died, shot by East German border guards, attempting to flee to West Berlin or West Germany. The wall stood for 28 years as a division between the Soviets and the Allies. During the summer of 1989, tens of thousands of East Germans fled the communist regime.



A man hammers away at the Berlin Wall, 12 November 1989.



Thousands of young East Berliners gather at the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate, 11 November 1989.



Peoples from East and West Germany greet each other, 22 December 1989.

(Source with more photos)

Weapons bound for Hezbollah

LGF:

The IDF has uploaded a video presentation showing the huge shipment of weaponry from Iran, intended for Hezbollah, that was intercepted this week by an Israel Navy commando force aboard the civilian ship Francop.

Sunday viewings

Spartacus (1960)
Gotcha! (1980)
V pilot

"An open letter to Jonah Goldberg"

Read Conor Friedersdorf on the state of the Republican party.

Climate change diavlog

In the past I've admired Manzi's cost-benefit analysis, but Professor Orr presents some bleak counter-views.

I'm eager to hear whether the next (fifth) IPCC report bears them out.

Dept. of memories

So, I found you can play DOOM in your browser. Sweet.

(Hell you can even play Quake 3 Arena in a browser.)

I'm reminded of a recent xkcd...



The tooltip:

I'm teaching every 8-year-old relative to say this, and every 14-year-old to do the same thing with Toy Story. Also, Pokemon hit the US over a decade ago and kids born after Aladdin came out will turn 18 next year.

Prince Ali! Mighty is he! Ali Ababwa.

What is this picture?

You'll never guess.

More on nukes

If you want zero-carbon power, they're the only practical solution.

"Under the Rightwing Rock"

Every time I think about maybe possibly voting Republican in the future, some bozo neocon opens his mouth and reminds me of the kind of people I'd be putting in government....here's Andrew:

If you don't think Bush's and Cheney's embrace of torture-as-policy has had a profound effect, check out this instant response to Fort Hood from Mark Noonan in the neocon camp:

A terrible event - but I don’t want anyone to call it an “act of violence” or “a terrible tragedy”. It was an attack - one or more men decided with malice to attack a US military base. We need to get right down to the bottom of this - and, liberals, if the stories of accomplices in custody are true, this is where harsh interrogation might be needed: whoever was involved in this most emphatically does not have a right to remain silent.

So we go from torturing a foreign terror suspect who may know the whereabouts of a WMD that is about to go off imminently (the original Krauthammer position) to torturing American suspects in a shooting spree (suspect, I might add, that subsequently turned out to be mirages).

This is not a slippery slope; it's a well-watered slide to throwing out the entire American system of government.

Obama on the debt

Ambers notes:

There will be talk of real, across-the-board limits to discretionary spending. There will probably be a bipartisan deficit-reduction panel set up, along with, perhaps, another Social Security reform commission.

Andrew sniffs:

Talk is cheap. And commissions are often ways of avoiding, not expediting real cuts in entitlements and defense. For this independent supporter of Obama, the key issue in the next year will be seriousness about reducing long term debt. If he cannot do it, or fails to make it a priority, he will lose me and many others. I understand why circumstances and inheritance have propelled the debt up right now. But circumstances cannot explain away the long-term crunch. A real leader tackles that. A phony leader ducks it.

I'm with Andrew. I want to see real progress before 2012.

Allowing Bush's tax cuts to expire won't be nearly enough.

Quote of the day

"It's time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else's civil war."

—Barack Obama, 2006

(via Obsidian Wings)

USPS, Inc.

Yglesias explains why we should privatize the postal service. Hear, hear.

No political lesson

Letter from a witness:

This was premeditated. This wasn't VBC again. That guy snapped, not this one. He was so damn calm when he was shooting. Methodical. And he was moving tactically. The Army really is diverse and we really do love all our own. We signed up to be shot at but not at home. Not unarmed. No one should ever see what the inside of that medical SRP building looked like. I suppose that's what VA Tech looked like. Except they didn't have soldiers coming from everywhere to tourniquet and compress and talk to the wounded while rounds are still coming out.

No one touched him...the shooter that is...other than to treat him. Though I told the medic (and I'm not proud of this) that was giving him plasma that there better not be anyone else who needed it because he should be the last one to be treated. But I had just finished holding a soldier who was critical (I counted three entry wounds) and talking to him about his children.... If the shooter had a grievance he should have taken it out on those responsible; he wasn't shooting people he knew (media reports to the contrary). He was just shooting anybody who happened to be present for SRP medical processing, mainly lower enlisted.

But please, no one use this politically! The Army is not "broken", PTSD doesn't turn people into killers, most Muslims aren't evil, and whether we should stay or go in Afghanistan has nothing to do with this. I'm babbling...sorry.

Megan concludes:

This guy was some form of lunatic or psychopath, and it seems pretty clear to me at this point that he was inspired by terrorists.  But there's no evidence that he was a terrorist--that is, that he was hooked into some organized network.  Lots of people do terrible things in the name of their religion--just ask George Tiller.  Their acts are, as the Catholic Church says, "sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance".  But they are no more indictments of a community than the acts of that Korean kid who went crazy at Virginia Tech.

There is absolutely no political lesson to be learned from this.  Gun control would not have stopped a commissioned officer from obtaining guns.  Barack Obama had no power to stop this.   Infectious PTSD is a lousy theory.  And nations certainly do not--and should not--shape their foreign policy around the possibility that a random psychopath will start shooting up a crowd.  Evil people do evil things.  That's all.

Addendum: No lesson other than more examples of the Right's immaturity, of course.

Jon's epic spoof of Beck

Peace be upon the people of peace...

Another meaningless shooting?

Here's James Fallows...

One consequence of having been alive through a lot of modern American history is remembering a lot of mass shootings. I was working at a high school summer job when news came over the radio that Charles Whitman had gunned down more than 40 people, killing 14, from the main tower at the University of Texas at Austin. I was editing a news magazine during the schoolyard killings in Paducah, Kentucky in 1997 and sent reporters to try to figure out what it all meant. I can remember where I was when the live-news coverage switched to the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, and the shootings at the one-room schoolhouse in the Amish country of Pennsylvania, and the Virginia Tech shootings two years ago. And all the rest.

In the saturation coverage right after the events, the "expert" talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre "mean"? A decade later, do we "know" anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.

We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They've got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don't mean nothing.

RIP.

Normally I'd be in agreement, as I was after the Virginia Tech massacre.

But for this Fort Hood case, the suspect, U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, is a devout Muslim and very religious. We don't know for certain that there's a connection between his faith and the shooting. But reports are he was troubled by the U.S. military's engagements and his coming deployment overseas against fellow Muslims. [Update: Witnesses say he shouted "Allahu akbar" during the rampage. He was to be deployed to Afghanistan.]

Given how many killings have been carried out in the name of Islam in recent history, well...



(Source: Pew, via Ordinary Scott)

Whether you think it's deserved or not, Islam has clearly earned a reputation for encouraging violence. This shooting will do its part to inflame the perception. No good shall come from this, but nor do I see how it will be empty or meaningless.

Stephen Colbert vs. Stephen Colber on AGW

With a little help from Mr. Gore...

GOP shoots and scores

The purged moderate speaks

The Daily Beast interviews Scozzafava:

How do you characterize yourself? We live in such a label-induced society – oh that person’s a liberal and this is a conservative. If I was to say to Dede Scozzafava, so what are you? What applies, if anything?

I’m a Republican.

Defined as what?

When I look at the Republican Party of Lincoln and I look back at eight principles of being a Republican, I think I pretty much identify with each one of those principles. Whether it’s less government dependency, promoting self-sufficiency, believing in lower taxes, believing in fewer government regulations, believing in less government spending, or believing in individual liberty, individual freedom, and less government interference in the lives of people. Those are all positions that I’ve always held to, I’ve always articulated on behalf of, and those are the things I stand for. And I think those are Republican principles.

I went through an editorial board during this most recent race. And at the end, the gentleman, the lead editor just looked across the table at me and he said, “A moderate Republican? You’re a conservative Republican.” The social issues sometimes people might not agree with, but I really think I govern according to the Constitution and I live my personal life according to my faith, and I try very hard not to mix up the two.

My kind of Republican!

Is it your intention to stay in the Republican Party?

I have every intention of staying in the Republican Party. This is my party too. There are a lot of moderate people—Republicans, like me--and I’m hearing from an awful lot from them. And I think the Republican Party needs to know if they don’t have room for us and they don’t want us working with them, we’re going to find a way to work against them. I’d much prefer for us to be a bigger party and us all to work on the things that are most important, the fiscal issues, foreign policy. If you listen to my foreign-policy positions, you know I’m a Republican.

Give me an example.

Israel. I’m pro-Israel. I’m pro-defense spending. I think diplomacy is good, but diplomacy only works if it’s backed up by a strong defense. And making sure you have a strong defense budget. When I see what’s going on with Iran it’s very, very scary. I don’t think that you can–it’s hard to put a peace branch out when you’re dealing with a regime like that. I think you have to be very, very firm with a lot of these countries. So if people took the time to know who I really was, I think they would have a Republican member in Congress today.

Er, so she's somewhat to my left on economics and clearly too much of a neocon on foreign policy.

But I'd definitely choose her over the Beck-Palin axis.

This is why they fight

Ordinary Jamelle sums up:

[..] we really should stop underestimating the extent to which raw prejudice drives political decisions.  As Freddie remarked on Twitter recently:

It has become impolite to say so, in either direction, but never doubt many in this country hate and fear gay people.

The corollary to this, of course, is that in a country where a near-majority is morally opposed to homosexuality, it is ridiculous (and almost cruel) to expect gay people to rely exclusively on legislatures as they fight to secure their rights as American citizens.  And that’s especially the case when you realize that when legislative efforts are successful, there is almost always an immediate effort to rescind or overturn the legislation.  The simple fact is that if current demographic trends hold true, a majority of Americans will eventually support marriage equality.  In the meantime though, I think LGBT activist groups should take a page from the Civil Rights Movement and again begin focusing their challenges on the courts.  It simply doesn’t make any sense to rely on the generosity of the majority (indeed, if black people did, segregation would have lasted for a whole lot longer).

Revisiting the achievements of the Veterans Health Administration

Alas, it's nowhere near the success model of government-run care for the rest of us that progressives think it is.

The progressive case for an excise tax

Ezra Klein makes it.

I support the excise tax as the best incremental compromise we're likely to get.

Ideally, like most health-care wonks, I'd want to eliminate tax credits for health benefits and require a transition to them being directly taken out of wages.

E.g. if you're making 70K/yr. and have a 10K/yr. health benefit, your employer would be required to recontract you for 80K/yr., and you would be directly responsible for contributing that 10K (or whatever other figure) to the health fund you wish to participate in (which could remain attached to your employer initially, but should eventually move to an individual market on a health exchange, so continued insurance is not directly tied to continued employment).

These are not the bombs you're looking for

Iraq's Ministry of the Interior has deployed paranormal bomb detectors at checkpoints...

[..] the ministry bought 800 of the devices from a company called ATSC (UK) Ltd. for $32 million in 2008, and an unspecified larger quantity for $53 million.

[..] ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” ATSC says.

What'll they think of next?

German deer still stuck in the cold war

Odd stuff

Rand Paul takes polling lead

Radley at Reason:

Over at the blog In the Agora, Joshua Claybourn notes that libertarian (and Ron Paul offspring) Rand Paul has taken an early polling lead for the Republican nomination to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.). Paul has already raised far more money than his opponent, Kentucky's GOP establishment-backed Secretary of State Trey Grayson. But Paul has also been able to convert dollars into poll points. He has jumped 14 points in the last three months.

Claybourn, an attorney and writer just across the Ohio River in Evansville, Indiana observes:

Rand Paul is a strong states’ rights advocate who wants the federal government out of people’s lives. He opposes federal drug laws and says the U.S. government should not outlaw gay marriage because only churches should be in the marriage business. He is skeptical of foreign interventionism and doggedly Constitutional about any engagement. But more than anything he likes talking about fiscal issues and the need to scale back government intrusion in economics and reform the nation’s fiscal policies...

Libertarian intrusions into Republican primaries are nothing new. But what separates Rand Paul from most other libertarian candidates (including his father) is that Rand is not a novelty act. He is a known commodity as a long-time practicing ophthalmologist in western Kentucky. Along with tremendous intellectual heft, Rand is a polished public speaker with a professional presence. In short, he is an ideal candidate for the libertarian cause.

All of which would explain why the national GOP is trying like hell to make sure he doesn't get the nomination.

Another winner: medical marijuana in Maine

Reason:

Yesterday Maine voters, by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent, approved Question 5, a ballot initiative that expands the conditions covered by the state's medical marijuana law and establishes a system of state-licensed dispensaries. Maine has allowed medical use of marijuana since 1999. But as in California, the right to grow and possess marijuana was restricted to patients and their "caregivers." Under the new law, nonprofit organizations regulated by the state Department of Health and Human Services will be allowed to operate storefront dispensaries that sell marijuana to patients with doctor's recommendations. While California has many such pot shops, ostensibly operating as patient "collectives" or "cooperatives," their legal status is matter of dispute. Maine now becomes the third state, after Rhode Island and New Mexico, to explicitly authorize a distribution system for medical marijuana. Ten other states, including California, have laws that allow medical use of the plant but are silent or hazy on the question of where patients can get it. [..] this lack of clarity means DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries may continue despite the Justice Department's avowed intent to avoid prosecution of patients and suppliers who comply with state law.

“It’s great to see Maine leapfrog other states in adopting cutting-edge medical marijuana legislation,” says Jill Harris, managing director of Public Policy at the Drug Policy Alliance, which backed Question 5. “What’s especially nice is that the medical marijuana guidelines recently issued by the U.S. Department of Justice provide reassurance to Maine officials that they can implement the new law without fear of reprisal by federal authorities.”

Another good night for the Second Amendment?

David Kopel at Volokh Conspiracy:

NY-23: Winning Democrat Bill Owens was A-rated by NRA (as was Hoffman).

Virginia: Either Deeds (B rating) or McDonnell (A) were sure to be a big improvement over outgoing Governor Kaine. Deeds lost the NRA endorsement by supporting closing of the (non-existent) “gun show loophole.” In the Attorney General race, Republican Ken Cuccinelli (A+) handily defeated a D-rated Democrat who advertised very aggressively on the gun show issue. Incumbent Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (A+) trounced an F-rated challenger.

In the Virginia House of Delegates, five Republican challengers with A ratings ousted Democratic incumbents rated F,F,B,B,B. A C-rated Republican also unseated an F Democrat incumbent. The House of Delegates already had a fairly solid pro-Second Amendment majority, so the major change in Virginia is a new Governor who, like former Governor and current Senator Mark Warner (Dem.), will sign rights-enhancing legislation passed by the legislature.

By far the most prominent gun control advocate on the ballot this year was Jon Corzine (F). This summer, Corzine twisted lots of legislative arms to win enactment of gun rationing (“one-handgun-a-month”), a silly law (.pdf) that is even sillier in New Jersey, where every handgun purchase requires advance permission from the local police chief. With Christie replacing Corzine, New Jersey gun owners can hope for benign neglect rather than active hostility. The New Jersey Assembly appears to be unchanged.

In sum: A bad night for advocates of gun show restrictions. Another fine night (as were election nights 2006 and 2008) for Democrats with A ratings from NRA. And good news for Second Amendment advocates in blue New Jersey and purple Virginia.

Good so far as this goes, but let's note anti-gun Bloomberg won NYC's mayoral, and this seems more important than the rural house special where all the candidates (incl. Scozzafava) were A-rated.

The pain in Maine

Andrew reflects:

[..] civil rights victories, the final and enduring ones, are always built on the foundations of defeats. Sometimes, the defeat of a minority's sincere aspiration to equality helps reveal the injustice of the discrimination and the cruelty of the marginalization. Sometimes, it helps show just how poorly treated we are, and galvanizes a community to fight back more fiercely as we saw in that amazing march on DC last month. That has certainly been true of previous civil rights movements. It is just as true of ours.

Periodic table

That's a nice table—too bad the bench is radioactive.

What an off-off-year election night...

Based on recent polling, I would have bet on:

Hoffman over Owens for NY-23
Corzine over Christie for NJ-Gov
No on 1 in Maine

Yay me, wrong on all three counts.

Now I'm pleased with the Owens and Christie upsets, but no marriage in Maine is painful. It tells us nothing we didn't already know—the public is still close to a 50-50 split—but the loss will surely have a chilling effect on efforts in New York and New Jersey.

Favored constituency watch

Obama continues the special treatment, which reminds Megan of an ad.

Venn diagram

Endangered species

The story so far

World industrial production in the Great Depression and now:



Writes Krugman:

Basically, we started out with a year that matched the Great Depression, but have since pulled back a bit from the edge of the abyss.

Quote of the day

"I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I'm the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois,"

—Senator-elect Barrack Obama, 3 November 2004

As one of the many who cheered him into breaking that promise and taking on Ms. Inevitable, I must say: It's been a wild five years.

(ht Ben Smith)

Who cools their coffee in a saucer, anyway?

DIA advocates abolishing the Senate.

Government motors update

Ugh.

80% reduction in world poverty rate (1970-2006)

Perry's bottom line:

Both graphs are based on a poverty measure of $1/day, but the authors obtain similar results using four other measures of poverty from $2 to $10 per day, both for the overall reduction in world poverty (top graph) and the regional differences (bottom graph).

Assuming these estimates are accurate, the 80% reduction in poverty between 1970 and 2006 has to be the greatest reduction in world poverty in such a short time span in the history of the world, and the 97% reduction in East Asia has to be the most significant improvement in regional standard of living in history as well. The authors don't explore the reasons for the record reduction in world poverty, but some likely candidates might be: globalization, market-based reforms, liberalization, Information Age technology, productivity gains in agriculture, the collapse of central planning in China and India, etc.

Africa is a big negative outlier. It gets the most economic aid, yet is performing the worst in terms of absolute poverty levels and not making much headway at reducing them.

Perhaps there's something wrong with Africa itself, or perhaps there's something wrong with the economic aid model (counterproductive, ala Dambisa Moyo's argument, fostering dependence like welfare), or some combination of these.

Either way, more aid for Africa does not seem to be a solution to the problem nor a smart use of resources, despite what TV ads tell us.

Meanwhile, East Asia is an extraordinarily positive outlier. Ain't it amazing what embracing modernity can accomplish?

"Positive feedback in inequality"

Fascinating stuff from Arnold Kling:

I think that perhaps the most important trend of the past thirty years is the increased importance of cognitive skills relative to physical labor. Obviously, this has been going on for more than just the past thirty years, but during the past thirty years we saw an acceleration. This has had a number of consequences:

1. It changed the role of women. Their comparative advantage went from housework to market work.

2. This in turn, as Wolfers and Stevenson have pointed out, changed the nature of marriage. Men and women look for complementarity in consumption rather than in production.

3. This in turn leads to more assortive mating, with achievement-oriented men looking for interesting mates rather than for good maids.

4. This in turn leads to greater inequality across households. It also fosters greater inequality among children. The children of two affluent parents are likely to have much better genetic and environmental endowments than the children of two (likely unmarried) low-income parents.

5. Inequality is exacerbated by globalization and technological change. If your comparative advantage is basic physical labor, you have to compete with machines as well is with workers from the Third World.

The net result is an economy that has improved considerably for people with high cognitive skills, but which has improved only somewhat for people with relatively low cognitive skills.

(via MR)

Lessons from NY-23

Sanity from the right:

For the better part of today, I have been reading reactions among the right to the news of Dede Scozzafava's withdrawl from the NY-23 race. Probably the most oft repeated commentary I have seen is that the developments of this race once again prove that, "moderate Republicans rarely succeed, and true conservatism wins every time".

Scozzafava dropping out is indeed a great thing for the conservative movement. It represents a victory for the grassroots activists on the ground over a disconnected and out of touch Republican establishment. But the analysis that says this proves "conservatism wins every time" is woefully misplaced, extremely lazy, and not at all grounded in reality.

This notion is an extension of rhetoric that has been used by Rush Limbaugh for years. It has gained popularity as the "true conservative" (whatever that means) base has grown frustrated with what it sees as "squishy moderates" losing in national elections. We heard it endlessly following John McCain's defeat in 2008, and had heard it previously when Bob Dole lost to Bill Clinton in 1996.

But the reality is very different. This increasingly popular notion is simply false, and lets take a look at why.

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Implicit marginal tax rates, again

Greg Mankiw writes in the Times and discusses:

A family of four with an income, say, of $54,000 would pay $9,900 for health care. That covers only about half the actual cost. Uncle Sam would pick up the rest.

Now suppose that the same family earns an additional $12,000 by, for example, having the primary earner work overtime or sending a secondary worker into the labor force. In that case, the federal subsidy shrinks, so the family’s cost of health care rises to $12,700.

In other words, $2,800 of the $12,000 of extra income, or 23 percent, would be effectively taxed away by the government’s new health care system.

That implicit marginal tax rate of 23 percent is a significant disincentive. And it comes on top of the explicit marginal tax rate the family already faces from income and payroll taxes. Altogether, many families would face marginal rates at or above the 50 percent level that animated the Reagan supply-side revolution.

[..] there is no simple fix. Higher marginal tax rates are an integral part of the Obama health plan.