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Lies, then a cowardly cover-up: thank God for our fearless press corps.
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Hmm: Survey statistics suggest Inner London kids take less drugs but are also more miserable than their peers Oop North. Far be it from me to suggest a causal relationship there.
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"All the words in the world. Pronounced".
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Outrage over the crazy notion that if your home is more valuable you should pay more council tax.
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This is brilliant.
links for 2009-01-08
09-Jan-09
Distorting the distortionists
08-Jan-09
It’s great to see the new Statistics Authority coming out with a code of practice for official statistics and embarrassing the government into abiding by it. I can’t help but feel, however, that this is a classic case of well-intentioned regulation causing a distortion in the market, as neither the code nor the Authority’s powers apply to political parties (most relevantly, the non-government parties) or the media, who remain free to spin, dissemble and lie at their pleasure.
I’m not sure it’s actually possible to keep up with the torrent of bullshit that politicians and the papers come out with, but we’ve got more and more specialist bloggers out there who are starting to pick these things up. Today’s example comes from Ben Goldacre and Tim Lambert, who both catch out the Telegraph making up nonsense about climate change and then refusing to own up to it.
links for 2009-01-06
07-Jan-09
links for 2008-12-08
09-Dec-08
links for 2008-12-07
08-Dec-08
Sunday Times lying to its readers again
02-Dec-08
Further to this, I emailed David Phillips, the IFS expert quoted in the original story, and asked him whether the conclusion that households are ‘worse off’ than in 1997 only held if you ignored the rather salient fact that their incomes had increased significantly over the same period. He replied
You are correct - and this was explained in detail and repeatedly to the journalist who ran the story originally …
I don’t know what’s more worrying - that Elizabeth Colman thinks it’s okay to lie to Sunday Times readers, or that she thinks Sunday Times readers are too stupid to object.
Non-jobs
01-Dec-08
An analysis of Government figures has shown 10 areas where more than 40 per cent of the workforce is employed in the public sector.
Incredible, it’s as if we need people to run public services or something. But here’s the good bit:
Richard Dodds, a farmer and Conservative councillor on Castle Morpeth borough and Northumberland councils, said: “I produce wheat and cattle but there are a lot of people who produce absolutely nothing. We’ve had an awful lot of white elephants and non-jobs created in the North-East.”
Yes, that’s a British farmer (and a rural Tory councillor, for that matter) complaining about people getting tax-payers’ money for doing nothing.
I’m pretty sure that’s not true
01-Dec-08
Elizabeth Colman in the Times:
The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has scrutinised all tax reforms in Labour’s budgets — and concluded its changes have left the average family where both parents work £1,283 a year immediately worse off than in 1997.
That’s only looking at the effects of taxes and benefits, isn’t it? Factor in wage increases under Labour and households are considerably better off than they were in 1997.
Sorry, got distracted there for a while. Anyway … on this night of nights it is worth remembering what a truly terrible leader George W. Bush has been for the US. Not a controversial claim you might say, but Matthew Yglesias (who has been superb for the last few months) does well to remind us here just how awful Bush has been. Although he has at least served to give us a ready answer to anyone who tries to claim that politicians are all the same …
Human evolution - some counter-examples
01-Sep-08
David Friedman writes:
The denial of male/female differences is the most striking example of left wing hostility to the implications of Darwinian evolution, but not the only one. The reasons to expect differences among racial groups as conventionally defined are weaker, since males of all races play the same role in reproduction, as do females of all races. But we know that members of such groups differ in the distribution of observable physical characteristics–that, after all, is the main way we recognize them. That is pretty strong evidence that their ancestors adapted to at least somewhat different environments. There is no a priori reason to suppose that the optimal physical characteristics were different in those different environments but the optimal mental characteristics were the same.
Sure there is. Can anyone identify any environment inhabited by pre-modern humans that favoured the evolution of stupidity? Ingenuity, adaptability, the ability to perceive, understand and communicate - these are useful anywhere. Dark skin or white skin - these are not.
I’d also suggest that Friedman thinks about whether the number of genes involved in the determination of skin colour is likely to be as many as those involved in the determination of any heritable component of intelligence. This matters given humans evolved from a common ancestor who lived only some 5,000 - 10,000 years generations ago.
Lastly, (and I can’t believe this still has to be explained to people) Friedman talks about ‘racial groups’ as if that actually means something clear-cut, but it doesn’t. There is more genetic diversity within Africa than anywhere else, yet we’re still expected to treat Africans as part of the same ‘race’ because they share dark skin.
None of this bothers Friedman, who dresses up his straw-man attacks on the supposed unthinking ‘faiths’ (of course) of The Left with scientific terminology designed to wow his readers, who judging from the comments need little encouragement to assert their superiority over both darkies and evil pinko commies everywhere. Naturally, Arnold Kling approves.
Edited to correct amusing years / generations typo
Unpleasant realities
16-Aug-08
Ryan Avent is, as usual, spot on:
were climate change to involve a cost of 3% of GDP spread evenly (or even progressively!) across the world’s population, then perhaps we could live with that. Unfortunately, it will not be spread evenly. There is an excellent chance that those most responsible for climate change will suffer the least, in fact, while the brunt of the pain is felt by the poor. If we have a moral obligation not to invade Bangladesh, kill thousands of its citizens, and create millions of permanent refugees, then it’s safe to say we have a moral obligation to take reasonable and affordable steps to prevent a climate catastrophe in Bangladesh for which we bear heavy responsibility.
I honestly don’t understand why so many people who profess to give a damn about people in poor countries seem not to when it comes to global warming. Maybe it’s because they realise that doing something about global warming will involve unpleasant sacrifices or policy responses they’re uncomfortable with. Do they think the rest of us are happy about global warming or something? I would dearly love to be able to fly around the world to my heart’s content, for example, but I know the real cost is too high, so I feel I have to sacrifice some flying. That pisses me off, to be honest, but then there are these things called trade-offs in life.
links for 2008-07-28
28-Jul-08
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I won’t hold my breath for all the NHS-knockers to cover this one.
‘Ownership’ of what you don’t own
27-Jul-08
From the BBC:
So there you are, the boxes are unpacked and you’re settling in nicely to your new house.
The sunlight dapples through the majestic plane trees, a bird cheeps from its perch on a Victorian lamppost, a bicycle jiggles over the picturesque cobbles.
It all seems worth the stress and the mortgage. But what’s this coming into view? A cavalcade of fluorescent-jacketed workmen is marching up the street.
A chainsaw is applied to a trunk, spades flick cobbles out of the ground, and there’s a mournful screech as your lamp-posts are uprooted. The council has come to nick your street furniture.
Of course, as far as the law is concerned, this isn’t “nicking” at all. Cobbles and lamp-posts do not belong to the street. They’re items the council can take away whenever it wants.
And yet these removals are enough to provoke rage among otherwise calm and unflustered folk.
When Bristol council removed the antique lamp-posts from David Cemlyn’s street in the St Andrews area of the city, it did not realise the volcano of anger they were about to unleash. By the time it came to uproot those in the next street, he was resorting to direct action, chaining himself to a threatened post and going on hunger strike.
Put yourself in David Cemlyn’s shoes. Of course you don’t actually own the streetlights. But if you’re like many people, you do feel some sense of ownership over them. This is understandable - when you bought your house you did not make your decision only on the basis of the building and the land it stands on - you also took into the account a much larger ‘bundle’ of characteristics, including the surrounding area and the amenities, geographical features and built environment therein. When the value of that bundle (of your investment, in other words) are threatened it is natural to feel aggrieved, and if the only means to affect the outcome is to protest than you might choose to do so.
This boils down to an idea of property rights which is somewhat murky and inchoate but no less significant for all that. Neighbourhood ‘quality of life’ issues are the bread and butter of local government precisely because of the difficulty of resolving many of the conflicts that arise. These issues run the gamut from what kind of lights you have on your street to what kind of people get to live in your neighbourhood, or in other words where you get to live. Of all forms of state intervention the regulation of human activity and interaction through the regulation of land use is probably the most supported, being as far as I can see more or less universally popular among those with the voice or influence to affect it. Even separatist communities or others (such as private homeowner associations) that ostensibly reject aspects of state authority are typically fiercely protective of the right to regulate what may be done with land within the designated community boundary, often with the implicit or explicit aim of keeping out certain kinds of people. To take another example, the Conservative Party is currently in the firm grip of the belief that there is no greater threat to the comforts and joys of life in South East England than the construction of housing on back gardens and are seeking to ban the practice everywhere they can.
This is just ‘big government’ on a small scale, and it puts a big question mark over the efficiency and distributional consequences of decentralised / fragmented government, as it is typically smaller jurisdictions that are the most ‘protectionist’ because their populations are the most homogenous. And if you believe that local governments shouldn’t be allowed exclude undesirables through land use regulation, then you have to answer the question - who’s going to stop them?
links for 2008-07-27
27-Jul-08
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The idea that corporations have a fiduciary duty to maximize corporate profits isn’t as straightforward as you might think.
The dearly departed
23-Jul-08
Looks like the Globalization Institute, which once upon a time styled itself “Europe’s Favourite Think-Tank blog”, is no more. I guess employing Paul Staines and Tim Worstall will do that for you. Fortunately Alex Singleton, ex of the GI, has not deprived us of his wisdom forever and blogs for the Telegraph here. Good luck to him.
Blogs in everything
09-Jul-08
Arctic Economics, courtesy of long-time economics blogger Ben Muse. It’s pretty good, too - I particularly like the post about a company called Skyhook International promoting dirigibles as the Arctic transportation mode of the future.
Climate change and global poverty
07-Jul-08
Dell, Jones and Olken say we can already see that higher temperatures reduce growth by more in poorer countries:
This paper uses annual variation in temperature and precipitation over the past 50 years to examine the impact of climatic changes on economic activity throughout the world. We find three primary results. First, higher temperatures substantially reduce economic growth in poor countries but have little effect in rich countries. Second, higher temperatures appear to reduce growth rates in poor countries, rather than just the level of output. Third, higher temperatures have wide-ranging effects in poor nations, reducing agricultural output, industrial output, and aggregate investment, and increasing political instability. Analysis of decade or longer climate shifts also shows substantial negative effects on growth in poor countries. Should future impacts of climate change mirror these historical effects, the negative impact on poor countries may be substantial.
And it’s going to get worse. William Cline:
Globally, the overall impact of baseline global warming by the 2080s is a reduction in agricultural productivity (output per hectare) of 16 percent without carbon fertilization, and a reduction of 3 percent should carbon fertilization benefits actually materialize—when results are weighted by output (see Table 1, bottom panel). The losses are greater when weighted by population or country.
The sharp concentration of losses is in the developing countries. Whereas the industrial countries experience outcomes ranging from 6 percent losses without carbon fertilization to 8 percent gains with it, developing country regions suffer losses of about 25 percent without carbon fertilization and 10–15 percent if carbon fertilization is included. For developing countries, the median loss would be 15–26 percent, and the output-weighted average loss, 9–21 percent. Losses could reach devastating levels in some of the poorest countries (greater than 50 percent in Senegal and Sudan)…
Moreover, it is likely that actual global losses will be worse than those portrayed here. Neither crop nor Ricardian models can account for the influence of what are likely to be increases in extreme weather, such as droughts and floods, and insect pests. Nor do the estimates take account of agricultural losses associated with rising sea levels, a major consideration in countries such as Bangladesh and Egypt.
A couple of points: First, Anyone who thinks the recent global food prices run-up was bad is invited to consider the impact of such huge losses to agricultural productivity combined with rising global demand. Second, it can’t be repeated often enough that the distributional consequences of climate change could hardly be worse, with very poor areas hit much more hard than the rich, some of which may actually gain from the effects of increased carbon fertilisation outweighing those of increased evapotranspiration. Third, maybe it’s time to buy property in Scandinavia.
links for 2008-05-28
28-May-08
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It’s all rather sickening. As Eli Rabett said, “Roger Bate’s existence is a strong argument against the existence of a just God”.
links for 2008-05-26
26-May-08
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“Kids don’t get themselves into college, for the most part, and thank god. If that were the case, no one would go. The environment around kids, and especially the parents, gets kids into college.”
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Contra Megan McArdle, investment in pre-school programmes like Head Start make very good sense in value for money terms.
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The best sentence I read today: “Facebook represents the commercialization of conversation, not the amateurization of collaborative content production”.
links for 2008-05-23
23-May-08
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Because some people need to be told: “Congestion pricing is an excellent solution to many problems, but it is best pursued alongside a policy of transit and densification, and not as an alternative to those strategies.”
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There’s nothing ‘meritocratic’ about the results of a failing education system.
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Janet Currie finds strong evidence of links between parental socioeconomic status and child health, and between child health and labour market outcomes, suggesting health plays a role in the intergenerational transmission of economic status
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Good question. Beshears et al identify five factors that drive a wedge between revealed and normative (’actual’) preferences.