After the sadness of California passing Proposition 8 banning gay marriage last year, there have been a couple of recent victories for civil rights campaigners in Vermont and Iowa. That motivated Nate Silver to work the numbers and ask when we might expect the rest of the US to reject a ban on gay marriage. The outcome is shown in the following diagram from The Map Scroll:
Rejection of ban on gay marriage
I like the preface to Bryan Caplan’s new book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. He says:
I doubt that “They’ll help me out when I’m old,” has ever been a good reason to have kids. Love tends to run downhill; as an old saying ruefully observes, “One parent can care for five children, but five children cannot care for one parent.”
…
The only promising way to meet the “What’s in it for me?,” challenge is to appeal to the intrinsic or “consumption” benefits of children. … if someone asks “What’s in parenthood for me?,” you’ve got to highlight kids’ cool features: They’re ridiculously cute; they’re playful; they’ll look like you; they’ll share half your genes; it’s all part of the circle of life.
It’s an obvious point, but one often missed by budding economists (at least the undergrad econ students I see), that economics deals with ALL benefits. Read more
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
— Winston Churchill.
So, really, it’s all about value judgments.
I’m lucky enough to be flicking through the latest Review of Economics and Statistics so I thought I might sum up a couple of interesting tidbits while I’m reading: Read more
Paul Krugman appears to be saying that a temporary increase in government spending can provide a stimulus EVEN WHEN full Ricardian equivalence holds. All the comments on his blog are saying how simple his explanation is, and how the Chicago school is full of morons – but I don’t really think his argument water tight.
Brad Taylor doesn’t think that the government should be installing acne-revealing lighting to ward off teenage hoodlums. In the UK they’re installing special lights that highlight acne in areas where teenagers congregate to get drunk, intimidate people and write graffiti all over the walls. Apparently it’s been very successful at dispersing the crowds!
So crowds gather, litter, intimidate people and vandalise the area without actually paying for the cost of their actions. That’s an externality if ever I saw one! Read more