The future population thanks to globalization :-)

Even the brainiacs don't care about economists?

If Jeopardy is one nerdy show, then what does it say when contestants blank on the category called "Economists"?  And more so when they don't even know the granddaddy of 'em all--Adam Smith!!!
(HT)

Remembrance of things past-4

Click here for a translation (from the movie Pyaasa, which Time listed as one of the 100 greatest movies ever!)

A statue for the world's first swine flu patient?

The BBC:

La Gloria in Veracruz is home to Edgar Hernandez - as a four year old boy, he became the world’s first swine flu patient.
He survived and became an overnight sensation, putting his family and his village firmly in the global spotlight.
The attention helped bring progress to La Gloria. Once dusty roads are now being paved, and a statute was erected in Edgar’s honour.

Lower fertility is changing the world for the better

A couple of months ago, I authored an op-ed on falling fertility rates in India.  The rapid decrease in fertility rates throughout the developing world is news to most of the "regular" crowd though.  (Not so to the readers of this blog, of course; you are some of the well-informed people!)

The Economist has a lengthy piece on it, yet again.  A must read because of the implications that demographic changes have on all kinds of public policies.  The conclusion:

This link between growth and fertility raises awkward questions. In the 1980s the link was downplayed in reaction to Malthusian alarms of the 1970s, when it was fashionable to argue that population growth had to be reined in because oil and natural resources were running short. So if population does matter after all, does that mean the Malthusians were right?

Not entirely. Neo-Malthusians think the world has too many people. But for most countries, the population questions that matter most are either: do we have enough people to support an ageing society? Or: how can we take advantage of having just the right number for economic growth? It is fair to say that these perceptions are not mutually exclusive. The world might indeed have the right numbers to boost growth and still have too many for the environment. The right response to that, though, would be to curb pollution and try to alter the pattern of growth to make it less resource-intensive, rather than to control population directly.

The reason is that widening replacement-level fertility means population growth is slowing down anyway. A further reduction of fertility would be possible if family planning were spread to the parts of the world which do not yet have it (notably Africa). But that would only reduce the growth in the world’s numbers from 9.2 billion in 2050 to, say, 8.5 billion. To go further would probably require draconian measures, such as sterilisation or one-child policies.

The bad news is that the girls who will give birth to the coming, larger generations have already been born. The good news is that they will want far fewer children than their mothers or grandmothers did.

Quote of the day, on teaching and teachers

In one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates warns a student that teachers can be dangerous. "You do not even know to whom you are committing your soul," Socrates says, "and whether the thing to which you commit yourself be good or evil."

Of course I agree with this quote, which is from Professor Steven Cahn who teaches a graduate course in philosophy to remind doctoral students about the profound seriousness of teaching.  It is with a "handle with care" that I approach teaching because I neither want to to brainwash students, nor to turn off any potential interest in the topics I teach.

This essay comes at a good time for me--during a light-hearted sidebar chat about giving students a break in the class, which I always do, a few students noted that they do not get any break in some of the other classes that also meet twice a week for an hour and fifty minutes each.  I explained to them that they have a right to a ten-minute break, and that such a break is factored into any class that meets for more than 50 minutes.  My point is this: every aspect of teaching--contents, behavior, and even breaks--are far too important for teachers to ignore and neglect.

Quote of the day

Great patriot, but deeply flawed democrat

Notice is a small "d" not the upper case "D" in democrat.  So, do not reflexively conclude that this is from Faux News.  But then Faux is certainly capable of such errors!  Anyway, that is the bottom line that Ramachandra Guha arrives at when remembering Indira Gandhi on the 25th anniversary of her assassination.

Remembrance of things past-3

Public option will cost more than private insurance?

Could Ezra Klein be correct?  My head spins (metaphorically speaking) from reading up about healthcare reform! Klein writes (citing the CBO's report):

the public plan will pay prices equivalent to those of private insurers and may save a bit of money on administrative efficiencies. But because the public option is, well, public, it won't want to do the unpopular things that insurers do to save money, like manage care or aggressively review treatments. It also, presumably, won't try to drive out the sick or the unhealthy. That means the public option will spend more, and could, over time, develop a reputation as a good home for bad health risks, which would mean its average premium will increase because its average member will cost more. The public option will be a good deal for these relatively sick people, but the presence of sick people will make it look like a bad deal to everyone else, which could in turn make it a bad deal for everyone else.

The nightmare scenario, then, is that private insurers cotton onto this and accelerate the process, implicitly or explicitly guiding bad risks to the public option

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (HT)

Droning about Pakistan

Sometimes I wish I were not a news junkie and, more than that, I wish that I had no interest at all in whatever was happening anywhere on the planet.  For one, despite my best attempts to stay focused on my own work and life, I end up blogging like this!  For another, it is damn depressing.

I check BBC for a news update after my coffee, breakfast and shower, and I read this report on Hillary Clinton's Pakistan trip:

it would be hard to imagine a more hostile and sceptical audience for a US secretary of state.

Mrs Clinton acknowledged there was what she called a trust deficit towards the United States in Pakistan because of past policies.

But she said she was working to change that by reaching out to ordinary Pakistanis.

And she flatly refused to discuss one of the major issues that the "ordinary Pakistanis" have with the US: the use of Predator drones.  Now, I could have just stopped with this; no, I had to read more stuff and get depressed and pissed off.  Over at Foreign Policy's AfPak channel, Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedermann provide this chart and write:

The number of civilian deaths caused by the drones is an important issue, because in the charged political atmosphere of today's Pakistan, where anti-Americanism is rampant, the drone program is a particular cause of anger among those who see it as an infringement on Pakistan's sovereignty. A Gallup poll in August found that only 9 percent of Pakistanis favored the strikes, and two-thirds opposed them.
And, according to Philip Alston, a U.N. human rights investigator, the use of drones to carry out targeted assassinations that end up killing civilians may well violate international law.
On Tuesday at a news conference in New York, Alston publicly warned that unless the Obama administration explains what the legal basis is for selecting the individuals targeted by drone attacks, "it will increasingly be perceived as carrying out indiscriminate killings in violation of international law."

Meanwhile, we are just about a week away from the second round of elections in Afghanistan.  Today is Friday--I am willing to bet that the militants are spending the weekend plotting their next violent attacks.  Crap, I should have just slept through today!!!

Colbert talks about Einstein and relativity

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God Wastes Miracle On Running Catch In Outfield

At the end of the Yankees-Angels game last week, it was a hilarious moment when I thought I heard ARod thanking god.  I mean, not only is the spectacle of sports pros thanking god hilarious, but coming from ARod--the guy who is not quite the poster child for following even the rules of baseball, let alone the Ten Commandments :-)

So, I dug into the old archives at the Onion and pulled up this beaut (which is where the title of this post is from):

HEAVEN—Rather than use His almighty power to breathe life back into the 130,000 people who perished in the Myanmar cyclone, rebuild an earthquake-destroyed China, or bring a lasting peace to the Middle East, the Lord God wasted a divine miracle Monday by granting Angels centerfielder Torii Hunter the ability to make a dramatic but otherwise routine running catch in the outfield. "I know many of My children believe My omnipotence would be better spent in ways other than affecting the contest between the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Detroit Tigers, and truth be told, there is a possibility Mr. Hunter would have made that catch on his own. But it was a very close game that the Angels really deserved to win," said God, adding that He answered the heartfelt prayers of nearly 50,000 Los Angeles fans by allowing Hunter to make the grab. "Everyone—even the first place Angels, who need to win just a few more close games to give them the confidence to make a World Series run—deserves God's help, not just those suffering from AIDS." God denied that His handiwork was responsible for Angels third baseman Chone Figgins waking up Wednesday morning with no pain in his right hamstring, saying He was as surprised as anyone.

Afghanistan: the Onion sums up the diplomat's resignation!

Matthew Hoh's resignation letter has received the ample attention it truly deserves.  Hoh notes there:

I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.

Hoh further points out that:

If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc..... the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe.

Hoh is absolutely on the mark.
So, why then do we continue to be in that cursed geography?  

The Onion explains:
According to sources at the Pentagon, American quagmire-building efforts continued apace in Afghanistan this week, as the geographically rugged, politically unstable region remained ungovernable, death tolls continued to rise, and the grim military campaign persisted as hopelessly as ever.

In fact, many government officials now believe that the United States and its allies could be as little as six months away from their ultimate goal: the total quagmirification of Afghanistan.
"We've spent a lot of time and money fostering the turmoil and despair necessary to make this a sustaining quagmire, and we're not going to stop now," President Barack Obama said in a national address Monday night. "It won't be easy, but with enough tactical errors on the ground, shortsighted political strategies, and continued ignorance of our vast cultural differences, we could have a horrific, full-fledged quagmire by 2012."
Added Obama, "Together, we can make Afghanistan into a nightmarish hell-scape Americans will regret for generations to come."

 If only it were funny :-(

Is Halloween overcommercialized?

In The Know: Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized?

iPhone to remotely drive your car

Yes, the app is just round the corner.  Watch this video demonstration of what a German research team did .... it is like the James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies--where Bond drives the BMW using a remote control.

On the marketing of colleges

Some will argue that, at long last, non-profit colleges have joined the real world—one that computer, truck-driving, and other proprietary schools have inhabited for a long time. But many colleges now use promotional tactics that are downright dishonest. A number of students—especially foreigners—are being deceived and getting hurt. Before we reach the point where Harvard is advertising on matchbook covers, we should probably consider whether selling education is significantly different from selling cars or soap.

Perhaps you are nodding your head in agreement as you read this.  Guess when this essay is from?  October 1979.  Yes, thirty years ago was this argument articulated in the Atlantic--by "Edward B. Fiske, formerly the Education Editor of The New York Times, is the author of The Fiske Guide to Colleges, an annual publication of Sourcebooks, Inc."

There is more--and they are so much the case even today.  For instance, Fiske's comment that:

One result of the new professionalism in college advertising is that promotional brochures are beginning to look like cigarette ads. A College of St. Elizabeth brochure, for example, shows a girl with long blond hair lying in a field of flowers and holding one gently in her hand while staring wistfully into the camera's eye. "Especially for women," reads the italic caption underneath, "because women are creative, intelligent and beautiful, resourceful and sweet and generally different from men."

Or how about this one?

Colleges plainly have to adjust their programs to meet changing student needs. But some serious problems are becoming apparent in the headlong rush to embrace the latest marketing strategies of the corporate world.

The most obvious problem is the abuse of simple truth, a virtue with which colleges have often presumed to identify themselves in the past. Many recruiters of foreign students routinely mislead about the programs, reputation, and even the geographical climate of the institutions they represent; but not all such incidents occur across the seas. One Indiana school put out a catalogue picturing a boy and a girl strolling hand in hand past a waterfall, though no waterfall of that sort can be found within miles of the campus.

Truth in advertising?  What was Fiske smoking to ask for that? :-)  And truth in academia?  Hello?  That is a contradiction!!! 
Finally, Fiske writes:

An obvious danger is sacrificing quality in the all-out effort to maintain enrollments and adjust programs to meet a perceived academic need—or at least a market. John Sawhill, the president of New York University, wonders whether colleges will ever flunk students in whose recruitment they have invested so much time, effort, and money. "You have to remember that the end result of education is a degree or a certificate, and that awarding this is a selective process," he commented. "You do have to evaluate students. If you engage in too big a selling effort to get them in, it makes it difficult to evaluate them when you're ready to give the degree."

There is also the danger that the new marketing fad could backfire and lead to greater governmental regulation. "If colleges begin to act like businesses, they will be treated as businesses," observed Arthur Levine, who recently shepherded an eighty-six-page report for the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education which criticized, among other things, "inflated and misleading advertising" among colleges and universities today. "If they act as hucksters, they will be treated as hucksters.... Neither businesses, nor hucksters, can successfully wear the mantle of academic freedom or autonomy from social control."

The consumer movement in higher education is welcome—in many ways. It has led to substantial improvements in the accuracy and usefulness of information in college catalogues. But it has the potential of pushing the "buyer-seller" analogy too far.

The real chink in the public option armor

The public option in the healthcare reform is a wonderful opportunity to argue--from a political philosophy perspective--the appropriate role for market and state.  One argument is about the efficient market hypothesis.  But, that to me is far less exciting than what Heather Mac Donald has articulated:

Well, then, why not have private providers compete with government across the entire range of government services?  Maybe the supporters of actual market-based competition in health care could offer the following deal:  We’ll give you your health care public option, now open garbage collection, road-building, transit operations, mail delivery, parks maintenance, education, sewage treatment, prison management, inter alia, to private sector competition, and let the most efficient player win.

So, in one sense, Democrats have provided the opening that Republicans have always been pushing for--think school vouchers, for instance.  How is philosophically a debate on school vouchers any different from this whole public option issue in healthcare? 
Strictly from such a perspective, this debate could be the most influential since Bill Clinton's statement on the end of the era of big government.  How odd then that Democratic presidents are the ones to preside over such discussions?  And how much more bizarre that Republicans are dozing through this opportunity?

FWIW, I am neither a D nor a R :-)

Quote of the day

“If the long-term issue is entitlement reform, ... the fact that the political system cannot say no to $250 checks to elderly people is a bad sign.”
From David Leonhardt's piece in the NY Times.  The quote itself is from Joel Slemrod, a University of Michigan economist.

Academic bait-and-switch

An excerpt from the last of a three-part essay:

On the first day of a session devoted to Joyce's Ulysses, Dr. Quentin began by saying, "Describe your reading experience. Please feel free to tell me what it was really like."
"I felt in awe," said Marcus, who sat at Dr. Quentin's immediate left. "Joyce is such a genius. His mastery of language and craft is unsurpassed."
"The best novel I've ever read," said Lucy. Her comment struck me as odd, because in the cafeteria earlier that day she'd called reading Ulysses her worst experience ever.
And so it went.
I didn't doubt Joyce's genius, but the comments of my colleagues annoyed me. Dr. Quentin had asked us to discuss our reading experience, not dance like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. I assumed he wanted a serious discussion of the challenges that the novel poses for the first-time reader, so I said, "Joyce is clearly brilliant, but if we are discussing the reading experience itself, I didn't enjoy Ulysses at all."
Dr. Quentin's mouth fell open. So did the mouths of all 11 of my fellow graduate students. No one made a sound until Marcus said, "Henry, I don't know quite know how to interpret your statement."
Marcus was tossing me a life preserver, but I swam farther out to sea. Since Dr. Benjamin had used King Kong to explain The Faerie Queene, I assumed I could do something similar. "If I had to choose between rereading Ulysses or Tarzan of the Apes, I'd go for Tarzan."
Excruciatingly calmly, Dr. Quentin said, "You and I will talk after class."

At least I did not ever have to pretend that I read Ulysses, leave alone pretending that I enjoyed it. I think I gave it three good attempts, but never progressed beyond the first couple of pages.

Net neutrality?

Joe "You lie" Wilson opposes it.  That can mean only one thing: we need net neutrality ASAP :-)

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Influenza: "they done the old woman in"!

All the talk about H1N1, bordering on paranoia, reminded me of the classic scene from My Fair Lady; thanks to YouTube, here it is:

Remembrance of things past-2

Click here for a translation--not the best of translations

no habla espanol? does not matter. watch this

remembrance of things past

Click here for a translation

Iceland pays for its banking mistakes!

Remember all that analysis of how Iceland played fast and loose with the mortgages that were all packaged up, and how when the bubble burst their banks owed way more than what their GNP itself was?  Iceland was one huge ponzi scheme by itself?
Irony then in the latest development.  Of all businesses, McDonald's decides that it needs to shut down its three burger joints there!:

the restaurants imported the goods from Germany, but that costs had almost doubled, with the falling krona making imports prohibitively expensive.
Mr Ogmundsson said the restaurants had "never been this busy before... but at the same time profits have never been lower".
"It just makes no sense. For a kilo of onion, imported from Germany, I'm paying the equivalent of a bottle of good whisky,"

No, not the McD's!!!

The dirt on climate change: in two photos

James Fallows:

Two samples from Lu Guang's work: a power plant in Inner Mongolia, then a migrant laborer in the coal regions of Shanxi province.

China's hidden agenda?

Sometimes I wonder whether China's interest in the US dollar, and keeping its yuan tied to the dollar, is to essentially bankrupt the rest of the world and the US so that it can ultimately prevail as the global power.  You think I am nuts?  Not so fast.  Consider the following:

The Economist notes:

The financial crisis has sharpened fears of what Americans often see as another potential threat. China has become the world’s biggest lender to America through its purchase of American Treasury securities, which in theory would allow it to wreck the American economy. These fears ignore the value-destroying (and, for China’s leaders, politically hugely embarrassing) effect that a sell-off of American debt would have on China’s dollar reserves. This special report will explain why China will continue to lend to America

Paul Krugman writes:

If supply and demand had been allowed to prevail, the value of China’s currency would have risen sharply. But Chinese authorities didn’t let it rise. They kept it down by selling vast quantities of the currency, acquiring in return an enormous hoard of foreign assets, mostly in dollars, currently worth about $2.1 trillion.

Many economists, myself included, believe that China’s asset-buying spree helped inflate the housing bubble, setting the stage for the global financial crisis. But China’s insistence on keeping the yuan/dollar rate fixed, even when the dollar declines, may be doing even more harm now.

To which Dan Drezner adds:

the United States is not the country that's hurt the most by this tactic.  It's the rest of the world -- articularly Europe and the Pacific Rim -- that are getting royally screwed by China's policy.  These countries are seeing their currencies appreciating against both the dollar and the renminbi, which means their products are less competitive in the U.S. market compared to domestic production and Chinese exports.

So, now you tell me why my interpretation is screwed!