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Incentives and Monetary Policy

by irj972ys Posted on February 4, 2013

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Paul Krugman takes on his critics:

One quite common statement among the Austrianish horde is something along the lines of â&#128;&#156;Itâ&#128;&#153;s ridiculous to imagine, as Krugman does, that you can create real wealth by printing more pieces of paper.â&#128;&#157;

Well, it may be ridiculous, but itâ&#128;&#153;s also true, under certain conditions â&#128;&#148; namely, when the economy is suffering from inadequate demand. And you donâ&#128;&#153;t have to use highly abstruse reasoning to see this, either; all you need to do is think in terms of some kind of model, not necessarily of the mathematical kind.

In a way, things are even weirder than Krugman suggests. The hard money folks certainly believe in the real-world effects of incentives, and one way of looking at monetary policy is simply as a way of changing incentives. It changes the value of saving vs. spending money. It changes the likely value of real-world investment vs. holding government bonds. It changes inflation expectations, which in turn changes behavior. We can argue about the effect of all thisâ&#128;&#148;and we do!â&#128;&#148;but the proposition that printing money changes incentives, which has an effect on economic behavior and therefore an effect on wealth creation, really shouldn’t be hard to believe intuitively.

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Incentives and Monetary Policy

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Texas Police Chief Talking Gun Control When Officer Is Shot

by irj972ys Posted on February 4, 2013

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When Fort Worth Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead visited Capitol Hill last week to push for tighter gun control measures, he had some unwanted help from a felon back in Texas, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports:

At 5 p.m. Tuesday, Halstead was meeting with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in Washington, D.C., to discuss gun control concerns of the Major Cities Chiefs Associationâ&#128;¦

At that time, his concerns were being played out at a Haltom City auto shop, where one of his officers and personal friendâ&#128;&#148;21-year veteran John Bellâ&#128;&#148;was shot in the head by a convicted felon being pursued by Haltom City police.

This should serve as a compelling illustration of why our country needs tighter gun control laws. But then, so should the murder of 20 elementary schoolers by a maniac with an assault rifleâ&#128;&#148;and we all know how far that has gone to sway people like Cornyn.

If anybody can change the minds of Republican senators, however, it’s probably somebody like Halstead, who represents a “cowboy town” in what’s arguably the most pro-gun state in America. “We almost see every week where we have officers being ambushed by people who have no right to possess those weapons,” Halstead told the Star-Telegram.

Halstead’s Major City Chiefs Association is part of a coalition of nine national police organizations that supports a ban on semiautomatic assault rifles and high-capacity magazines and advocates expanded background checks.

For more on what police officers think about gun control, read my story on how the NRA recruits cops with freebies paid for by gun companies.

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Texas Police Chief Talking Gun Control When Officer Is Shot

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Boy Scouts May Allow Gay Members…Sort Of

by irj972ys Posted on January 29, 2013

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The Boy Scouts of America announced today that it will consider allowing local troops to decide whether to admit gay members, an unprecedented move that comes after months of online protests, lost funders, and scouts renouncing their memberships. But even if the organization rules next week to drop their longstanding ban on gay scoutmasters and scouts, packs would still be allowed to discriminate if they choose to. As BSA director of public relations Deron Smith explained in a statement, “The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members, or parents.”

Rich Ferraro, a spokesman for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), says that the announcement is “a big accomplishment,” as it’s “the first time the Boy Scouts have said it is publicly considering changing the ban.” But lifting the ban without prohibiting troops from discriminating might not go far enough, he adds. “We’re not going to rest until every gay young adult out there is able to safely participate.”

Nonetheless, since the Boy Scouts reaffirmed its ban on gay members last summer, the organization has seen at least four big funders pull or postpone their funding. Thousands of scouts have spoken out against the policy, and more than 1.2 million Americans have signed petitions against it, according to Scouts for Equality.

The Boy Scouts was also losing local leaders because of the policy. Just last week, pack 442 in Cloverly, Maryland was pressured by its regional council to take down an anti-discrimination statement or risk losing its charter. Theresa Phillips, the pack’s committee chair, told Mother Jones that after the pack was forced to take the statement down, she asked for her name to be removed from the charter. Her husband, a den leader, had renounced his Eagle Scout award months before. “My family loved participating in scouting, and I look forward to the day when we might once again be able to take part,” Jennifer Tyrrell, an Ohio mom who was forced to stop leading her son’s troop because she is gay, told GLAAD. Kate Brown, a former den leader in the Washington, DC area, says that she took her two sons out of the program after she saw what happened to Tyrrell.

Advocates are optimistic that if the Boy Scouts’ national leadership lifts the ban, troops like Brown’s, Tyrell’s, and Phillips’ will allow gay members and their families to openly participate. But just how many gay-friendly troops might emerge if the ban is rolled back? According to CNN, 70 percent of Scout troops are affiliated with a church or religious group, and the Catholic and Mormon churches are some of the Scouts’ biggest backers. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Americans are against having openly gay adults serve as Boy Scout leaders. The conservative Family Research Council is encouraging scouts to “stand strong,” asserting that rolling back the antigay policy “would be devastating to an organization that has prided itself on the development of character in boys.”

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Boy Scouts May Allow Gay Members…Sort Of

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Not Everyone is Living Longer

by irj972ys Posted on January 25, 2013

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On the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, Donald Boudreaux and Mark Perry argue that the middle class is doing better than we liberals think. They haul out all of the usual arguments, some of which are valid (you need to count healthcare benefits as part of income) and some of which aren’t (the average is being pulled down by immigrants). But then there’s this:

No single measure of well-being is more informative or important than life expectancy. Happily, an American born today can expect to live approximately 79 years—a full five years longer than in 1980 and more than a decade longer than in 1950. These longer life spans aren’t just enjoyed by “privileged” Americans.

Harold Meyerson is agog: “Clearly, they missed the recent study in Health Affairs which found that the life expectancy of white working class men fell by three years from 1990 to 2008, and that of white working class women by five years.” This is actually the figure for high school dropouts, not the entire working class. At the other extreme of the educational spectrum, whites with more than a college degree, life expectancies have risen by five years for men and three years for women.

The chart on the right shows the difference, with men in light colors and women in darker colors. Longer life spans, it turns out, really do depend on just how privileged you are.

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Not Everyone is Living Longer

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Gristedes Tycoon John Catsimatidis Launching New York Mayoral Bid Next Week

by irj972ys Posted on January 25, 2013

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John Catsimatidis, the controversial billionaire Republican whose business empire includes real estate, an oil refining company, and the Gristedes supermarket chain, is running for mayor of New York City this year. For real. He told me Friday morning that he plans to officially announce his candidacy at a press conference on Tuesday.

Catsimatidis flirted with entering the 2009 mayoral race, going so far as to hire staffers and set up an exploratory committee. But he never jumped in, and Michael Bloomberg went on to narrowly defeat city comptroller Bill Thompson. (Bloomberg is term-limited and cannot run again.) Late last year, Catsimatidis started a campaign account for the 2013 race and talked publicly of exploring options, sparking speculation that he would again flash some leg before ultimately retreating.

But Catsimatidis now insists he’s all in. “I’m running,” he declares. His potential competitors in the GOP primary include Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Joe Lhota, Bronx Borough President (and ex-Democrat) Adolfo Carrion Jr., and newspaper publisher Tom Allon, who switched from Democratic to Republican for this election. Should he win the Republican contest, Catsimatidis could face Democrats City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, city comptroller John Liu, or New York public advocate Bill de Blasio in the November general election.

Catsimatidis, like Allon, used to identify as a Democrat. In the 1990s, he raised huge anounts of money for President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign. But he jumped to the Republican Party in 2007 because, he explained at the time, doing so gave him clearer path to the general election, with several prominent Democrats rumored to be running. Since then, Catsimatidis has stuck with the GOP and blasted Barack Obama as an inexperienced, ineffective, anti-business president. In December, he drew a comparison between singling out wealthy Americans for tax increases and the Holocaust. “We can’t punish any one group and chase them away,” he asserted on a local teelvision show. “We—I mean, Hitler punished the Jews. We can’t have punishing the 2-percent group right now.” (He subsequently backed away from the Hitler analogy, adding, “I think the rich should pay more in taxes, I agree with that 100 percent, but everybody should feel the pain a little bit.”)

Catsimatidis, not surprisingly, backed Mitt Romney in 2012, raising millions in campaign cash in the New York area for the Romney-Ryan ticket. (He still attends fundraisers for Democrats, he says.)

This Sunday, Catsimatidis is hosting a fundraiser for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at his apartment. Castsimatidis notes that this is his way of thanking McConnell for not impeding the $60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill that passed the Senate in December. Asked why he is fundraising for McConnell, who voted against the first Sandy relief bill, Catsimatidis says the Kentucky senator could’ve done much to kill the bill, but elected not to do so. “What should I do instead? Kick sand at McConnell for voting against the measure?” he asks. “No, I say thank you.”

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Gristedes Tycoon John Catsimatidis Launching New York Mayoral Bid Next Week

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