McArghle

I have conflicting views on Megan McArdle. On the one hand, she's frequently wrong (two recent examples, but it goes on and on). She's also generally in the "government must be wrong" camp, at a time when deregulation has gone far too long, with plainly disastrous results.

On the other hand, unlike the majority of those who argue for the same things as McArdle, she at least acknowledges that arguments should rest on facts. Unfortunately for Megan, all this buys her is enough respect to receive qualified criticism. A lot of articulate individuals who understand that it would be futile to fact-check people a Beck or a Breitbart take pleasure in taking apart McArdle's arguments, since she appears as a person who might possibly acknowledge a factual mistake.

It's not the warmest of welcome to the reality-based community, but then I guess McArdle isn't the most gracious of guests, either.

Paris, June 29 & 30

At the Eiffel Tower:

Montmartre:

Arc de Triomphe:

Franklin D. Roosevelt Metro Station:

And Where is the Left in All of This?

If you keep up with global economics and tend to read people who tend to be right, you should by now have noticed that Europe and America are intent on starving themselves into a repetition of the 1930s, supposedly to pacify the financial markets (yes, those financial markets).

I suspect what's really going on here is a perversion of a political trend that was originally a positive development: the voters preference for competence over ideology. For years now, the trend has been to elect politicians who aren't necessarily very exciting, but do seem to be able to achieve some real social improvements. Obama, Merkel, Sarkozy, Cameron (and Reinfeldt, closer to home) all ran on competence first and with the possible exception of Sarko they were also notably centrist (Obama's bipartisanship, Merkel's grand coalition wrangling, Cameron's and Reinfeldt's tack to the middle).

And competence is good, right. But right now, it seems that we've all arrived to the conclusion that the competent, responsible thing to do is to get national budgets back in balance. After all, we all saw what happened to Greece, and debt is pretty universally accepted to be a Bad Thing. Some voices protest that we still need spending to get out of the recession, but that sounds populist and a bit extreme. The competent thing to do here is surely to pay for all those past excesses with some good old belt-tightening.

Except it's not. I mean, really, really not. All serious, centrist economists with proven records are absolutely opposed to any form of austerity right now. The data shows that it won't work: the effect of drawing down government spending now will put budget balances far deeper into the red in the future by locking us into years or decades of little to no growth. The bond markets currently have no appetite for punishing budget deficits, nor has anyone found a reason to believe that austerity packages would signal anything but weakness to the financial market.

If there's anything to be done for the budget deficits, it's -- amazingly -- France who has it right in pushing for an increase in the retirement age and raising taxes on the rich, which will do long-term budget outlooks a world of good without shutting down growth in the short term. Amazing because France's government is by the looks of it the most clear-cut right-leaning one of the bunch.

Which brings us to the title and my amazement that the centre-left does not seem to have the slightest bit of appetite to take this on. Here we have a long line of centre-right governments who are about to let misguided ideology stand in the way of sound technocratic practice -- keep spending money to get employment up -- that would be good for both the economy and for the vast majority of lower- and middle-class workers. And the reason they give is that they're scared of the financial markets! And the centre-left completely bloody fails to call them on it!

Opportunities

Some have already made the charge that the Obama administration is letting a chrisis go to waste by not coming down hard on off-shore drilling in the wake of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but if there's one good use for accrued outrage over this, it should be to strengthen a forthcoming bill on global warming.

The global thirst for fossil fuels is, after all, the reason why BP can by many counts afford to pay for cleanup and compensation without going under as a company. The incentives for oil companies are all wrong, and that can't be sustainably remedied by national legislation to control drilling. The price of oil simply has to come down to the point where it's no longer profitable to go after it in places where the environment makes it expensive to drill (if not for fear of cleanup costs then simply because it costs much more to drill deep offshore, or tear up huge areas of oil shale, etc).

Wish List

Taking this off Amazon since their shipping seems shoddy.

• Animal Spirits by George A. Akerlof, Robert J. Shiller
• Born Again by Notorious B.I.G.
• Breeding Bio Insecurity by LC Klotz
• Economics by Paul A Samuelson, William D Nordhaus
• Economics by Paul R. Krugman, Robin Wells
• Living Weapons by Gregory D. Koblentz
• Macroeconomics by Paul Krugman, Robin Wells
• Microeconomics by Paul Krugman, Robin Wells
• Ready to Die by Notorious B.I.G.
• Russia and the Arabs by Yevge Primakov
• The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman
• The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine by Edward N. Luttwak
• This Time is Different by Carmen M. Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff
• The Korean War by Bruce Cumings

Google-translated excerpt from a Swedish study on child abuse in foster homes

This is from the concluding chapter, the full documents in Swedish can be found at Regeringen's web site

11 Discussion and suggestions

Survey interviews has uncovered abuse and neglect with a seriousness and an extent previously not been done in Sweden. Many of those who suffered abuse and neglect have been trying to get by, despite the severe trauma from childhood.

It is a difficult and important task to receive and convey these stories of neglect in the child welfare system. The work is like no other I have done.

This chapter comments on first results of the study. Then found that a heavy responsibility rests on the community, in the sense of state and municipality.

Responsibility means, first, to ensure that the interviewees talk about are not repeated in the present and secondly to ensure that victims are reimbursed.

The chapter ends with discussion and proposals on how the child welfare system in the future are to improve the safety of children in care.

1.11 Survey results

The study on the neglect of the child welfare system will come when its ready to be interviewed about 1 000 people. This interim report presents findings from 404 interviews.

There are at least 250 000 people who have been placed by the child welfare system during the eight decades by the investigation. Those who have been invited to interview are people who believe that they are victims of abuse and / or neglect, ie. neglect, during his placement in the child welfare system. The interviewees are not representative of all social care for children.

Their stories show what can happen when the child welfare foster parents and staff in institutions of neglect and assault children, when other agencies within the child welfare system did not perform their task in a way it is, or how bad things can happen when it becomes wrong. In this sense, the investigation can be regarded as an "Accident".

11.1.1 Neglect and abuse

Chapter 7 gives the neglect of the interviewees described. I note that 225 women and 179 men told of a working day in the child welfare system, which was marked by poverty, deprivation and cruelty. For the first time in our country, these experiences are now consolidated.

The 404 persons have been placed by a total of 130 municipalities. There are several communities who were interested to stay local because many interviewees were located far from home and do so in several foster homes and institutions during their childhood. The study therefore concern a very large part of the country's municipalities.

All tell of neglect and abuse

Results of the chapter found that of the 404 interviewees have 343 people (85 percent) told of abuse and neglect in foster care. 249 people (62 percent) have told of abuse and neglect in institutions. Many people have told of neglect in both foster homes and institutions.

Redeployment and the lack of information to children in respect thereof, has been so widespread that they can be characterized as a specific form of neglect. Several break-up while in the child welfare system has the most experienced. Barely 44 percent of men and about 39 percent of women reported having had 5 or more placements. Just over 8 percent of the respondents had had 10 or more placements. The average value (calculated as the median) are four placements. All the broad categories of neglect than physical violence with a weapon (49 percent) and threats and threatening situations (41 percent) were reported by more than half of the interviewees. 353 people (87 percent) have reported misconduct. In the case of abuse is the most comprehensive privacy category (346 persons, 86 per cent).

Sexual abuse is the only area showing significant differences between the sexes. 61 percent of women compared with 42 percent of men have told us they have been sexually abused.

In summary, the interviewees said that they have experienced many relocations, the physical violence of various blunt, other physical violence, harmful compulsion, rules and punishments, threats and threatening situations, privacy violations, exploited in work and victims of sexual abuse and neglect. In Chapter 7, the detailed investigation reported results from the interviews.

Big Deal

WaPo:

"Starting immediately, insurers would be prohibited from denying children coverage due to pre-existing conditions. A complete ban on the practice would take effect in 2014, when the legislation seeks to create a network of state-based insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, where people who lack access to affordable coverage through an insurer could apply for federal subsidies to purchase policies.

"Insurers competing in the exchanges would be required to justify rate increases, and those who jacked up prices unduly could be barred from the exchange. Lifetime limits on coverage would be banned and annual limits would be "tightly restricted," aides said, until 2014, when they, too, would be banned entirely.

"Reid's package also would give patients the right of appeal to an independent state board if an insurer denies a medical claim. And all insurance companies would be required to spend at least 80 cents of every dollar they collect in premiums on delivering care to their customers."

Big, big deal. Despite the serious funding problems in the health care bill, these rules in effect establish health care as a fundamental human right in America. The rest, pardon the expression, is just arguing about the price.

Call of Distraction

I finally got an opportunity to play Modern Warfare 2 this weekend, but I'm finding it kind of a mixed bag. For all the attention to detail and atmosphere Infinity Ward has put into the game, they can't seem to come up with environments that really stand on their own merits. An arctic Russian air base or a Brazilian favela are clearly both incredibly interesting places to explore, but MW2 has no time for that, instead turning them into comically overcrowded shooting galleries for the player to run and gun through.

To some extent I suppose this is a matter of taste or age, although I have nothing against twitch gaming. Some of the finest games I can think of are twitch games and I grew up on Doom and Quake. I guess I just feel that Half-Life marked the graduation day for the first-person shooter genre and any game that doesn't take its worlds as seriously tends to feel a bit childish.

The Atlantic vs Google

This article strikes a real blow for the reputation of business executives, I have to say. In his examination of how to cut costs in American health care, the author manages to say this much about chronic disease: "(Chronic conditions with expected annual costs above some lower threshold would also be covered.)". An afterthought, parantheses and all.

The problem, of course, is this[PDF]:

Medal of Honour

Finally had time to read up on the motivation for the Riksbank Prize. What fascinates me about Ostrom's type of research is the hard evidence it's produced for individuals valuing justice over profit.