The left will deny that this would ever happen here and then as soon as they had incentive to do this here they would do it. I have no doubts.The report shocked the nation and prompted the government to pass legislation to force the Japanese to shape up. The laws to address what the Japanese have come to call "metabo" take effect this year. They've given the government and employers, long dominant forces in Japanese workers' lives, places at the dinner table in ordinary Japanese homes. They've also sparked a flurry of products to help Japanese keep trim or shed extra pounds.
One regulation, effective in April, requires all citizens over the age of 40 to have their waists measured every year. If a man's waist is more than 33.5 inches or a woman's more than 35.5 inches, they are considered at risk and referred for counseling and close monitoring. The government is also requiring companies to slim down their workers or face higher payments into the national insurance program.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Price Of Solicalized Healthcare
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The Cost of Something Is What You Give Up to Get It
The second of Mankiw's 10 principles, I think that Mankiw intended it to be reinforce the concept of opportunity costs. It is also important in another way. The "correct" price of any good or service is the price that was paid for it.
You here a lot of people and pundits complaining that the cost of gasoline is "too high" as they rip out their credit card to pay for filling up their Hummer. Or complaining that no one wants to buy their house at "fair market value."
This isn't to say that their aren't bubbles or depressed markets, but you never really know for certain that you are in a bubble or under-priced market until its over do you? After all everyone was convinced that housing prices would never go down and that e-commerce had ushered in a new economy that didn't follow the normal economic rules.
Then reality set in and every figured out that economic rules still apply and we were in a bubble after all.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
Conservation
McCain on the energy 'crisis:'
The Arizona senator called for more energy conservation, saying it was "no longer just a moral luxury or a personal virtue; conservation serves a critical national goal."
Anyone know of a better method to encourage conservation than high prices?
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
People Face Trade-offs
Several of Mankiw's principles have a certain 'well duh' air about them. This is one of those. The amazing thing is that when people are forced to make these trade-offs they can get kinda pissed off about it.
I'm not certain what triggers this anger, but people can accept that in order to take that trip to Hawaii they may need to driver that car for an extra year. Why is it that when you tell them that they need to put some extra money aside to make sure that a medical emergency doesn't push them into bankruptcy they get all put out?
We face trade-offs from the moment we wake up in the morning (possibly even slightly before that) until the moment we close our eyes to go to sleep. The most important lesson that people can learn is that government can't just make these trade-offs go away, they can merely move them around a little and hide the true costs of those trade-offs from us.
Monday, June 16, 2008
The 10 Principles of Economics
Mankiw boils economics down to ten principles in his Essentials of Economics textbook which he views as the central, unifying ideas that drive the economy and economic decisions.
He defines these principles as:
1: People face trade-offs.
2: The Cost of Something is What You Give Up to Get It
3: Rational People Think At the Margin
4: People Respond to Incentives
5: Trade Can Make Everyone Better Off
6: Markets Are Usually a Good Way to Organize Economic Activity
7: Governments can Sometimes Improve Market Outcomes
8: A Country's Standard of Living Depends on Its Ability to Product Goods and Services
9: Prices Rise When the Government Prints Too Much Money
10: Society Faces a Short-Term Trade-off between Inflation and Unemployment
Over the next several posts I'm going to provide my views on each of these principles.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
The Positive Study of Economics
I just started reading my Economics text book for the class I taking this quarter. So far it is pretty interesting, though nothing ground breaking yet.
One thing that I find very odd is that it spends a not-insignificant portion of a chapter discussing the difference between positive and normative statements.
Why would an economics text go into philosophy in this way? It almost appears defensive doesn't it? Or is this just a way to justify the inclusion of opinion into the science?
Anyone have a good theory as to why this is covered in an introductory economics course?
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
In Case You Were Wondering
Yes, this was me.
In the comments a number of people think that life in the past would be a piece of cake because we know more science and math. Here is the reply I left in the comments.
For everyone arguing that knowledge of math and science is the key to success - I think you are underestimating the role of class in these times.
You will probably not know enough conventional wisdom to pass a sniff test in any time before the early 1900's. Also consider how the mainstream viewed certain types of discoveries - eg Galileo.
I don't think that you would be able to burst onto the scene and proclaim some hugely advanced truth - they wouldn't be able to understand it. To even have a shot you would have to walk everyone through the incremental steps to get you to the 'ah ha' moment - and that is only if you can ever get anyone to listen to you.
I personally don't think that a modern American would be able to deal with the vast amounts of physical labor that would be involved:
1) There is no in door plumbing or running water.
2) Electricity isn't available - everything is done by hand: cleaning clothes, carrying water, etc.
3) You will probably not be able to afford meat, at least not much - is your metabolism capable of handling an all starch diet?
4) You will need to walk everywhere you go.
5) You will need to deal with all of the aches and pains we pop pills for today.
6) Pollution is going to be much worse - what effect will that have on your health?
Monday, June 02, 2008
Screw Confucius
I like living in interesting times and I don't believe that there has been a more interesting time than right now.
Some people think that the internet has arrived and is mainstream, but we haven't seen nothing yet. There will come a day where we view the dot com boom of the 90s as a quaintly as we view the Model T today.
I can only guess at what the future will look like, but my guess is that having a computer at home with your files on it, or your music on it, or your pictures on it, will be a thing of the past.
Now to a certain extent this exists today in various forms. You can share pictures with family and friends through Picasa and similar sites. You can also pay sites like Amazon or Microsoft to backup your other data outside of your home. You can even share video at places like YouTube.
Unfortunately, all of these services only provide the barest hint of what I'm talking about. For one, none of them actually do everything that you need them to do. For another, they either downgrade the quality of media that you are trying to share or store your data, but don't make it readily available to you.
Live Mesh provides a hint at what I think the future is actually going to look like. In its current form it is very simple, providing the barest of features. But even in that form it is quite powerful and in my opinion the biggest thing to come to the internet since Mosaic.
Via this glimpse into the future you can see how all of your data will be available to you anywhere that you can get an internet connection. You can synchronize the data offline, share it with friends & family. This limited beta also provides the capability to remote control any of your computers. They promise that the client will be available to Mac and mobile devices, I hope that they also extend it to Linux and non-MS mobile devices like iPhone and BlackBerry so that the concept of anytime, anywhere, from any device can truly be realized.
You can also imagine how this could be extended to create photo albums, create personalized radio stations or video sites - without the inconvenience of limited quality. You could create calendars and shared contacts. You could store ebooks and read them from any device, edit your documents from the web. On and on and on. Because it is intended to be a platform, the extent of what can be accomplished is really only limited by the imagination of software designers.
Essentially, I see the need to have 'my' computer to become passe - in reality you will need a computer - because all of your needs will be available in one place, on one site as opposed to the conglomerate of different services that we all use today with data strewn about scores of websites and computers.
These are truly interesting times and technology like Mesh can only make them more interesting.
I Hate Math
There are two very good (according to me) climate blogs at The Blackboard and Prometheus. The main reason that I love them so much is that they are "believers" in Global Warming, but they aren't alarmist about it.
They approach the science as, you know, a science and attempt to look at and understand the data. The other reason I probably like them is because the activist portion of the blogosphere seems to hate them because - well they look at and try to understand the data.
The downside of all of this is I don't get the math. Not in the least. I would like to understand, but all of that statistics just loses me.
The pale green solid and dashed curves represent the OLS (ordinary least squares) fit to monthly data from Jan 1975-April 2008, with dashed lines representing 2-sigma deviations for residuals. These bands should encompass approximately 95% of “weather”. The blue represents the 2C/century trend projected by the IPCC; 2sigma uncertainty for “weather” are taken from the OLS fit for 1975-2008 and applied to the IPCC projection. Small ‘+’ and ‘x’ indicate monthly measurements of GMST. The green circle are the 12 month Jan-December averages for each year. The red-outlined orange circle is the current annual average based on data for 2008.
Does that mean we are getting warmer, colder, staying the same or being invaded by aliens?
If anyone would be willing to translate all of the recent talk about falsifying IPCC reports or point me to a statistics for dummies site you would win my undying gratitude and admiration.
And what a treat that would be!
Sunday, June 01, 2008
When is Forever Not Actually Forever?
A large number of states are targeting unclaimed refunds under unclaimed property laws.
Until the early part of this decade, retailers, manufacturers and the fulfillment companies that processed the rebates for them simply kept the unclaimed money. Now, all but a handful of states are banding together .... They believe consumers are the rightful owners. The upshot is that millions of dollars potentially could wind up in the states' tightly stretched coffers.
At the center of the debate is Minnesota-based Young America Corp., one of the country's top three fulfillment companies.
In a closely watched lawsuit, Iowa Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald is accusing Young America and its clients of not reporting millions of dollars in uncashed checks, as required by unclaimed property laws.
Sounds noble doesn't it? Shouldn't all of those consumers be notified they have unspent dollars in their pockets? Fortunately, we have a maverick who is willing to fight for the little guy.
Commerce Commissioner Glenn Wilson, ... now is challenging the ruling and fighting big business on behalf of consumers.
Because this is really all about the consumer, right? After all:
"In our view, that's your money forever because the company has made an obligation to you," said Iowa assistant attorney general Layne Lindebak.
And what does forever actually mean? Here is a quick look at how unclaimed property works:
As in most states, unclaimed property laws in Minnesota typically cover such things as abandoned checking and savings accounts, uncashed payroll checks, unclaimed safe deposit box contents, and stocks and bonds. States have three years to locate owners or beneficiaries. After that, the money goes to the general fund, which pays for the bulk of state programs and services.
So forever actually just means three years, then the state can just take your money - you know the money that is yours forever - and use it for whatever purpose they deem appropriate.
If you were paying attention, I cut a couple of words from the first snippet of the article. Here is the sentence in full:
Now, all but a handful of states are banding together to lay claim to the cash.
Remember, no matter what words are coming out of a politician's mouth, it isn't about protecting consumers - it is about trying to get free money.
Politicians are nothing but bandits and thieves, they will speak to you in honey sweat tones, but that is only to lull you into a false sense of security long enough to pick your pocket.