Amatuer hour at Slate

Labor economics is a big area with a lot of literature. It's probably the area of academics that can most completely address the exceedingly complex issue of immigration and it's effect on societies.

Tim Wu doesn't know labor economics. His article on Slate is what happens when amateurs write about difficult economic issues. Things get simplified, things get ignored, and so TIm gets things wrong. If I were writing on Tim's areas of expertise, copyright and telecom law, I would try to avoid sweeping policy recommendations and conclusions. Tim on the other hand seems unaware of his ignorance. It's the things that you don't know that you don't know you don't know that get you into real trouble.

What does Tim seem unaware of? Mostly negative externalities and the divide between the interests of elites and the interests of the country. These things are so obvious it is painfully annoying to review them, but patient people have done just that:

Negative externalities
Elites vs. the rest

Practicing law without a license is a crime. Writing about economics without a clue isn't, and shouldn't be, but it's tacky, and at the margin damages the national discourse.

So please, a little humility when you write outside your field. Read a study, or maybe even two.

Ikea Review - FREDRIK Computer work station

Setup was a bit of a hassle. one part of the click system on one of the pieces was just a bit to narrow to fit as designed. Half an hour of repetitive attempts to force it worked like a charm.

The cable shelf is a bit mystifying. From the instructions, it seems you are supposed to place a power strip in the shelf before assembly, (after assembly, the bottom of the shelf is to narrow for either three or two prong plugs to fit through) then plug all your power cables into a power strip about two feet above the floor on the shelf rather then a power strip on the floor. This wouldn't work for me. I have a one of the wide power strips that seems more common these days.

I like the shelf, though, as it is just wide enough to fit my cable modem and router inside, and relatively safe from babies, puppies, and ants (ants once set up a colony inside of my router, with larvae and everything).

Strained Simile

Ezra Klein wrote that:

It's one of the depressing oddities of the presidential campaign that the candidate with the most "credentials" on terror is the candidate whose city was unprepared to stop, or effectively respond, to the worst terrorist attack in American history. It would be as if the CEO of a company that engaged in Enron-like practices emerged a champion of corporate rectitude because after his firm was found out, he gave a really good speech, and seemed somewhat upset.

It would be like that if New York had attacked itself. I wonder how Ezra thinks New York might have been prepared to stop the attacks. An international NYC intelligence apparatus? NYC fighter jets?

Daily Deranged

From cpa1's diary:

With regards to unemployment being an economic indicator, you have to realize from where it is coming. I don’t think for a second that our unemployment rate is 4.5%. I’d believe those figures as much as I believed there were weapons of mass destruction, we will be greeted in the streets of Baghdad with flowers and Dick Cheney has integrity and a conscience. With Bush, Cheney and Rove, there is nothing you can believe.

My italics. Let me be of assistance. Here's how unemployment is actually calculated (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on-line explanation):

...[T]he Government conducts a monthly sample survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of unemployment in the country. The CPS has been conducted in the United States every month since 1940 when it began as a Work Projects Administration project. It has been expanded and modified several times since then. As explained later, the CPS estimates, beginning in 1994, reflect the results of a major redesign of the survey.

There are about 60,000 households in the sample for this survey. The sample is selected so as to be representative of the entire population of the United States. In order to select the sample, first, the 3,141 counties and county-equivalent cities in the country are grouped into 1,973 geographic areas. The Bureau of the Census then designs and selects a sample consisting of 754 of these geographic areas to represent each State and the District of Columbia. The sample is a State-based design and reflects urban and rural areas, different types of industrial and farming areas, and the major geographic divisions of each State.

Each of the 754 areas in the sample is subdivided into enumeration districts of about 300 households. The enumeration districts, in turn, are divided into smaller clusters of about four dwelling units each, through the use of address lists, detailed maps, and other sources. Then, the clusters to be surveyed are chosen statistically, and the households in these clusters are interviewed.

Every month, one-fourth of the households in the sample are changed, so that no household is interviewed more than 4 consecutive months. This practice avoids placing too heavy a burden on the households selected for the sample. After a household is interviewed for 4 consecutive months, it leaves the sample for 8 months and then is again interviewed for the same 4 calendar months a year later, before leaving the sample for good. This procedure results in approximately 75 percent of the sample remaining the same from month to month and 50 percent from year to year.

Each month, 1,500 highly trained and experienced Census Bureau employees interview persons in the 60,000 sample households for information on the labor force activities (jobholding and jobseeking) or non-labor force status of the members of these households during the week that includes the 12th of the month (the reference week). This information, relating to all household members 16 years of age and over, is entered by the interviewers into laptop computers; at the end of each day's interviewing, the data collected are transmitted to the Census Bureau's central computer in Washington, D.C. In addition, a portion of the sample is interviewed by phone through two central data collection facilities. (Prior to 1994, the interviews were conducted using a paper questionnaire which had to be mailed in by the interviewers each month.)

I wonder where in this process cpa1 thinks Bush, Cheney, and Rove cooked the books (and got away with it). Maybe he will clarify this for me.

Jonah Goldberg on Death Penalty on National Review Online

Just read an odd article by Jonah Goldberg. Some quotes and questions:

But the point is that it shouldn’t matter whether capital punishment is a deterrent. The death penalty cannot be justified by the deterrence argument alone. As the late sociologist Ernest van den Haag wrote, “Deterring the crimes, not yet committed, of others does not morally justify execution of any convict (except to utilitarians, who think usefulness is a moral justification).”

If you have the capacity to prevent a crime from occurring, wouldn't it be a moral obligation (not just morally justified) to do so? Why would preventing crimes not justify punishing crimes?

I support the death penalty because I believe that in some cases the death penalty is just. But, save perhaps in the realm of military justice or some truly grave crisis, executing to set an example for others is an indefensible rationalization of mob rule.

The rule of what mob? The mob of legislators that decide what criminal penalties to write into law? The mob of jurors that decide verdicts? The mob of judges that impose the sentences allowed by law?