Marginal Revolution

Questions which are rarely asked

Today it is from Megan McArdle:

Veterinary spending is rising just about in line with human medical spending.  Kudoes to AEI for publishing a graph that seriously undercuts one of the major conservative arguments about health care:  that the main problem is consumers who don't bear their own costs.  Veterinary spending is subject to few of the perversities that either left or right suppose to be the main problems afflicting health care spending.  Consumers pay full frieght most of the time.  They are price sensitive, and will let the patient die if keeping him alive costs too much.  There is no adverse selection.  There is no free riding on mandatory care.  Government regulation is minimal.  Malpractice suits are minimal, and have low payouts.  So why is vet spending rising along with human spending?

There is a very nice graph in the post.

Assorted links

1. Reviews of Create Your Own Economy here, here, and Robert Wenzel likes me better here.

2. Virginia Postrel reviews Free; and don't forget Virginia on kidneys.

3. Revamping the White House art collection.

4. The public choice theory of Christopher Hayes.

5. Superfreakonomics is due out October 20.

Getting stuck in the bad equilibrium in India

The poor in India are victims of state indifference and corruption; somewhere between a quarter and a half of all subsidized food meant for them, for example, is stolen by corrupt government officials.  And yet if one asks the poor what jobs they would like their children to have the number one answer is to work for the government.  (See also my earlier post on Regulation and distrust for a model.)

In his magnificient, if poorly titled, In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, Edward Luce provides a sadly, poignant analogy: 

To the poor the state is both an enemy and a friend.  It tantalizes them with a ladder that promises to lift them out of poverty but it habitually kicks them in the teeth when they turn to it for help.  It inspires both fear and promise. To India's poor the state is like an abusive father whom you can never abandon.  It is through you that his sins are likely to live on.

Luce's book is the best of recent books on India, highly recommended.

Which words make you wince?

Via Bookslut, here is an article on that topic.  Some contenders:

pulchritude
chillax
hubby
no-brainer
webinar
staycation
any word starting with "mommy"

What can you add to this list?

Showing that you care

I thank KunLung Wu for the pointer and of course Robin Hanson for the concept.

*A Brain Wider than the Sky*

The author is Andrew G. Levy and the topic is migraine headaches:

Even more remarkably, triggers seem to be culturally particular.  French migraine researchers, testing a French population, found widespread complaints about white wine and chocolate.  British researchers, testing their own countrymen and women, found red wine and cheese to be the more potent triggers.  Such anomalies might point to flaws in the studies, but more likely, they point to something mysterious about the human temperament that migraine reveals.  It's not the chemical in the wine that triggers the migraine generator, but something else inside the wine entirely, something in what the wine means to the drinker -- something that might change by region, by individual, by culture, that simply obliterates the border between the somatic and the psychosomatic.

The subtitle is A Migraine Diary and you can buy this very interesting book here.  Levy outlines his struggle with migraines, their possible roots, and what they reveal about the broader human condition.  According to Levy, Asians and African-Americans are less prone to migraines and the differences may be partly genetic in origin.