Marginal Revolution

Good advice from the FT

Tyler Cowen, the economist, advises readers to “snap up foreign fiction translated into English, if only because the selection pressures are so severe”: in order for a publisher to think a work of fiction worth the risk of translating and promoting to a foreign audience, its quality has on average to be higher than the average for homegrown work.

Here is more.  The best place to follow new releases of such fiction is the blog Literary Saloon.

Assorted links

1. What are the lessons of military schools?

2. Fancy Fast Food.

3. 61 [sic] essential reads of postmodern literature.

4. The fate of Massachusetts health care reform.  Ezra Klein offers a different perspective.  Lots is at stake here.

The Return of the Puppet Masters

In a post from a few years ago titled, Do you love cats?, I wrote this:

Toxoplasma gondii is a favorite parasite of evolutionary biologists because it has an incredible property.  The parasite lives in the guts of cats where it sheds eggs in cat feces that are often eaten by rats.  Now how to get back from the rat to the cat?  Amazingly, Toxoplasma gondii infects the brains of rats making them change their behavior in a subtle way that increases the genetic fitness of the parasite.  Toxoplasma makes the infected rats less scared of cats and so more likely to be eaten! 

Now here is the kicker.  Toxoplasma gondii also infects a lot of humans.

Now here is the latest research finding;

Toxoplasma gondii infects 20–60% of the population in most countries...We confirmed, using for the first time a prospective cohort study design, increased risk of traffic accidents in Toxoplasma-infected subjects...Our results show that ...subjects with high titers of anti-Toxoplasma antibodies had a probability of a traffic accident of about 16.7%, i.e. a more than six times higher rate than Toxoplasma-free... subjects.

People with RhD blood factor have some protection - see the article for more.  No word yet on whether this increases the probability of being eaten by cats although I suppose it would have to.

Inequality and consistency

I agree with Will Wilkinson's point that real social inequality has (mostly) been falling for some time in the United States.  Today many an upper middle class person is plausibly happier than many a billionaire.  Yet most self-made billionaires work very hard to get to that position, which creates a possible tension between cardinal and "observed choice" or "ordinal" metrics of welfare.  Why work so hard for so little?  Presumably many of these billionaires really want to "be there," even if they are only marginally better off or in some cases worse off.

Here are a few possible implications, not all of which are (or can be) true:

1. Higher marginal tax rates aren't very unjust, because lower incomes don't make wealthy people much less worse off.

2. Higher marginal tax rates are very unjust, because they undo results that the wealthy have worked very hard for and cared very deeply about.

3. Work is fun for the (self-made) wealthy, so higher marginal tax rates won't much discourage their work effort.

4. Greater wealth is barely worth it for the wealthy, so higher marginal tax rates will very much discourage their work effort.

Will's paper convinces me that the distinction between ordinal and cardinal measures of human welfare is more important than ever. Conservatives often cite #2 and #4, or in other words they have an ordinal normative theory and a cardinal predictive theory.  Liberals are more likely to cite #1 and #3, giving them a cardinal normative theory and an ordinal predictive theory.  In neither case is there an outright contradiction, but arguably both groups end up holding an odd mix of positions.

It would be interesting to take each group aside and present them with the abstract questions of cardinal vs. ordinal understandings of well-being, yet without explaining to them the possible policy implications of their answers.

Fairhope, Alabama

Fairhope, Alabama, is one of two single tax colonies remaining in the United States (the other is in Arden, Delaware). The community was established in 1894 by a group from Des Moines, Iowa, headed by Ernest B. Gaston, who wanted to establish a colony based on the single tax theories of economist, journalist and social reformer Henry George.

The rent paid to the Single Tax Corporation by lessees includes an amount due for state, county and local taxes, plus an administration fee to operate the Single Tax Corporation office, plus a “demonstration fee”, intended to demonstrate the usefulness of the single tax concept. Funds from the demonstration fee are used to enhance the community by supporting such things as the public parks, the public library, the historical museum, etc.

Fairhope is located on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay...About 4,500 acres of land in and around Fairhope is owned by the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation. This includes the downtown area and a little less than half of the remainder of the city.

The link is here. Here is Wikipedia on Fairhope.  Fairhope never succeeded in being a formal single tax "colony," but here is a short history and they are arguably the "purest" remaining example of the Georgist idea.  One public choice lesson in this history is that later economic pressures will overwhelm virtually any initial constitution.  It is a pretty city to visit and they still have a plaque in honor of the single tax concept.

Via Kevin Vallier, here is a guidebook for Fairhope.

Favor

Here is the website for my new book, CreateYourOwnEconomy.org.  If a few of you would take a look and click on it, that would be much appreciated.  Thanks!

Assorted links

1. The courageous Bruce Bartlett, on taxes.

2. Harvard University Press will publish one thousand digital books.

3. Countercyclical assets: remaindered books.

4. Skidelsky on Keynes and on books on Keynes.

5. Jazz fifty years ago.

Predictions about immigration and attractiveness

Sebastian Flyte, an unusual commentator, wrote:

A man's mate value is tied to status - if he emigrates he throws away whatever mate value he built up in his life. A girl's is tied to youth and beauty. These are carried with her luggage.

He has a point.  Female migrants should on average be prettier, ceteris paribus, than those who stay in the old country.  That means holding constant income, education, and some other variables.  Female immigrants should find it easier to marry into the receiving country's population than do male immigrants.  From a public choice point of view, the women in the country receiving the immigrants should be more suspicious of liberal immigration policies than should be the men in the receiving country.  It is up for grabs whether male immigrants should be handsomer or uglier than average, relative to their home country populations, again holding constant some relevant variables.

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

Tyler blogged this earlier (of course!) but it's worth another post.  Sum is a peculiar book, it's forty stories, each a page or two in length about a possible scenario for the afterlife. Some of the stories are like Zen koans, others have the flavor of O. Henry or Jeffrey Archer's A Twist in the Tale.  Here's is one of the lighter pieces which features wry theological commentary, an astute understanding of human psychology and, as if that were not enough, an appreciation of free market economics.  It's called Great Expectations.

Hat tip to Robin Hanson who lent me the book.

My favorite things Alabama

1. Popular music.  Emmylou Harris is from Birmingham and I like her albums with Gram Parsons.  "The New Soft Shoe" is an excellent song.  While I appreciate Nat King Cole in the abstract I never choose to put it on.  Lionel Richie has a nice voice but the sound is too bland for my taste.

2. Painter: The early Howard Finster is excellent, although he churned out weak material for a long time later on.

3. Jazz: Lionel Hampton is the obvious choice, but I will pick Sun Ra, who is a musical god of sorts for me.  Jazz in Silhouette is the best place to start, although it does not communicate the overall diversity of his work.  He remains an underrated musical figure.

4. Country music: Hank Williams.  Even if you hate country music you should buy the two CDs of his collected works.  I also love Shelby Lynne; start with I am Shelby Lynne.

5. Bluegrass: The Louvin Brothers.  Tragic Songs of Life is one of my favorite albums as it has a deeply scary and tragic feel; again you can love it even if you hate country and bluegrass.  Do you know the song "The Great Atomic Power"?

6. Writer: I can't make my way through To Kill a Mockingbird.  Who else is there?  Wasn't one of Charles Barkley's books funny?  I've never finished a Tobias Wolff novel, too stilted.  Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King were very good writers, though they don't quite fit the category.  Same for James Agee.  Truman Capote would be an easy pick except I don't enjoy his books.  Zora Neale Hurston was born in the state though I am inclined to classify her under "Florida."

7. Quilters: From Gee's Bend, Alabama, there is an entire tradition.  The traveling exhibits of these works are excellent.

8. Gospel: Blind Boys of Alabama.  They transfer better to disc than do a lot of gospel groups.

9. Song, about: Don't go there.

10. Movie, shot in.  Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  As for "Movie, set in" here is a worrying list.  Maybe I'll go with Fried Green Tomatoes, although the book is supposed to be better and more open about the sexuality of the main characters.

The bottom line: There are some major stars here and I haven't even mentioned the famous athletes.