Duuuude
Twitch Film links White House West.#
Don Boudreaux on the trade deficit and giant sucking sound.#
Much of the unnecessary worry stems from confusion engendered by the careless construal of plural pronouns. Talking about "our" trade with foreigners, or of "our" manufacturing base, or of how much of "our" currency or equity is held by "them" creates a too-ready illusion that each nation is a single, unified economic unit — America, Inc., Japan, Inc., Botswana, Inc.
It isn't so. It isn't close to being so.
What matters above all are the circumstances and preferences of each individual -- individual prospects, successes and set-backs, tastes and preferences, and opportunities. Do I worry about the fact that I manufacture nothing? Do I tremble with fear that I do not weave the cloth used to make my clothes? Do I shudder at the prospect of having forever to depend upon strangers to make my computer keyboards, my shoes, and my toasters?
The Pop View of international trade would have us believe that something is fundamentally different when I depend upon strangers in China to weave my cloth compared to my relying upon strangers in South Carolina to do so. But I see no difference. Nor is there a significant difference if I use my credit card to purchase new clothing from strangers in China compared to using my credit card to purchase new clothing from strangers in South Carolina.
Michael Williams links to a Catholic voting guide.#
A Catholic may vote for a pro-abortion Catholic politician only "in the presence of proportionate reasons."
What are "proportionate reasons"? To consider that question, we must first repeat the teaching of the church: The direct killing of innocent human beings at any stage of development, including the embryonic and fetal, is homicidal, gravely sinful and always profoundly wrong. Then we must consider the scope of the evil of abortion today in our country. America suffers 1.3 million abortions each year--a tragedy of epic proportions. Moreover, many supporters of abortion propose making the situation even worse by creating a publicly funded industry in which tens of thousands of human lives are produced each year for the purpose of being "sacrificed" in biomedical research.
Thus for a Catholic citizen to vote for a candidate who supports abortion and embryo-destructive research, one of the following circumstances would have to obtain: either (a) both candidates would have to be in favor of embryo killing on roughly an equal scale or (b) the candidate with the superior position on abortion and embryo-destructive research would have to be a supporter of objective evils of a gravity and magnitude beyond that of 1.3 million yearly abortions plus the killing that would take place if public funds were made available for embryo-destructive research.
Don Boudreaux explains the silver lining on the dark cloud of unskilled labour.#
Compared to jobs performed by skilled workers, jobs performed by low-skilled workers don't pay wage premiums. Therefore, the loss of any particular low-skilled job doesn't eliminate any special wage premium earned by that worker; any other low-skilled job will likely pay roughly the same amount as was paid by the now-defunct job. And because basic human labor — which is the product supplied by low-skilled workers — is quite flexible, the opportunities for profitably employing such labor in the economy are large. If a brilliant new invention eliminates the need for lawn mowers to be guided by human beings, the low-skilled workers who previously mowed lawns can work as carpenters' helpers, janitors, warehouse stockers, and other jobs that require only general human muscle and action.
In short, low-skilled workers whose jobs are eliminated are often more likely than are high-skilled workers to find a new job very quickly that pays roughly the same amount as the old job.
The downside of (the overwhelmingly very advantageous) possession and use of special work skills is that the demand for any such specialized skill is less thick than is the demand for general, low-skilled human grunt labor.
Glen Whitman explains relationship cycles.#
I figure that everyone, men and women alike, derives diminishing marginal utility (MU) from relationship time. But the MU diminishes more quickly for men than for women. The figure below illustrates the difference.
[Figure omitted.]
For men, the MU of relationship time is given by MU(RM). It crosses the MU of alternative activities, MU(A), at 3 days per week. For men, the MU of relationship time is given by MU(RW), and it crosses MU(A) at 5 days per week. Thus, women's optimal number of relationship days exceeds that for men, but it's still less than 7. (Slightly different assumptions could generate essentially the same conclusion. For instance, men and women could have the same MU of relationships, but men could have a higher MU of alternative activities, thus generating the same qualitative result — a lower optimal number of relationship days per week.)
But what explains the perception that women want 7-day-a-week boyfriends? Now we come to my theory of relationship cycles. When two parties to a relationship have different preferences about timing, even a small divergence can create the illusion of a much larger one. Say that Harvey and Matilda have spent three days straight together. At this point, Harvey requests some alone time. If Matilda agrees (despite her desire to continue another couple of days), both parties get to reset their relationship clocks. Once Harvey and Matilda reconvene, say, four days later, Harvey's and Matilda's relationship-time MU's have both risen back to their initial levels. But in another three days, Harvey will be asking for alone time again. Matilda never has to ask for alone time, because Harvey is always satiated sooner. Thus, the pattern of interactions creates the appearance of one-sidedness: Harvey keeps asking for alone time, while Matilda always want more together time.
Rasmusen extends the theory.
I was talking about something similar with my girlfriend just the other day. Basically, I said that love is when our "long-run" marginal utility from a person is not diminishing, while a mere infatuation is the situation where there is are diminishing marginal returns in the long run. She was upset that I would ever think to mention economics in a personal conversation though.