Month: May 2009

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I am a graduate student in the field of Criminal Justice and have given lots of thought to your Ask the Audience question. What it really boils down to is, as your reader states, is the politics. Throughout my education every professor in every class that dealt with corrections reform stated the obvious. They had to because regardless of their personal philosophy, the data doesn't lie.

First, you have to decriminalize most illegal drugs. You cannot have a serious argument about reducing prison population without this on the table. Second, as another reader mentioned, most incarcerated offenders are either mentally ill or substance abusers. Third, merely adding police officers and especially adding SWAT-type tactics to local police forces hinders more than it helps.

In theory, the options are pretty easy. Decriminalize and regulate drugs. Use the revenue to boost treatment centers in communities. Raise the pay of corrections officers so that the flow of contraband is lessened. Put more educators and therapists in the prison budget instead of increasing the number of guards. Train local police forces in community policing tactics rather than strict enforcement. Reform the current parole system to give those coming back into the community a reasonable shot at success.

In reality, you need to convince the public, sure. But just show them the numbers. What we are currently doing obviously doesn't work. I think Governor Schwarezenegger said it best: we don't need to be hasty or drastic, but we need to have all options on the table.

by Richard Florida

Felix Salmon points to Michael Lewis' review of the new Warren Buffet biography by Alice Schroeder.

Lewis is no fan of Buffett's, and dwells in his review on many of the investor's weaknesses: his juvenile shoplifting, his dysfunctional family life, his "diet of an eight-year-old". He even explains why he thinks that "there has never been a better time to bet against Warren Buffett" — not that Lewis himself is about to do so. Lewis says that Buffett is unhappy with Schroeder's book; he'll be much less happy with this article …

by Patrick Appel

Larison reacts to that Gallup poll:

by Chris Bodenner

Andrew is taking a break this week, but the Dish and its three guest-bloggers continue to the churn out content. Today we covered the Indian elections, the furor over Pelosi, the new polling on abortion, marriage equality in Washington, and Dowd's plagiarism. Patrick got his arms around the carbon debate and I broached the battle over Gitmo transfers. We also solicited topics of discussion from readers, and we began by airing mental health. On the lighter side, we met a slingshot phenom, decifered corporate logos, and saw little difference between Star Wars and Star Trek.

Richard Florida highlighed where college grads are headed, pointed to a feature on the future of work, provided a map of the top sports towns, showed the economic benefits of marriage equality, spotlighted new stats on GOP decline, found a paradox in female happiness, and introduced his series on why class still matters. (A few readers dissented along the way.)

Richard Posner argued that the US economy is an depression, not a recession, and that the federal government is mostly to blame, not the banks. Posner also countered the common stereotype that bankers are "stupid, greedy, and reckless."

Lane Wilson explored, in two parts, the biases and myths surrounding the photography of the American West. She also took a look at the best places to get laid off.

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

It's fairly clear from the tone of the Richard Florida piece you posted that he continues to believe quite strongly in his back-to-the-cities theory, regardless of the continued economic decline of many major urban centers. Florida no doubt hopes that a generation of young people will follow his advice and head off to places like LA, NYC and San Francisco to make their mark on the world. In his mind they will then be thoroughly indoctrinated into the cult of urban renewal and can take that message elsewhere with their annual job hunts.

As the antidote to anyone who continues to believe in this approach, I urge them to read Joel Kotkin's essay, "Urban Legends".

While the idea of a trendy loft apartment in SoHo and a 80 hour work week sounds great to some in their mid-to-late 20's, once they hit 30 they are starting to think about a comfortable 3 bedroom with a yard big enough for a Labrador Retriever and enough vacation time accrued to take the family on a couple nice trips per year. They are thinking about a 40 hour work week that gives them time to hit the gym after work, play in the co-ed softball league and sleep in on Saturdays.   Richard Florida's vision hinges on an age group of roughly 5 years. The reality is that the next 20 years after that are much more predictive of what our national living trends will be.

Florida has responded to Kotkin here, here, here, and here (and that's only a smattering of the back and forth between the two, but it should give you the flavor of the debate). Another reader takes issue with the same post:

The linked survey listing "the best place for college grads to start their careers" actually lists the top ten cities graduates desire to start their careers.  This is not the same thing. I graduated 2 years ago this May. A majority of my classmates would have identified places like NYC, Chicago, DC, or San Francisco as their ideal place to start their career, but a vast majority of them did not actually end up in these places.  They chose a $65000 (with no city or state tax) per year job in Houston, a city with a stable real estate and job market (even still) and a low cost of living, over their NYC offers (which tended to be in the $40000s) almost every time. 

The best places to start a career (or continue one) are likely not those that are the most popular, especially in the current economic state.  Collapsing real estate prices in places like California have devastated the net worth of years worth of college graduates that chose to settle in that popular area, while those in unpopular places like Houston have not experienced this.  Chicago has been having trouble sustaining strong and diverse growth for years and cost of living in NYC has been an impractical location for graduates (outside of finance) with student loans and high value skills for a great while (the reason why it experiences one of the lowest net in-migration rates for young, educated people).

 by Patrick Appel

Manzi explains problems with the carbon tax proposed by two Republican law makers last week (the bill would offset the new tax with an equal cut in the payroll tax):

I found the cap and trade vs. carbon tax debate last week helpful, though a carbon tax is probably politically unfeasible because it is harder to cram it full of concessions to make it politically palatable. For more on this front, see Marginal Revolution and John Broder in the NYT.

That said, it's clear that legislators on both sides like to pretend that their chosen global warming plan will be cheap or free. They might be a bargain in the long run compared to the havoc global warming will wreak, but both plans constitute a massive new tax. There is no hiding that. And unlike a new entitlement – which voters grow accustomed to and will fight strongly against cutting – either global warming plan is simply an attempt to slow the rate of carbon emissions and maintain the status quo or improve it slightly. Even if the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill passes, I wonder whether it will be vulnerable to political attacks for this reason – especially in its current form.

The Congressional Budget Office recently had a good paper recapping of the science and implications of global warming. I agree that we need to act and am leaning towards supporting the bill, but I would prefer to see more bill-specific projections first. The World Resources Institute has analyzed it here and here, though like Tyler Cowen, I'd find more cost-benefit analysis helpful. Krugman's pitch:

As the Center for American Progress has pointed out, by 2020 the legislation would have the same effect on global warming as taking 500 million cars off the road. And by all accounts, this bill has a real chance of becoming law in the near future. So opponents of the proposed legislation have to ask themselves whether they’re making the perfect the enemy of the good. I think they are.

by Richard Florida

Economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers identify one (pointer via Mark Thoma):

By many objective measures, the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging–one with higher subjective well-being for men.

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Paying actual cash for clunkers to get the high polluters off the highway may be a good idea, but not vouchers for new cars, for two reasons:

1) The cars you really want to get off the road, the heaviest polluters, are in the hands of people who are not and should not be in the market for a new car. If you're driving a beater that ought to be scrapped, what you need is cash buy a better used car, not to be given the down payment on a new-car loan you are likely not to be able to keep up with.

Another reader adds:

A $4,500 voucher doesn't allow anyone to afford an additional car. It allows someone who was going to buy a car anyway to buy a more expensive car. With the $4,500, maybe the buyer will upgrade to the hybrid powertrain (good), or maybe he'll upgrade from the 4-cylinder to the V6 (bad), or maybe he'll buy the navigation system, the leather interior, the sunroof, and the fancy stereo (indifferent).

Some of the $4,500 will end up in the pockets of workers on US assembly lines, sure, but some will also end up in the pockets of overseas workers, and some will end up in the pockets of US and overseas executives and shareholders. Who deserve my tax money . . . why?

The US govt would get more financial and environmental bang for its buck if it just spent the $4,500 on unemployment benefits, retraining, more fuel-efficient government fleet vehicles, and more energy-efficient government buildings (which would entail some labor and manufacturing stimulus, too).

by Patrick Appel

Fallows switches parties.