Month: December 2011

Brutal:

Allahpundit nods along:

A thought experiment from Dan Foster: What if Gingrich had spent the past six years running for president and entered the primaries as the "inevitable" nominee, and then Bachmann, Perry, and Cain had all imploded? Would Romney now be surging on the strength of anti-Newt sentiment? If not, why not?

Weigel notices that Democrats aren't wasting their breath:

If you're on the DNC/Obama email lists, you notice that the other team doesn't bother attacking Newt. This isn't complicated. They worry about Romney. They don't worry about facing Gingrich.

Jacob Sullum flags a study that suggests so. One of the reasons:

Alcohol is often consumed in restaurants and bars, while many states prohibit the use of medical marijuana in public. Even where it is not explicitly prohibited, anecdotal evidence suggests that the public use of medical marijuana can be controversial. If marijuana consumption typically takes place at home, then designating a driver for the trip back from a restaurant or bar becomes unnecessary, and legalization could reduce traffic fatalities even if driving under the influence of marijuana is every bit as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol.  

Pete Guitner's two cents:

Now keep in mind that this study shows correlation, not causation, but it appears to be a very powerful correlation, in that it completely undermines the prohibitionist argument that legalization is certain to result in an Armageddon of fiery crashes on the highways.

The last legacy airline to have avoided bankruptcy filed for Chapter 11 earlier this week. Megan McArdle focuses on the company's intractable labor disputes:

[W]hen there are three or four unions–pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and baggage handlers–things get complicated. All of those groups are completely necessary to make sure that the plane gets in the air. If one of them doesn't show up, you lose all the money on every seat. 

Those unions are not just trying to get more money out of shareholders, or customers. They're also in competition with each other. A single union that leaves errs on the side of claiming too little value can hope to get some of it back in future negotiations. But if the pilot's union leaves money on the table, it's all too likely to get picked up by the flight attendants. You can finesse this problem when the company's doing well–that's one of the reasons that Southwest has excellent relations with its unions, and why the union troubles didn't emerge at the majors after deregulation. But when times aren't so flush, this dynamic becomes a problem. 

(Chart from Jordan Weissman)

Austan Goolsbee believes so:

At the time of the formation of the euro, I would say most American economists said that’s not a good idea, that’s not a currency area that makes sense. And the answer from Europe was, how is Missouri and Mississippi a currency area? But the flaw in that was not recognizing the importance of mobility.

In Michigan, in the mid-’80s, the unemployment rate goes way up because a lot of factories shut down. And then, the mid-2000s, to pick a date, the unemployment rate in Michigan isn’t that much higher than in the rest of the country. But the main way that happened is people moved. What makes us a workable currency area is that people can move around. And that happened in East Germany too. They could move around. But the Greeks don’t even speak the same language as the Germans. Seven million Greeks can’t pack up and move to Germany. So low mobility, plus having the wrong currency values, plus no subsidies, is a toxic mix.

Frustrated by the shortage of Adderall in New York City, Mélanie Berliet tracks down a large supply from a far-away pharmacy and debates selling the excess:

I phone a college sophomore I used to babysit, figuring that as a student he'll know Adderall’s present street value. He says that 10-mg. pills typically go for $7 to $10. But I notice that on Craigslist, where Adderall is exchanged under the label "study aid," posts from buyers far outnumber those from sellers. I estimate I can price pills up to $12 apiece, for a profit of nearly 800 percent. On the other hand: "It's good that you obtained the drugs legally. But Adderall is a controlled substance, so selling it is illegal," criminal-defense lawyer Edward Kratt tells me. "And if you’re doing it over the Internet, there are interstate-commerce implications that might put the case under federal jurisdiction."

She goes on to "chronicle the Adderall-dealing adventures of my dear friend Ellie."

(Photo by Taylor Dawn Fortune)