Krugman on family values

While Krugman has been slumping for some time, he makes a nice comeback in today's op ed. Excerpt:

[T]o the extent that the French have less income than we do, it's mainly a matter of choice... let's ask how the situation of a typical middle-class family in France compares with that of its American counterpart. The French family, without question, has lower disposable income.... But there are compensations for this lower level of consumption. Because French schools are good across the country, the French family doesn't have to worry as much about getting its children into a good school district. Nor does the French family, with guaranteed access to excellent health care, have to worry about losing health insurance or being driven into bankruptcy by medical bills.

Perhaps even more important, however, the members of that French family are compensated for their lower income with much more time together. Fully employed French workers average about seven weeks of paid vacation a year. In America, that figure is less than four.

So which society has made the better choice?...

Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, at Harvard, and Bruce Sacerdote, at Dartmouth... write: "It is hard to obtain more vacation for yourself from your employer and even harder, if you do, to coordinate with all your friends to get the same deal and go on vacation together." And they even offer some statistical evidence that working fewer hours makes Europeans happier, despite the loss of potential income.

It's not a definitive result, and as they note, the whole subject is "politically charged." But let me make an observation: some of that political charge seems to have the wrong sign. American conservatives despise European welfare states like France. Yet many of them stress the importance of "family values." And whatever else you may say about French economic policies, they seem extremely supportive of the family as an institution. Senator Rick Santorum, are you reading this?

Link

It's the Kids. Lock Up the China!

As a matter of fact, I am presently wearing my dad's shirt, which of course I'm only "borrowing." Excerpt from article:

A generation ago, adult children visiting their parents' homes might have left with a Tupperware container of lasagna. Today, many of them stealthily make off with toiletries, groceries, sometimes clothing and even furniture. It is an apparently widespread practice, born of a sense of entitlement among young adults - and usually amusedly tolerated by parents - that gives new meaning to the phrase "home shopping." Like most adults, the pilferers have set up their own households, but they seem not to have given up the expectation that their parents should provide for them in certain ways. They loot their parents' houses to cut costs, or because they would rather not pay for incidentals.

Some pretty bold assertions. Link

Who Suffers From Inflation?

Daniel Gross writes about an interesting hypothesis on why Wall Street economists think a higher rate of inflation is emerging, despite numerous indications to the contrary: Its group-think among a coterie of cloistered rich folk. That is, the prices of luxury goods are increasing faster than inflation. The folks that make inflation predictions are purchasers of luxury goods. Hence, they've convinced each other, per their purchasing experiences, that the cost of living is rising. Isn't this a great sentence:

If you're buying Châteauneuf du Pape at Sherry-Lehmann instead of Budweiser at 7-Eleven, it sure seems like the cost of necessities has risen sharply in recent years.

Burnoogle

The Burnstein-ized version of Google. Yeah whatever, go check it out... Link

Why do I always get stuck for hours at O'Hare?

Blame the major carriers' hub and spoke system. This and other interesting factoids are discussed in an article by economist Austan Goolsbee. He does a nice job articulating why I fly on Southwest out of Midway (Chicago's other airport). Excerpt:

American Airlines, for example, uses O'Hare as a hub and schedules a cluster of flights to arrive there from the east in the earlier afternoon. Another cluster leaves for points west and south soon after. In the 30-minute period between 2:45 p.m. and 3:15 p.m., American has scheduled about 18 takeoffs, not counting its regional flights. That comes close to maxing out the airport's capacity, without any other airline. Other airports are even more extreme. Continental has seven flights scheduled to depart during the exact same minute (11:45 a.m.) out of Newark, as well as almost 20 other flights in the surrounding half hour. Some of these flights leave late more than 80 percent of the time. The major airlines know perfectly well that these hideous statistics are inevitable.

"Kids today are not wearing jockstraps"

This article in Slate is the perfect anecdote for a slow day in the office. So what do "jockstraps" do anyway, you ask? Answer:

"They kind of keep the genitalia from flopping around, is the best I could tell you," says Dr. William O. Roberts.

Indeed, jockstraps do a fine job of holding your balls out of harm's way and preventing the scrotal sac from getting all (ouch!) tangled up.

Aren't you glad you asked! Now go read the article if you want to find out why no one is wearing them anymore.

Levitt on car seats vs. seat belts

Levitt recently published an article in the NY Times Magazine re: seat-belts vs. car seats. His conclusion: based on preliminary research, car seats and booster seats are a waste of money.

Letters criticizing the article were published in yesterday's NY Times magazine. One critical letter concluded: "We hope that this misleading article does not cost a child his life."

Already, Levitt has posted a response to this criticism on his blog. Its an interesting, and compelling rebuttal.

Camp Michigania Pics

Some pictures of our vacation to Camp Michigania, over the 4th of July Weekend.

ODB participating in the 4th of July parade...



Sam at the archery range...



Sam participating in the "family Olympics"...



Oliver and Sam showing off their awards, which the counselors hand out at the end of the week. (Sam's is fairly self-explanatory; Oliver's reflects the fact that he met a lady-friend in his class and the two were inseperable for the week.)





And, finally, the traditional family pic on "the hill." Unfortunately, ODB was throwing a fit, so he could not participate in the photo shoot.

Panorama Pictures

I've been experimenting with photo software. Attached are the products of this experiment: two views of the front of our house. The pic on top came out pretty well, plus you can see ODB playing in the sprinkler.







(Both pics were created with Arcsoft Panorama Maker 3.)

Banana Split

While we're on the topic of childhood memories (and Roald Dahl books), this article on the origins of the banana split is fascinating.

Link

Why children love Roald Dahl's stories -- and many adults don't

I have very fond memories of reading Dahl's books as a kid and/or having my mom read them to me. The New Yorker has an article on Dahl's work and his life in general. I learned that he is an anti-semite, which is disappointing. But I still admire the guy. It is a great article.

Excerpt:

In Dahl’s fiction, the bad characters aren’t just bad; they’re swing-kids-around-by-their-braids awful—a quality that some adult readers find unsubtle but many children find hilarious and satisfying. Even the good adult characters are often rash or easily cowed, whereas the kids in Dahl’s books are usually sensible, mature, and unflappable. (The kids make all the “good decisions,” as my nine-year-old son puts it.) And in Dahl’s stories the kinds of elaborate schemes that children are forever concocting—and that sensible adults are forever rejecting as impractical or dangerous—yield triumphant results. When the Giant Peach is attacked by sharks while floating across the ocean, James comes up with the idea of attaching loops of string to a flock of seagulls, in order to lift the peach into the air—and, voilà, that’s precisely what happens!

…

“I have very strong and almost profound views on how a child has to fight its way through life and grow up to the age of, let’s say, twelve,” Dahl told a BBC interviewer in 1988. “All their lives they’re being disciplined. When you’re born or when you’re one or two or three, you’re an uncivilized creature. And from that age, right up to twelve or fifteen, if you are going to become civilized and become a member of the community, you’re going to have to be disciplined. Severely. Stop eating with your fingers and spitting on the floor and swearing and anything else you want to mention. And who does this disciplining? It is two people. It’s the parents. . . . Although the child loves her mother and father, they are subconsciously the enemy. There’s a fine line, I think, between loving your parents deeply and resenting them.”

Most of Dahl’s young readers are presumably not mistreated, and yet they intuitively understand that the beatings and humiliations meted out to his young characters are metaphors for the powerlessness of being a child. And they appreciate that Dahl so nakedly takes their side.

Link to New Yorker article.

Get Rich Slowly!

Some more advice. The website foldedspace.org offers bullet-point summaries of several books on becoming financially independent. Most of these sorts of books are effectively condensed to a couple of hundred words. And that is what they've done here. Do read it. If anything, its a helpful reminder.

Excerpt from intro:

Over the past few months, I've read over a dozen books on personal finance. Recurring themes have become evident.

These books have embarrassingly bad titles, seemingly designed to appeal to the get-rich-quick crowd: The Richest Man in Babylon, Your Money or Your Life, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, Wealth Without Risk, Creating Wealth, etc.

Some of the books out there — most of them? — really are as bad as their titles. Others, however, offer outstanding, practical advice. The best books seem to have the same goal in mind: not wealth, not riches, but financial independence...

How is financial independence achieved? Again, the best books all basically agree. (To some of you, this will be common sense, stuff you've known all your life. To others, like me, this kind of thinking is a sort of revelation.)

Here, then, is my personal summary of the collected wisdom found in these books...

Link to read the rest.

Advice on beer

Some good advice for you steak tip marinators...

1) Never use a frosted mug with beer -- it dilutes the taste and can introduce unwanted flavors into the mix.

2) Tilting the glass at a 45-degree angle, pour half the beer down the side and then the other half right down the middle. That kind of pour lowers the carbonation to the right level.

3) When buying beer, look for freshness dates on the bottles -- beer begins losing flavor about four months from the bottling date. If you have a quality lager that has passed its peak, use it for marinating steak tips.

4) If you're hosting a party and there is leftover beer in the fridge, put it back in the cupboard. (Temperature changes won't hurt it.)

5) For dinner guests, try pairing black lager with smoked Gouda, and oysters with stout.

6) Before serving any cold beer, take it out of the fridge and allow it to warm up on the counter for five or 10 minutes. Beer that is too cold loses its complexity.

Link (subscription required)

The end of Eminem?

What amazes me is not that Slim Shady might retire, but that so many people deeply give a shit one way or the other. Link to pretty interesting article.