New York Times : “The backlash against President Obama is the latest iteration of a populist tendency against money being siphoned off by condescending elites and going to those who do not work.”
More Government Health Care Means A Smaller U.S. Military, by Greg Zerzan
Religion
The Right Way to Pray?, by Zev Chafets
New York Times: “Americans aren’t sure they know how to talk to God. Fortunately, there is plenty of instruction available.”
Science
Are Your Friends Making You Fat?, by Clive Thompson
New York Times: “Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler say your friends — and even your friends’ friends — can make you quit smoking, eat too much or get happy. A look inside the emerging science of social contagion.”
Wall Street Journal: “The time to worry about moral hazard is now.”
Health Care Reform
Mandated Health Insurance Squeezes Those in the Middle, by Vanessa Fuhrmans
Wall Street Journal: “President Barack Obama and his congressional allies have made insuring nearly all Americans a major goal of overhauling the nation’s health-care system. One of their toughest challenges will be trying to cover people like Ron Norton of Worcester, Mass. Mr. Norton, 49 years old, is an adjunct professor at a local community college who earns about $40,000 a year. He’s also one of roughly 200,000 Massachusetts residents who remain uninsured despite a state law requiring residents to have health insurance. “I can’t use up all of my savings just to buy mandatory insurance,” Mr. Norton says. It’s like penalizing “the homeless for refusing to buy a mansion.”
Some Firms Are Already Bending Stubborn Health Care Cost Curve, by Roy Ramthun and Merrill Matthews
Investors Business Daily: “President Obama repeatedly says of health care changes that doing nothing would be worse than an overhaul. But exactly why is that? The fact is that health insurance is slowly reforming itself, largely in response to employer and consumer demand.”
Another Health-Care Invention
Wall Street Journal: “Obama and the cost of individual insurance.”
Sociology of Religion
Fight Nights and Reggae Pack Brazilian Churches, by Alexei Barrionuevo
New York Times: “A growing evangelical movement in Brazil is attracting young people by adopting their culture.”
Statistics
Seeking Accurate Job-Creation Numbers, by Carl Bialik
Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading today (organized by topic):
Catastrophes
One year after Hurricane Ike, from the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” blogsite
Boston Globe: “One year after Hurricane Ike tore across the gulf coast of Texas, residents paused on Sunday to observe the anniversary of the costliest natural disaster in Texas history. Destroying or damaging many thousands of houses, including 3/4 of all homes in Galveston, Ike’s 110 mph winds caused more than $29 billion in damage, and took the lives of at least 72 in the United States. In Galveston one year later, 75% of businesses have reopened, much of the debris has been cleared, and 95% of the population has returned, but much work still remains to be done as residents continue to rebuild and recover. Collected here are a series of before-and-after photographs – which (starting with the second one below) will fade between “before” and “after” when clicked. (13 photo pairs total)”
Donald Marron notes that the student loan crises of 2006–2007 and 2008 “…had the same root cause: the fact that the government, rather than market forces, determined how much lenders were paid for making guaranteed student loans. In both cases, the government got the payment levels wrong, and the crises followed soon thereafter.”
Financial Crisis
Lehman and the Financial Crisis, by John Cochrane and Luigi Zingales
Wall Street Journal: “The lesson is that institutions that take trading risks must be allowed to fail.”
Here, Alex Tabarrok critiques Paul Krugman’s recent New York Times essay entitled “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong”; Krugman’s answer to his own question is that the economics profession had become so fixated on so-called efficient markets theory that “Discussion of investor irrationality, of bubbles, of destructive speculation had virtually disappeared from academic discourse.” Tabarrok counters that “…if we are to understand recent history it’s neither true nor useful to argue that Greenspan and other economists thought the price was always right”.
Health Care Reform
Fact-Checking the President on Health Insurance, by Scott Harrington
Wall Street Journal : “Responsible reform requires careful analysis of the underlying causes of problems in health insurance and informed debate over the benefits and costs of targeted remedies. The president’s continued demonization of private health insurance in pursuit of his broad agenda of government expansion is inconsistent with that objective.”
Politics, Law and Regulation
Free Speech, Now that Speech Is Free, by Gordon Crovitz
Wall Street Journal: “Political campaign regulations are silly in the age of YouTube.”
New York Times: “In the aftermath of the financial crisis, many experts want formulas for risk that look at human behavior and how it can change rapidly.”
News Analysis: Public Option Fades From Debate Over Health Care, by Robert Pear
New York Times: “Hopes for a public insurance program are faltering in the face of opposition from the insurance and health care industries and conflicting signals from the White House.”
Science
Is Happiness Catching?, by Clive Thompson
New York Times: “Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler say your friends — and even your friends’ friends — can make you quit smoking, eat too much or get happy. A look inside the emerging science of social contagion.”
University of Chicago economics professor Casey Mulligan calculates that the cost per job year for the jobs that the Obama administration claims have been “saved” as a result of last January’s stimulus package comes to $1.2 million, and that through June of 2009, we had spent $100 billion to supposedly raise GDP (according to the Obama administration’s own estimates) a mere $20.3 billion.
Market Says: Public Option Is A Clunker, by Lawrence Kudlow
Investors Business Daily : “The day after President Obama’s impassioned speech for big-government health care, Wall Street bet heavily that the so-called government-insurance option he supports is dead.”
9/11
Remembering September 11th, from the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” blogsite
Professor Mulligan points to Chicago colleague John Cochrane’s essay entitled “How did Paul Krugman get it so Wrong“, written in response to Paul Krugman’s essay “How did Economists get it so wrong?”
Health Care Reform
Medicare Is No Model for Health Reform, by Grace-Marie Turner and Joseph R. Antos
Wall Street Journal: “Many doctors refuse Medicare patients because payments are so low.”
The President’s Tort Two-Step, by Kim Strassel
Kim Strassel’s essay explains, among other things, why the real “low hanging fruit” for reducing health care costs (via tort reform so as to mitigate its effect on the practice of so-called “defensive medicine”) is not likely to get picked; unfortunately, the plaintiff’s bar is far too powerful of a special interest in the current health care reform debate.
9/11
The Children of 9/11 Grow Up, by Peggy Noonan
Wall Street Journal: “College students talk about how the attack shaped their lives.”
Fama/French Forum: “In an interview conducted by Professor Richard Roll, famed University of Chicago economist Eugene F. Fama discusses his life, research, and contributions to the field of finance.”
Wall Street Journal: Tehran is on course for a nuclear weapon next year.
Health Care Reform
Reviewing the checklist from the President’s speech, by Keith Hennessey
Did Obama rescue the public option? (Prediction Markets assessment of last night’s address by President Obama to Congress)
The Intrade Gazette: “The market did receive a bump in price but with Obama indicating he is willing to compromise on the public option the chances of it being passed remain modest. The market closed yesterday at 27.9%, up from the previous days close of 20.0%. Many Democrats feel the public option is essential to effective reform. However, the market clearly feels that compromise or outright defeat is the likely outcome.”
Washington Post: “”Switzerland and the Netherlands . . . cover all their citizens using private insurers, and they do so for much less cost.”
Politics
It’s Still the Economy, Stupid, by Daniel Henninger
Wall Street Journal: This could be America’s greatest failed presidency.
Why are Jews Liberal?, by Norman Podhoretz
Wall Street Journal: “I’m hoping buyer’s remorse on Obama will finally cause a Jewish shift to the right.”
When I read Mr. Podhoretz’s essay this morning, the following quote (about liberal versus conservative world views) stood out in particular:
“…I think it fair to say that what liberals mainly see when they look at this country is injustice and oppression of every kind—economic, social and political. By sharp contrast, conservatives see a nation shaped by a complex of traditions, principles and institutions that has afforded more freedom and, even factoring in periodic economic downturns, more prosperity to more of its citizens than in any society in human history. It follows that what liberals believe needs to be changed or discarded—and apologized for to other nations—is precisely what conservatives are dedicated to preserving, reinvigorating and proudly defending against attack.”