by David Friedman, “David Friedman’s Substack,” December 25, 2024.
Excerpts:
In 2024 Republicans received just below two-thirds of the vote in Tennessee. But they received eight of the state’s 9 congressional districts. All else being equal, had been Tennessee gerrymandered much less severely, Republicans in the present day would seemingly have a slim one-seat majority within the US Home of Representatives fairly than a five-seat benefit. (The Economist: On the state degree, democracy in America is fracturing)
Two thirds of the voters getting eight congressional seats out of 9 can be anomalous in a proportional illustration system, however US congressional elections are first previous the publish. If the inhabitants of Tennessee had been evenly distributed, with the identical proportion of Republican and Democratic voters in every congressional district, the bulk occasion would win all of them — even when the division of votes was 51/49. With a majority of just about two to 1, the one means the Democrats get any seats is that if their voters occur to be concentrated in a single or a couple of districts.
And:
As far as the Economist article is worried, its declare is supported by neither logic nor present legislation. No court docket has interpreted the Voters Rights Act to justify pressured redistricting to make the variety of congressional representatives of every occasion proportional to the variety of votes solid for that occasion.
If one ever does, the Libertarian Celebration, with .42% of the vote in 2024, ought to sue for its two congressmen.
by Jeanna Smialek, New York Occasions, December 6, 2024. (HT to Tyler Cowen as a result of I had missed this one on the time.)
Excerpts:
FRED — whose identify stands for Federal Reserve Financial Information — was born in 1991. However he was a sparkle within the eye of the St. Louis Fed lengthy earlier than that.
And:
The story began within the Nineteen Sixties, with an economist named Homer Jones (now generally known as the “grandfather of FRED”). Mr. Jones was the director of analysis on the Fed’s department in St. Louis, and he needed to make central financial institution selections extra data-based, so he began to mail typed information studies to Fed officers across the nation.
DRH word: The story doesn’t point out it however Milton Friedman has credited his trainer Homer Jones with getting him interested by economics.
by Chelsea Follett, Human Progress, December 24, 2024.
Excerpts:
The author P. J. O’Rourke famously quipped, “Once you consider the nice outdated days, assume one phrase: dentistry.” So allow us to take his recommendation. James Wynbrandt’s The Excruciating Historical past of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces offers a lot to chew on. Because the New York Occasions E-book Overview put it, “Wynbrandt has clearly performed his homework.”
Our ancestors’ enamel had been in an appalling state. As Wynbrandt factors out whereas quoting the Previous Testomony, calling a lady’s enamel white as sheep and noting that none had been lacking as soon as counted as excessive reward worthy of a love poem. In any case, wholesome enamel had been far rarer prior to now than in the present day. The primary mass-produced bristle toothbrush didn’t seem till round 1780 in England throughout that nation’s industrialization. Our preindustrial forebears had solely a primitive understanding of what was the reason for their enamel to rot, fall out, and always ache.
And:
As famous, damaged jaws had been one other exceedingly widespread end result of tooth extraction. In 1530, the primary printed e book on dentistry, the German Zene Artzney, or “Medicines for the Enamel,” suggested, “The signal by which you will choose whether or not the jaw be fractured or one thing of it damaged off, is when the cavity wherefrom the tooth has been drawn bleeds greater than normal, and the jaw swells a lot that one can not open the mouth, and the cavity festers and swells.” Within the seventeenth century, as sugar turned extra extensively obtainable in Europe, tooth decay turned an much more widespread ailment. The rich, who had the earliest and most ample entry to sugar, had been the primary and worst stricken. By 1602, it was noticed that Queen Elizabeth I “showeth some decay, which to hide when she cometh in public she putteth many positive cloths into her mouth to bear out her cheeks. ”In different phrases, she was lacking sufficient enamel to even have an effect on the outward look of her face, along with her pores and skin sagging into the area the place enamel would usually be.
DRH remark: In 2015, I disagreed strongly with Milton and Rose Friedman’s following assertion in Free to Select:
Industrial progress, mechanical enchancment, all the nice wonders of the fashionable period have meant little to the rich. The wealthy in historical Greece would have benefited hardly in any respect from fashionable plumbing–working servants changed working water.
I don’t find out about Milton and Rose, however I positively depend fashionable dentistry as one of many wonders of the fashionable period. The excerpted article above says why.
by John Miltimore, The Every day Financial system, December 25, 2024.
Randolph’s racism seems much less extreme than Mortimer’s. In any case, denying a person a job due to his race and utilizing a racial slur is way harsher than observing musical expertise (actual or perceived) in a gaggle of individuals. However each are examples of racism; and the viewers sees this clearly. Furthermore, we later see that Randolph’s kinder, gentler racism isn’t far faraway from Mortimer’s, since Randolph agrees along with his brother following his racist outburst.
Not everybody would possibly agree with this evaluation, after all. Some could argue that Mortimer is extra racist than Randolph. What’s essential to grasp is that the racism of the Duke brothers comes from the identical place: they overlook Billy Ray as an particular person, even after testing his mettle.
And:
“[Racism] is the notion of ascribing ethical, social or political significance to a person’s genetic lineage — the notion {that a} man’s mental and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his inner physique chemistry,” Rand wrote in The Advantage of Selfishness. “Which implies, in observe, {that a} man is to be judged, not by his personal character and actions, however by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.”
Rand, an individualist, known as racism “the bottom, most crudely primitive type of collectivism” — and she or he was proper. Sadly, this primitive collectivism was institutionalized in America for a lot of the 20th century by way of Jim Crow legal guidelines, which marginalized African People and enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement within the South.
And:
“I don’t assume white individuals worldwide have actually reckoned with how a lot their very own private id is formed by constructions of whiteness,” Kendi stated throughout a latest speak. “Whiteness prevents white individuals from connecting to humanity.”
One needn’t have a PhD to see that regardless of all of this fancy language, Kendi’s “antiracism” is deeply racist. Like Randolph and Mortimer, he doesn’t see individuals as people; he sees them when it comes to their race (on this case “whiteness”).
by Alexander William Salter, The James G. Martin Heart for Financial Renewal, December 27, 2024.
Excerpt:
The economics main is in dire straits. Throughout the nation, econ curricula aren’t instilling an appreciation for, or perhaps a familiarity with, the financial mind-set. Principle lessons restrict the ability of financial evaluation by decreasing markets to sterile workout routines in “excellent competitors,” or else subordinating social science to social management by obsessing over “market failures.” Empirical lessons equip college students with refined statistical instruments however at the price of decreasing utilized economics to data-mongering.
The unlucky result’s that econ majors are nearly all the time half-educated and quarter-lettered. They’ll memorize fashions and run regressions. They’ll confidently make pronouncements in regards to the necessity of corrective taxes and laws to advertise financial effectivity. However they’re unable to clarify why popcorn prices a lot on the films, how we knowhigh oil costs aren’t the results of price-gouging, or—most worrying of all– what makes some nations wealthy and others poor. The state of affairs is grim.
But it’s not hopeless. All of the supplies that professors want to coach economists nicely are already obtainable. There are a lot of methods to restructure curricula to provide competent financial reasoners. All of them require vast studying and deep pondering. College students whose consideration spans run out at 280 characters haven’t any place in an economics program.
