Stationary Bandit

Immigration Questions

Russ Roberts raises a few good points pertaining to the present debate.

We once believed in a lady in the harbor with a lamp beside the golden door. She said "send me your tired huddled masses yearning to breathe free." She welcomed the wretched and the homeless. Now it's "send me your tired huddled masses as long as they're software developers, 25-39 years old and can already speak English." So modern. So utilitarian. So ugly.

Here's an idea. If we care so much about keeping the US competitive in the global economy, we can do more than just keep the wrong people out. Let's make existing residents prove they're worthy of staying here.

Here is the whole piece. 

Media Hypocrisy?

When major companies close plants, newspapers are quick to point out the suffering of those who lose their jobs.  They express their disgust with the amount of the salary of the CEO.  If only the CEO would take a reduction in salary, these workers could retain their jobs. 

Here is an instance where very few people will learn of the plight of recently unemployed.  The NYT is closing an Edison, NJ plant and several hundred jobs will be lost.  I wonder how many media outlets will remind us of the salary of the CEO of the NYT?

Update

After taking some time off from blogging, I plan to resume shortly.

The Dionysian Trap

The always insighful Orlando Patterson offers his thoughts how culture has constrained young black males from benefiting from recent economic progress in the United States.

So why were they flunking out? Their candid answer was that what sociologists call the "cool-pose culture" of young black men was simply too gratifying to give up. For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture, the fact that almost all the superstar athletes and a great many of the nation's best entertainers were black.

Not only was living this subculture immensely fulfilling, the boys said, it also brought them a great deal of respect from white youths. This also explains the otherwise puzzling finding by social psychologists that young black men and women tend to have the highest levels of self-esteem of all ethnic groups, and that their self-image is independent of how badly they were doing in school.

I call this the Dionysian trap for young black men. The important thing to note about the subculture that ensnares them is that it is not disconnected from the mainstream culture. To the contrary, it has powerful support from some of America's largest corporations. Hip-hop, professional basketball and homeboy fashions are as American as cherry pie. Young white Americans are very much into these things, but selectively; they know when it is time to turn off Fifty Cent and get out the SAT prep book.

Here is the whole piece. 

Clive the Turtle

Not too many animals can claim that they belonged to Lord Clive, who led the British in the Battle of Plassey against the Nawab of Bengal in 1757. and lived through Y2K.

A tortoise that once belonged to British colonial general Clive of India in the 18th Century has died in a zoo in Calcutta.  Adwaita, "the only one" in Bengali, was found dead by keepers in Alipore Zoo on Wednesday. His shell cracked some months ago and a wound had developed.   West Bengal officials said records showed Adwaita was at least 150 years old but other evidence pointed to 250.

Story here.

Raising Awareness about Modern Slavery

Sadly, slavery continues in the modern world.  The Sudan, for example, continues to permit it.  Some students in Oregon are trying to raise awareness and get out of homework at the same time.

Students at Robert Gray Middle School in Southwest have. The sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade classes of teacher Sarah Burpee have been staging creative fundraisers for a Boston-based nonprofit working to end chattel slavery in Sudan.

The students have collected pocket change, drummed up donations in exchange for seeing teachers getting pies in the face (voluntarily, of course), wearing pajamas to school or their hair in crazy styles, or -- best of all -- giving no homework for a week. Principal Willie Poinsette has agreed to dance the Electric Slide (do kids these days even know what the Electric Slide is?) if students can fill a giant jar full of change.

For those interested, the American Anti-Slavery Group has lots of additional information about the present state of slavery.

Sometimes Your Vote Does Count

Hillsdale, MI recently elected a new mayor--18 year old Michael Sessions (story here).  He did not win by much.

The new mayor was only 17 in August when the deadline passed to file for election. In late September he turned 18 and began his write-in campaign, using money from a summer job. The work paid off. 670 voters wrote his name on the ballot, ousting the old mayor by just two votes.

Rebuild New Orleans?

Ed Glaeser does not think so.

But, the Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser argues, such an approach is backward. "If there is disaster insurance, then it is, presumably, the people of New Orleans who are insured, not the place itself," he writes in an article for The Economists' Voice, an online journal (www.bepress.com/ev). The article is called "Should the Government Rebuild New Orleans, or Just Give Residents Checks?" He favors the latter.

His basic argument is that individuals are better at picking where to live and work than any centralized government planner. Evacuees know their own wishes, skills and opportunities.

Besides, "if you're going to bet on place," Professor Glaeser said in an interview, "New Orleans is probably not the right place to be betting on. It's a mid-19th-century city built around a tremendous water-based advantage of the mid-19th century, not around any kind of advantage of use in the 21st century."

The rest of the story is here.

India Continues its Rapid Growth

More evidence that market-oriented reforms lead to economic growth.

India's economy expanded at the fastest pace in more than a year in the first quarter, as companies including Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. increased production to meet rising orders.         

Gross domestic product in Asia's fourth-largest economy expanded 8.1 percent in the three months ended June 30 from a year earlier, the Central Statistical Organisation said in New Delhi today. That compares with a 7.2 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of nine economists.

Story here.  Let's hope that neither corruption nor the recent nationwide strike derail the necessary reforms to continue its transition to a market-based economy and higher levels of income. 
         

      

Has Joe Stiglitz Lost His Mind?

It appears that his has let his ideology overcome his better judgment.  As a result, he sounds like someone from the far left.  First, in his latest column, he writes that

The Bush administration’s response to the hurricane confirmed the suspicion among blacks that, while they might send their boys to fight America’s wars, they had not only been left behind in America’s prosperity, but that there was neither understanding nor concern when they needed it most.

He continues.

Scientists increasingly believe that global warming will be accompanied by larger climatic disturbances. Recent evidence is at least consistent with that hypothesis. Perhaps Bush had hoped that the consequences of global warming would be felt long after he left office — and would be felt more by poor, low-lying, tropical countries like Bangladesh than by a rich country astride the temperate zone.

If I understand the column, Stiglitz's believes that the Katrina resulted from global warming which Bush could have stopped or slowed down but he did not because he is anti-poor and anti-black.  I think I understand why Jagdish Bhagwati said "I often tell Stiglitz that you can use the Nobel Prize as a weapon of mass destruction."  Stiglitz's recent column is a good example.