by David Friedman, “David Friedman’s Substack,” December 25, 2024.
Excerpts:
In 2024 Republicans received slightly 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 at the moment 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 stage, 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 put up. If the inhabitants of Tennessee had been evenly distributed, with the identical share of Republican and Democratic voters in every congressional district, the bulk get together 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 courtroom has interpreted the Voters Rights Act to justify compelled redistricting to make the variety of congressional representatives of every get together proportional to the variety of votes forged for that get together.
If one ever does, the Libertarian Get together, with .42% of the vote in 2024, ought to sue for its two congressmen.
by Jeanna Smialek, New York Instances, December 6, 2024. (HT to Tyler Cowen as a result of I had missed this one on the time.)
Excerpts:
FRED — whose title stands for Federal Reserve Financial Knowledge — 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 Sixties, with an economist named Homer Jones (now typically known as the “grandfather of FRED”). Mr. Jones was the director of analysis on the Fed’s department in St. Louis, and he wished 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 instructor Homer Jones with getting him all for economics.
by Chelsea Follett, Human Progress, December 24, 2024.
Excerpts:
The author P. J. O’Rourke famously quipped, “Once you consider the nice previous 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 gives a lot to chew on. Because the New York Instances Guide Overview put it, “Wynbrandt has clearly finished his homework.”
Our ancestors’ tooth had been in an appalling state. As Wynbrandt factors out whereas quoting the Previous Testomony, calling a girl’s tooth 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 tooth had been far rarer up to now than at the moment. 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 responsible for their tooth to rot, fall out, and consistently ache.
And:
As famous, damaged jaws had been one other exceedingly widespread end result of tooth extraction. In 1530, the primary printed guide 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 traditional, 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 grew to become extra extensively obtainable in Europe, tooth decay grew to become an much more widespread ailment. The rich, who had the earliest and most considerable entry to sugar, had been the primary and worst troubled. By 1602, it was noticed that Queen Elizabeth I “showeth some decay, which to hide when she cometh in public she putteth many advantageous cloths into her mouth to bear out her cheeks. ”In different phrases, she was lacking sufficient tooth to even have an effect on the outward look of her face, together with her pores and skin sagging into the house the place tooth 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, the entire nice wonders of the trendy period have meant little to the rich. The wealthy in historic Greece would have benefited hardly in any respect from trendy plumbing–working servants changed working water.
I don’t find out about Milton and Rose, however I undoubtedly depend trendy dentistry as one of many wonders of the trendy 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 far harsher than observing musical expertise (actual or perceived) in a bunch of individuals. However each are examples of racism; and the viewers sees this clearly. Furthermore, we later see that Randolph’s kinder, gentler racism shouldn’t be far faraway from Mortimer’s, since Randolph agrees along with his brother following his racist outburst.
Not everybody would possibly agree with this evaluation, in fact. Some could argue that Mortimer is extra racist than Randolph. What’s essential to know is that the racism of the Duke brothers comes from the identical place: they miss out on 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 suggests, in apply, {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 he or she was proper. Sadly, this primitive collectivism was institutionalized in America for a lot of the 20th century by Jim Crow legal guidelines, which marginalized African People and enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement within the South.
And:
“I don’t assume white folks worldwide have actually reckoned with how a lot their very own private identification is formed by constructions of whiteness,” Kendi mentioned throughout a current speak. “Whiteness prevents white folks 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 folks as people; he sees them when it comes to their race (on this case “whiteness”).
by Alexander William Salter, The James G. Martin Middle 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 courses restrict the ability of financial evaluation by decreasing markets to sterile workouts in “good competitors,” or else subordinating social science to social management by obsessing over “market failures.” Empirical courses 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 virtually all the time half-educated and quarter-lettered. They’ll memorize fashions and run regressions. They’ll confidently make pronouncements concerning the necessity of corrective taxes and laws to advertise financial effectivity. However they’re unable to clarify why popcorn prices a lot on the motion pictures, 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 supply competent financial reasoners. All of them require huge studying and deep pondering. College students whose consideration spans run out at 280 characters haven’t any place in an economics program.
