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 at the moment would doubtless have a slim one-seat majority within the US Home of Representatives reasonably 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 submit. If the inhabitants of Tennessee had been evenly distributed, with the identical share of Republican and Democratic voters in every congressional district, the bulk social gathering would win all of them — even when the division of votes was 51/49. With a majority of just about two to at least one, the one manner the Democrats get any seats is that if their voters occur to be concentrated in a single or a number 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 social gathering proportional to the variety of votes forged for that social gathering.
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 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 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 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 choices extra data-based, so he began to mail typed knowledge experiences to Fed officers across the nation.
DRH observe: The story doesn’t point out it however Milton Friedman has credited his trainer 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, “Whenever 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 loads to chew on. Because the New York Instances Guide Evaluate put it, “Wynbrandt has clearly achieved his homework.”
Our ancestors’ enamel had been in an appalling state. As Wynbrandt factors out whereas quoting the Outdated 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 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 should be blamed for their enamel to rot, fall out, and consistently ache.
And:
As famous, damaged jaws had been one other exceedingly frequent end result of tooth extraction. In 1530, the primary printed e book on dentistry, the German Zene Artzney, or “Medicines for the Tooth,” suggested, “The signal by which you will decide 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 grew to become extra broadly obtainable in Europe, tooth decay grew to become an much more frequent ailment. The rich, who had the earliest and most plentiful 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 high-quality 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, together 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 trendy plumbing–working servants changed working water.
I don’t learn about Milton and Rose, however I undoubtedly depend trendy 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 just isn’t far faraway from Mortimer’s, since Randolph agrees along with his brother following his racist outburst.
Not everybody may agree with this evaluation, in fact. Some might 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 fail to spot 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 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 20 th century by means of 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 discuss. “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 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. Concept courses restrict the ability of financial evaluation by lowering markets to sterile workout routines in “excellent competitors,” or else subordinating social science to social management by obsessing over “market failures.” Empirical courses equip college students with subtle statistical instruments however at the price of lowering utilized economics to data-mongering.
The unlucky result’s that econ majors are nearly at all times half-educated and quarter-lettered. They will memorize fashions and run regressions. They are going to 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 scenario is grim.
But it’s not hopeless. All of the supplies that professors want to coach economists effectively are already obtainable. There are numerous methods to restructure curricula to supply competent financial reasoners. All of them require extensive studying and deep pondering. College students whose consideration spans run out at 280 characters don’t have any place in an economics program.
