David Friedman, “David Friedman’s Substack,” December 25, 2024.
excerpt:
In 2024, Republicans won just under two-thirds of Tennessee’s votes. Still, he won eight of the state’s nine constituencies. All else being equal, gerrymandering in Tennessee would be significantly reduced, and Republicans today would likely have a mere one-seat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives instead of a five-seat advantage. (The Economist: At the state level, American democracy is crumbling)
Two-thirds of voters winning eight of nine seats is unusual in a proportional representation system, but the U.S. Congress passed the post first. If Tennessee’s population is evenly distributed and each congressional district has an equal proportion of Republican and Democratic voters, the majority party will win every district, even if the vote split is 51/49. I will do it. With a nearly 2-1 majority, Democrats can only win seats if voters happen to be concentrated in one or a few districts.
and:
As far as the Economist article is concerned, its claims are not supported by logic or current law. No court has interpreted the Voter Rights Act to justify forced redistricting to make each party’s number of members in Congress proportional to the number of votes cast for that party.
If that happens, the Libertarian Party, which has a 0.42% turnout in 2024, should sue the two members.
Jeanna Smialek, New York Times, December 6, 2024. (To Tyler Cowen, as I missed this at the time)
excerpt:
FRED (its name stands for Federal Reserve Economy Data) was born in 1991. But he had attracted the attention of the St. Louis Fed long before that.
and:
The story begins in the 1960s with an economist named Homer Jones (sometimes now referred to as “Fred’s grandfather”). Mr. Jones, director of research at the St. Louis Fed branch, wanted to make the central bank’s decisions more data-based, so he began mailing data reports to Fed officials across the country.
DRH Note: Although not mentioned in the article, Milton Friedman credits his teacher Homer Jones with getting him interested in economics.
Chelsea Follett, Human Progress, December 24, 2024.
excerpt:
Author PJ O’Rourke famously quoted, “When you think back to the good old days, think of one word: dentistry.” So let’s take his advice. There’s a lot to chew on in James Winbrandt’s The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces. As the New York Times review put it, “Winbrandt clearly did his homework.”
Our ancestors’ teeth were in terrible condition. As Winbrandt points out, citing the Old Testament, a woman’s teeth are said to be as white as a sheep’s, and not having a chipped tooth was once considered a high praise worthy of a love poem. . After all, healthy teeth were much rarer in the past than they are now. The first mass-produced bristle toothbrushes did not appear until around 1780, during the increasing industrialization of England. Before the Industrial Revolution, our ancestors had only a rudimentary understanding of what caused teeth to rot, fall out, and cause constant pain.
and:
As previously mentioned, jaw fractures are also a very common result of tooth extraction. In 1530, the first printed book on dentistry, the German Sene Artzny, or Medicine for Teeth, advised: The extracted tooth bleeds more than usual, the jaw is too swollen to open the mouth, and the cavity becomes suppurated and swollen. ” In the 17th century, as sugar became more widely available in Europe, cavities became an even more common treatment. The wealthy, who had the earliest and most plentiful access to sugar, were the first and hardest hit. By 1602, Elizabeth I was showing “some deterioration, and to hide it, when she appeared in public she would put a lot of fine cloth in her mouth and make her cheeks stick out.” It was observed that “In other words, she had lost enough teeth to even affect the appearance of her face, and her skin was hanging down where her teeth would normally be.”
DRH Comment: In 2015, I strongly disagreed with Milton and Rose Friedman’s statement in Free to Choice:
Industrial progress, mechanical improvements, and the great wonders of our time all mean little to the wealthy. The wealthy people of ancient Greece would have benefited little from modern plumbing. Servants were running instead of running water.
I don’t know about Milton and Rose, but I definitely think modern dentistry is one of the wonders of our time. The excerpt above explains why.
By John Miltimore, Daily Economy, December 25, 2024.
Randolph’s racism appears to be less severe than Mortimer’s. After all, denying a man a job or using racial slurs because of his race is far more important than observing musical talent (real or perceived) within the group. That’s tough. But both are examples of racism. And the audience can clearly see that. Additionally, we later find out that Randolph’s kinder, gentler racism isn’t all that different from Mortimer’s, as he agrees with his brother after he goes on a racist rant. Masu.
Of course, not everyone agrees with this analysis. Some might argue that Mortimer is more racist than Randolph. The important thing to understand is that the Duke brothers’ racism comes from the same place. Even though they tested Billy Ray’s mettle, they didn’t see him as an individual.
and:
“[Racism] “It is a concept that ascribes moral, social, or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage; that a man’s intellectual and character traits are produced and transmitted by chemical reactions within the body. ” wrote Rand in “The Virtue of Selfishness.” “This means, in practice, that people are judged not by their own character and behavior, but by the character and behavior of the group of their ancestors.”
Ms. Rand, an individualist, called racism “the lowest and most primitive form of collectivism,” and she was right. Unfortunately, this primitive collectivism was institutionalized in America for much of the 20th century by Jim Crow laws that marginalized African Americans and enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement in the South.
and:
“I don’t think white people around the world really consider how much their personal identities are shaped by constructions of whiteness,” Kendi said in a recent talk. “Whiteness prevents white people from connecting with humanity.”
You don’t need a PhD to know that despite this fancy language, Kendi’s “anti-racism” is deeply racist. Like Randolph and Mortimer, he does not see people as individuals. He views them in terms of race (in this case “whiteness”).
By Alexander William Salter, James G. Martin Center for Economic Revitalization, December 27, 2024.
excerpt:
The Faculty of Economics is in a dire situation. Nationally, the econo curriculum does not instill an appreciation for or familiarity with economic thinking. Theory classes limit the power of economic analysis by reducing markets to a futile exercise in “perfect competition” and by subordinating social science to social management through a fixation on “market failure.” Empirical classes provide students with advanced statistical tools, but at the cost of reducing applied economics to data management.
The unfortunate result is that students who major in economics consistently have about a quarter of the academic and academic backgrounds. They can memorize models and run regressions. They will confidently proclaim the need for corrective taxes and regulations to promote economic efficiency. But they wonder why popcorn is so expensive at movie theaters, how do they know that rising oil prices are not the result of price gouging, and most worryingly, what makes some It is impossible to explain what makes one country rich and another poor. The situation is difficult.
Still, it’s not hopeless. All the materials professors need to train economists are already available. There are many ways to restructure the curriculum to produce competent economic theorists. Both require extensive reading and deep thinking. Students who lose their attention span after 280 characters have no place in an economics program.
