Reflections on the Iraq War

1. "Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It"
2. Interactive map
3. Graphs

The article, maps, and graphs focus on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Income Support, Unemployment Insurance, and Vet Benefits.  What the article misses (and I know this was not their objective) is all of the other ways that people are indirectly dependent on government resources--primarily in the various forms of corporate welfare that permeate government distribution (farm subsidies, oil subsidies, highway subsidies, bank bailouts, etc.).  

I point this out for two reasons. First, if we managed to add these indirect government benefits to the map I suspect we would find that the map flattens out--that is, the areas where individuals are not terribly reliant on direct government benefits may also be the areas where companies (and by extension, their employees) are benefiting from government support.  Second, one of the things not being talked about in the Republican small government conversation is the vast network of indirect government benefits that permeate American economic life. While small government advocates do bring up the bank bailouts, you rarely hear them talking about all the other ways that people are indirectly dependent on government.  Talk to anybody on Capitol Hill about making major reforms to the farm subsidy system and you will quickly realize what the real third-rail of American politics is.  This is, of course, on purpose. Many small-government advocates rely heavily on these benefits and would regret them becoming a serious component of the small government conversation.  

This is not say that corporate welfare is necessarily bad.  My own thought is that corporate welfare ought to be the subject of the same sort of scrutiny that individual government benefits are subject to.  Anybody out there that does not think that Medicare requires serious reform (in order to just stay solvent, let alone become a "better" program) is not looking at the facts. The same can be said of energy subsidies and bank subsidies. We need government to incentivize clean fuel productions and to make sure that when banks screw up--even when their actions have been terribly (even, potentially, criminally) misguided--the whole economic system does not collapse.  I just wish we were having an honest conversation about it.  

from the NYT

http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/what-a-drag/

Krugman (NYT): Nobody Understands Debt

Stevenson (Slate): The Greatest Paper Map of US You Will Ever See

Nocera (NYT): The College Sports Cartel (and his follow-up pieces: Let's Start Paying College Athletes, NCAA's 'Justice' System and More NCAA 'Justice')

Mary Williams Walsh had a good piece this week on the pension crisis in Rhode Island and what it means for the state government and local governments.  

John Cassidy had an interesting story about Keynes in the New Yorker a few weeks ago and it is now up for non-subscribers.  His central question: What would Keynes tell us to do now?  He also touches on how the Republican approach of tax-cuts is, even though they would deny it, a Keynesian approach.  

Slate's Tom Vanderbilt has an interesting (and fun) story on "rolling speed harmonization" which is a technique being tested on I-70 in Colorado.  By reducing average speed but keeping it constant, people get where they want to go faster and safer.

Happy reading.

The basics are that a team wins the series when it is up 3-0, 4-1, 4-2, 5-3, or 5-4 (which ever comes first).  Of course, the format lacks the simplicity and elegance of the "Best of..." format but I do think he is on to something.  Naturally, the format has one of the same shortcomings as the current format in that as the series gets longer (it effectively turns into a best of 9 series) the less sure we are that the format has picked the best winner--such is Ellenberg's tradeoff to produce a winner quickly.  Of course, at 3-3 or 4-4 the differences between the teams are likely narrower so it is going to be more difficult to make a "true" determination of which team is better.  The problem is that these narrow difference situations are exactly the ones in which we want to know who the better team is.  My (untested and probably more imperfect) solution: after both teams get 2 losses, the winning team must win 2 games in a row to be declared a winner (like tennis).  However, 3-0 will end the series and so will 3-1 (this makes the 2-1 game very exciting). The result would be that every other game beginning with the 3-2 game would be really exciting.  Yes, the series could go on forever but such is my trade-off for producing the best winner.  

In any case, it is fun to think about.