Ebay for Innovation

http://www.innocentive.com/ A kind of interesting platform for innovation.

France Abandons Carbon Tax

Seems like Cap and Trade is not getting anywhere.

France has abandoned the carbon tax amid fears that French businesses would lose competitive edge internationally.

Breakthrough.org sees this as further proof that cap and trade is politically impossible since Australia and Canada also abandoned cap and trade programs recently.

It doesn't prove to me that cap and trade is not worthwhile. It does show how invested we are in subsidizing pollution and energy. In Beyond Growth, Herman Daly talks about how globalization and free trade causes nations to be unable to set policy unilaterally. Transnational corporations are more powerful than nations themselves because of the need for economic stability. It's unclear how to get out of this situation, though.

Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and Finland have carbon taxes, though.

Health Care

Obama signed the health care overhaul! I'm excited, but it makes me uneasy how there are still so many people who oppose it. I should really figure out what the bill actually said. At any rate, MA already has mandatory health insurance, and the federal overhaul was modeled after MA's overhaul, so things aren't going to change that much in MA.

Here's President Obama's remarks in Iowa City.

He claims

But we have built into law all sorts of measures that in the years to come, health care inflation, which has been rising about three times as fast as people’s wages, is finally going to start slowing down. We’ll start reducing the waste in the system, from unnecessary tests to unwarranted insurance subsidies.

And once this reform is implemented, then health insurance exchanges are going to be created. This is the core -- the core aspect of this bill that is going to be so important to Americans who are looking for coverage. Basically, we set up a competitive marketplace where people without insurance, small businesses, people who were having to pay through the teeth because they’re just buying insurance on their own, maybe you’re self-employed -- you’re finally going to be able to purchase quality, affordable, health insurance because you’re going to be part of a big pool -- by the way, with members of Congress. So you will be able to get the same good deal that they’re getting, because if you’re paying their salary, you should have health insurance that’s at least as good as theirs.

Here's an article about More Doctors Taking Salaried Positions vs private practice. It could be generally good for patients as their records can pass through the system more easily, but could be letting Big Medicine more easily set high health care costs. However, "The process feeds on itself because doctors who remain in private practice worry that as their peers sell out, their own options become more limited and the prices for their own practices fall," implying that insurance companies are paying doctors less so I'm kind of confused about which is it.

“We wouldn’t go back,” he said, “now that we’ve seen the value of improved patient care and improved communication with primary care physicians.”

Michael Packnett, the president of Parkview and Dr. Mirro’s new boss, said that his organization was growing rapidly, while the number of independent hospital and doctor practices in northeast Indiana shrank. A key reason, Mr. Packnett said, is that many doctors have decided that the challenges of running their own businesses are simply too great.

“Now they get to refocus on practicing medicine,” Mr. Packnett said.

women in science and engineering

new report out: http://www.aauw.org/research/whysofew.cfm


a not very good article on it in the nyt: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/science/22women.html

i'll try to comment more after reading it.

Sell Short

Interesting piece from WBUR on some novels about the financial crisis by Michael Lewis like the Big Short.

Burry figured that he could bet against pools of these subprime mortgage loans using an instrument called a "credit default swap," essentially insurance on a corporate loan. Burry persuaded the investment banks to create credit default swaps for the subprime mortgage market.

"As the pools of loans that are underneath these bonds start to default," Lewis says, the investment banks that gambled on the subprime mortgage loans were forced to send Burry money daily as the bonds went bad. "Wall Street firms, they were on the other side of the bets."

And in the clip, they talk about how AIG was where the Wall Street firms got their money.

William Edwards Deming

I recently bought a book by Deming on a whim without really knowing who he was. They were talking about him on the radio the other day, though, about how he is largely credited with improving Japanese management practices and manufacturing quality after WWII. I just started reading his book. He was the one who advocated for US manufacturing to move away from cheap goods and move to higher value higher quality goods. Actually, the US has been successful in doing this, but now the labor force has been put out of work. I wonder if he was wrong or if his suggestions were not implemented according to his intentions. He says that competition can be bad when people race to lower standards. Some of this is consistent with Daly's criticism of free trade. Production moves to places with lower environmental standards and workplace safety laws. It'll be interesting to compare his views with Forrester and Daly's along with more conventional economists like Krugman.

Work Life Balance

Cool NPR piece on getting rid of 9-5. This kind of lifestyle would be really amazing. I would be able to have time to pursue hobbies. On the other hand, it is very convenient to work with people in person.

Complaints About China

Krugman recently wrote an article saying how the US needs to "get tough" with China and its undervalued RMB. He suggests a 25% tariff on Chinese goods. It's been interesting reading the comments. They are much less anti-China than they used to be. Of those who disagree with this policy, here were a number of similar themes.

1. The US banking sector caused this economic collapse, not China, so the US can only blame its problems on its own policies of deregulation and thus should bear the burden of fixing itself. In fact, many people praised the Chinese for working hard and the Chinese government for unabashedly looking out for the well-being of their citizens, which was nice but kind of strange to hear and might not be totally deserved. There is also the widespread view that China has helped to stabilize the world economy.

2. People pointed out that a tariff or devaluing the RMB would probably put 30 million Chinese people out of work, and it would be hard to convince the Chinese that this is more fair than having unemployment in the US, especially since most Americans are still better off than most Chinese people.

3. The US pursued a policy of free trade in the first place and while American manufacturing was moved overseas, hurting the labor class, many other Americans gained financially from these policies. Much of the cheap goods that are manufactured in China were made for US companies. Now that the US government does not want to be in debt to China anymore, they want China to devalue its currency so that the government effectively owes less money.

4. The idea of tariffs and moving away from free trade is not intrinsically a bad idea, but rebuilding American manufacturing would be a long term commitment. The immediate effects of a tariff would be that people would buy from the second cheapest places like other countries in SE Asia. It would basically be like a sales tax on Americans. People pointed out that the US also has trade deficits with many other countries like Japan and Germany so it's a more structural problem than just value of the RMB.

5. Some questioned whether "devaluing" the RMB is really less fair than the kinds of economic and trade policies practiced by the US. The value of currency is not that clear cut, and much of the purpose of monetary policy is to influence the value of the currency.

6. Krugman is also known for advocating going into even more debt to stimulate the economy. He is in favor of a Keynesian New Deal type program. This seems inconsistent with his views on trade with China.

7. Actually, the book Poorly Made In China was lamenting that it is becoming more difficult and expensive to manufacture in China, so perhaps the trend is already for manufacturing to move away from China.

Religion and Defectors

Last week the NYT had a really interesting article on Scientology. I started reading stories from ex-scientologists online. It's fascinating how people get indoctrinated into a system and how the system targets people. It's like how magic tricks and hypnosis work better on some people than others.

History and Vigilantism

Recently NPR was talking about John Brown, the abolitionist who tried to free slaves by force leading up to the start of the Civil War. They were saying how state governments are cutting funding to parks so they might close the park where he is buried.

I didn't realize the familiar and distinctive Civil War tune is about him.
John Brown's body lies a-molderin' in the grave. x3
His soul's marching on.

Yay history. He was a vigilante, but he turned out to be on the right side.