Almost Classical

Richard Florida and his team are at it again, pointing to correlations and assuming causations.  High-School Dropouts and College Grads Are Moving to Very Different Places Cities like Washington and San Francisco are gaining the highly skilled but losing their less-educated workforce. While I suppose I could live anywhere, my career somewhat demands that I be near either cities or at least college towns. It isn't that I love or even like cities — I don't — but I like being employed. I don't like the noise, light, or other pollution of cities. Employment: it beats the alternative. Don't imagine cities are "attractive" to every migrating household. No, they simply are where we must go, and we must demand higher and higher salaries to afford those very cities, pushing the inequality gap wider and wider.  Want to live near the great university where I work? Expect to spend $700K or more on a little, old, problems-included, house. Invest another $100K...

We will always have articles accusing "libertarianism" of being everything from "fascist" (huh?) to "right-wring" to "juvenile." Those advocating for classical liberalism will be linked to racists, plutocrats, crony capitalists, and other perversions of limited government and negative rights. (I still hate the "negative" rights label, inherently a rhetorical device that insults various philosophical and political schools of thought.) When I read "Somalia is a libertarian paradise," I know the comment poster is either ignorant or intentionally lying. The basics of classical liberalism include: Rule of law, with an egalitarian legal system; Enforced contracts, protecting parties in transactions; Property rights beginning with the individual's ownership of self; Limited, effective, and reliable government. Now, for the sad reality that libertarians in the United States need to address: there are horrible people who...

Over on Politico, the divisions we know exist are examined yet again, this time in a new Pew poll. Pew poll: Polarization highest in recent history Two decades ago, “a lot of Democrats and Republicans said they didn’t really like what the other party was doing, but they didn’t downright worry about them and see them as a threat in the way that we’re seeing from a lot of people today,” said Michael Dimock, Pew’s vice president for research. On Facebook, my political friends are increasingly intolerant of other views. It is best to be neutral and ignore the political, or you risk having to choose sides when neither "side" is of much interest. The hatred, the name calling, the complete intolerance for "them" and a conviction that "they" are destroying this country is… destroying this country. As a classical liberal, I'm the definition of a radical moderate. Leave me alone, and I'll support your right to be left alone. Let me be a heath-consciou...

I tell my students, learn to tell a story about economics, not merely to report statistics. This is why: Taking On Adam Smith (and Karl Marx) - NYTimes.com : Academic economics is so focused on getting the econometrics and the statistical interpolation technique correct, he said, “you don’t really think, you don’t dare to ask the big questions.” American economists too often narrow the questions they examine to those they can answer, “but sometimes the questions are not that interesting,” he said. “Trying to write a real book that could speak to everyone meant I could not choose my questions. I had to take the important issues in a frontal manner — I could not escape.”  He hated the insularity of the economics department. So he decided to write large, a book he considers as much history as economics, and one that is constructed to lead the general reader by the hand. He is also not afraid of literature, finding inspiration in the descriptions of society in the realist novels ...

On April 18, 2014, the city of Providence, R.I. , added to the growing list of lawsuits against exchanges, brokers, and HFT specialists. This demonstrates the power of narrative. The Lewis book,  Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt , contains nothing new, no breaking story or previously unpublished information. But, Lewis' ability to tell a story and tell it well compels politicians to respond. Remember, state attorneys general run for office; public officials remain politicians, not mere lawyers. As the media and voting public demand action, the financial industry faces growing pressures. This happened with tech stocks (how VC were taxed), the home lending industry, and now HFT. Laws pass on emotion, seldom offering good solutions to perceived problems. The lawsuits relating to HFT will culminate in regulatory changes, if not outright wins in court. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/18/highspeed-classaction-idUSL2N0NA0XC20140418 (Reuters) - Dozens of the largest U.S. stoc...

Instead of blogging everything I read or hear, I use Twitter to promote the better content I encounter online. https://twitter.com/almostclassical Twitter seems to be the replacement for RSS feeds, sadly. I miss the old, text-centric days of newsgroups, mailing lists, and feeds. Oh, well. The market has spoken. 

The "Great Sort" at the local and state level, not the evils of redistricting, has changed our government — and, more importantly, our national discussions on all issues. And I do mean all  issues, because studies show left/right; progressive / liberal / libertarian / conservative; secular/religious; North / South / East / West; and other ways to group people correlate to music choices, television viewing, trust in government, and much more. How can we prove that redistricting isn't the villain behind our political discourse? Easily: we look at the Senate, which should represent entire states, not statistically modeled and gerrymandered districts. Yet, the Senate, supposedly the great deliberative body of our government, has become little more than yet another left-right battleground. The ideological middle is dead in Congress. Really dead. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/10/the-ideological-middle-is-dead-in-congress-really-dead/ BY CHRIS CIL...