Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation—"It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?"
Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.
Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier's trade—that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs—I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.
But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen."
It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.
It seems that the comparison of using stimulus dollars for green investments to broken windows is akin to making a type III error: giving the right answer to the wrong question. No, green investments by the public sector will not increase the long-run number of jobs, and they may have some unintended consequences if future harm is not priced with a tax or an auction. However, short-term public sector jobs will reduce the pain of the current recession by reducing overall employment in the short term. Then the question is what the best thing to do is, i.e. "are green jobs better than the next best alternative for public funds?" To many the answer is "yes." Investments made now to clean up the environment and improve our energy infrastructure will do a lot to increase welfare even if that welfare is not well measured by the metrics of GDP and employment. The "broken windows" analogy also frames the debate in a misleading way. If the analogy is apt, then it must be the case that the "windows" are already "broken" and the cleanup investments are just paying the tab for the vandalism of past generations.
The EU, Canada, and Japan are in the aggregate much more significant tradeI think we're missing the bigger issue: Why a carbon tariff? Why not just a tax on carbon content for domestically and foreign produced goods? Why give domestic producers a "carbon subsidy?"
partners than China/Mexico/Brazil. And the case for them charging us carbon
tariffs seems about as good as the case for us charging the Chinese.
Last year, the U.S. Justice Department began investigating whether VMI's environment is especially hostile to women. Allegations of sexual assault have become a fact of VMI life, occurring about once a year, typical for a school of this size, according to college officials. The first case to result in a criminal charge ended Tuesday.That means they guy could have easily been convicted, but instead got a suspended sentence, meaning he will not serve a day for rape. Probably happens all the time all across the country, and that is a sad commentary on our society.In that case, a female cadet alleged that Stephen J. Lloyd, then a senior from Mason Neck, Va., pulled her into a storage room the night of March 27 and raped her. Lloyd no longer attends VMI. On Tuesday, he entered an Alford plea, which means he did not admit guilt but acknowledged that there is enough evidence to convict him. The plea is tantamount to a conviction of misdemeanor sexual battery.
The sentence: a year in jail and a $2,500 fine, suspended.
In 2008, only 14 percent of federal workers were on part-time schedules, compared to 26 percent in the private sector. Federal workers were far older on average: 55 percent were between the ages of 45 and 64, compared to 36 percent of private-sector workers. Furthermore, 45 percent of federal workers held a college degree or higher educational credential, compared to 29 percent of private-sector workers.and
analysis of the impact of individual education and experience on earnings in the United States by the Harvard economist George Borjas showed that federal employees are paid considerably less than comparable private workers at the top end.Basically, people looking at the simple averages are not accounting for several important ("lurking") variables that more than explain the average differentials between federal employees and the average private-sector employee. Andrew Gelman calls this a lack of "statistical literacy"; some call it "lying with statistics". These statistical liars include Chris Edwards at Cato (who by the way should probably know better but is advancing a deliberate agenda), The Free Enterprise Nation, Ilana Mercer of World Net Daily, and Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe.
“In reading [Professor Ostrom's and Williamson's] work, you are
impressed that economics is not really fundamentally about markets, but
about resource allocation and distribution problems. Markets appear
because they operate effectively to handle a subset of these resource allocation
challenges. ” - Michael Spence, senior fellow, the Hoover Institution.
the shares of all the big American media companies have outperformed the market since March.
Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses.... The frozen hamburgers made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company... Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testing only after the ingredients are ground together.
...lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard.Nor is knowing the producer necessarily good for the community:
Historically, such personalized economic transactions were the norm, but they were inherently fraught with risk and tension. In colonial America — a place I’ve studied in some depth — all markets were initially driven by face-to-face interaction. It should come as no surprise that things could get, well, personal. Markets were intensely competitive and exclusive. Everyone knew everyone. And that was often the problem. The court records of colonial New England are replete with personal market transactions gone awry.Food for thought, so to speak. Trade is good.
