I won't watch this Super Bowl, too

"The bag is not even full, and the total is almost 35 dollars?" I remarked with a laugh after the clerk rang up my groceries.

"Yes, eating is an expensive habit" she joined in.

My groceries were nothing compared to another guy's basket.  His was a more expensive amount.  But, it was not because he was loading up with food as if end times were around the corner.  Nope.  His high bill came from the beer and wine and party food--it is time for Super Bowl Sunday.

As the only regular reader (hehe!) knows well, I don't care a damn about the Super Bowl.  I cannot even recall the last time I watched the game.  Even in the years that I did, I was way more interested in the singing of the national anthem--all because of the phenomenal job that Whitney Houston did way back in my early years in this country.

Despite all the news reports on concussions and the taxpayer subsidies, the sport continues to have maniacal supporters.  Not only those who voted for this POTUS.  A great number of the ultra-left too are rabid sportswatchers.  I have always wondered how these lefties deal with the cognitive dissonance--their own ideological views on the political economy, versus the anti-competitive mega-rich owners of the teams sucking on taxpayer teats!  I tell ya, it is such unholy combinations that makes politics bizarre, and why truth has no place in politics.

The defense of taxpayer subsidy for sports, especially the stadiums (stadia?), is beyond truth!

Federal subsidies are justified for infrastructure projects that provide a public good across states, but local sports stadiums clearly do not meet this criterion.
Indeed, there is little evidence that stadiums provide even local economic benefits. Decades of academic studies consistently find no discernible positive relationship between sports facilities and local economic development, income growth, or job creation. And local benefits aside, there is clearly no economic justification for federal subsidies for sports stadiums. Residents of, say, Wyoming, Maine, or Alaska have nothing to gain from the Washington-area football team’s decision to locate in Virginia, Maryland, or the District of Columbia.

Now that we are fully in a post-truth America, who cares, right?  A listing--like here--on how all that taxpayer waste can be put to use will appeal only to a few truth-seekers!

I have often commented that sports in America is a wonderful proxy measure for many aspects of the country.  American football is highly correlated with jingoism and a militaristic attitude.  And more, like these two NY Times reports show:

It is a mad, mad, mad world! :(

Thus spake the market!

Think about this: Most kids and adults like to be entertained.  Most kids and adults alike do not care to invest time and energy into reading and thinking.  Are those fair enough generalizations?

Thus, if we had money to spend along with the time, then most of us would shell out our time and money on entertainment.  And what better entertainment than sports, right?

If we leave everything to the market, then that is the kind of an outcome we can expect.  Which is also what we see increasingly happening in higher education, where students spend their time and money.  And with plenty of help from taxpayers, sports rule.  The flashier and more exciting the sport is, the more is the money spent on it.

Which is why it is no surprise that this op-ed (in the NY Times!!!) author has taken it to the logical extreme: He (of course it is always a "he" when it comes to such nutcases!) says it is high time universities offered majors in football and basketball and ...: He cites how the market has already spoken in favor of this:

Last weekend, nearly 157,000 people packed Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee to see the University of Tennessee battle Virginia Tech, the largest crowd ever to turn out for a football game, college or professional.
With popularity comes money, and lots of it. In April, the N.C.A.A. signed a deal with CBS and Turner Broadcasting for an eight-year, $8.8 billion extension of their March Madness basketball TV contract to 2032, while the college football bowl series brings in more than $500 million annually.

Exactly.  When was the last time a philosophy match brought in such money?

The author offers more:

Athletic budgets have swelled as a result. Texas A&M is on the verge of becoming the first campus to bring in more than $200 million a year from athletics. The University of Iowa just announced a 10-year, $45 million contract extension for its football coach. In 40 states the highest paid public employee is a college coach.

Oh, I get it now; the high salaries of coaches at colleges is to be lauded as the market speaking loudly.  What was I thinking!

 The $6.9 million annual salary of Nick Saban, the head football coach at the University of Alabama, is equal to the combined average salary for nearly 100 assistant professors at the school, according to the most recent data available.

Get rid of those faculty in geography and pay the football coach some more, I say.

Oh, wait, except that coaches earning gazillions, and the NCAA being an awesome cash machine, are not the results of the free market.  Click here, and in the table sort it out by the final column on "% Subsidy" if you want to puke all over the screen!

And, oh, while the coaches get paid gazillions, the worker-bees, also known as students, do not get paid.  Surely that is how the market works.  It does not?

It's wrong that taxpayers are forced to subsidize professional sports teams via stadium deals and the like. It's equally wrong that taxpayers and students see their bills jacked up to fund college sports teams, no matter how enjoyable the spectacle. I suspect that if and when the actual payouts to athletic departments for sports programs become better known, this worm will turn.

Nope, in this entertainment obsessed world, no worm will turn anywhere.  Who cares if 30-year old Johnny can't read and lives in mom's basement as long as he gets screens full of entertainment!

How American cheese is made out of ... politics!

Unfortunately, this was in the funny pages of the newspaper, instead of the editorial pages where it truly belongs:

You assist a hardworking poor family with government policies and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan pounce on you.  You pay gazillions to subsidize and promote cheese, well, ...

Opining about the tripling of per capita cheese consumption in the US, Charles Lane wrote in the WaPo:

If people want more cheese, that’s between them and the free market, right?
Well, no. The summation of individual choices can have big costs for everyone. Obese people cost health insurers $1,429 more per year than the non-obese do, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Also, the Golden Age of Cheese was not purely the result of individual choices. It reflects decades of pro-cheese U.S. agriculture policy. I am not making this up. The nation’s cheese binge is a case study in the broader dysfunctionality of federal farm legislation, the latest iteration of which is being debated in Congress.
Yes, there are real social trends at work, too. An aging population consumes less milk as fluid and more in solid form; a wealthier population can afford a richer diet, including cheesy dishes eaten at restaurants.
But the country’s appetite for cheese also reflects U.S. policy.

 But, of course, we shall not discuss anything about real policies, but shall instead focus all our attention only on theatrical fluff.  Oh well, the fatty price we pay for "democracy" :(

"Green jobs" and Oregon. Intelligent investment, or subpar subsidy?

If only policy-making involved cut and dried kind of binary options, right? But, they are not, and that is only the beginning of the problem! 

Here in Oregon, there is always a dream of "green jobs."  The latest is SoloPower that is proceeding with its plans to build a solar panel manufacturing plant in Portland, thanks to the federal government guaranteeing the loan.  Yes, in the post-Solyndra world, this federal backing is generating a lot of controversy.

But, that controversy is not the reason for this blog post. 

The larger question is whether a federal or state government ought to have any such industrial policies to pick winners and invest in them. 

If private investment is not available in plenty, might there be a reason or two for that?  After all, isn't the market notorious for backing risky investments? Remember Enron, where private investments went down the drain?  Or, how about Google, where private investments have delivered a gazillion dollars as returns? 

Anyway, the industrial policy to favor "green jobs" gains momentum.  Along the lines of what one finds in this op-ed in the Oregonian:

The good news is that Oregon is well-positioned to capitalize on the latest trends in sustainable innovation thanks to its wealth of natural resources, close proximity to Pacific Rim markets, and strong history of acting as an environmental pioneer.

The bad news is that you're already behind due to growing global competition along with the politics in Washington, D.C. failing to provide adequate momentum and leadership. The current U.S. mindset remains mired in now passé second industrial revolution thinking based on fossil fuels, coal, natural gas and nuclear power.

In contrast, the green economic revolution -- and its adopters in the EU and Asia -- deploys renewable energy, new smart technology, and incorporates natural resources like water and land through sustainable policies and business practices. 

Thus, one might conclude it is a win-win for the economy and the environment. 

But, if it is really a win-win-win ... then wouldn't the market forces rush in to realize the profits?  Is the absence of a market rush indicative of how much there is no profit to be made, without taxpayer subsidy?

Why might there not be the big profit?  Megan McArdle explains:

Even if we succeeded in creating, via subsidy, a vibrant domestic solar panel manufacturing industry, there's no reason to think it would stay here . . . unless you're planning to continue the subsidies forever, which is like trying to get rich by paying yourself to mow the lawn.

This is why it's so stupid to focus on "green jobs".  The reason to promote green energy is to mitigate global warming, lessen economic dependence on some very volatile and unstable parts of the world, and build enough scale and demand that you maybe someday usher in an era of power that's "too cheap to meter", as they used to promise about nuclear.  I understand why it makes sense politically for Democrats, but it's also dangerous, because if you can't produce the jobs, a lot of your support for the "green" evaporates, a long with a lot of green money. 

 Where does China come into this?  McArdle channels Matt Yglesias:

What's at issue here, basically, is that China is trying to give us a bunch of free solar panels. It's quite true that insofar as we've been organizing economic activity around the (reasonable) assumption that China won't give us a bunch of free solar panels, that getting the free panels will cause some dislocations. But it seems implausible that the best possible way of dealing with the situation is to refuse to accept the panels. That (poor) China has chosen to boost domestic employment by subsidizing consumption in (rich) America is slightly bizarre, but we may as well try to enjoy it while it lasts.

See, a simple issue of green jobs is not as straightforward as one might wish, which is why policy-making is awfully difficult.  I am way suspicious of people--especially politicians and academics--who pretend or, worse, believe, that there is a right way and a wrong way and that is it.

Cheap food/high calories. Healthy food is expensive. Obese we are!

A big tip of the hat to Economix for the link to the following chart:

It is simply way easier in the US to consume a whole lot of calories by spending very little money.  A McDouble for a dollar is beyond ridiculous.  It doesn't even make sense that a burger would be this inexpensive. 

More from Leonhardt:

One dollar’s worth of Coke has 447 calories, while $1 of iceberg lettuce has just 16.5. To look at it another way, you would have to spend about $5 to buy 2,000 calories at McDonald’s, $19 to buy 2,000 calories worth of canned tuna and $60 to buy 2,000 calories worth of lettuce.
These gaps have become larger over time, as this chart makes clear:

Source: Bureau of Labor StatisticsChange in price of items since 1978, relative to overall inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. The price of carbonated drinks, for example, has fallen 34 percent relative to all other prices.

I rarely saw obese people in Quito and its surrounding areas.  BTW, fruits there were tremendously tasty and inexpensive; I think I bought two guavas and two bananas for about 35 or  40 cents.  These were the guavas with the red pulp inside.  Aaah!  One can't get obese by eating a whole bunch of bananas, guavas, papayas, ... maybe we ought to send--at taxpayer expense--the highly obese to Quito, have them walk those ups and downs of the city, and have them subsist on nothing but local fruits, steamed corn, and locro.

Getting rid of agricultural subsidies here in the US makes sense even from a health perspective.  These subsidies are killing us. Literally sometimes.

But, of course, that is not what Congress did.  Instead, the House voted to retain farm subsidies!  As Alex Tabarrok notes, the news headline "House keeps farm subsidies, cuts food aid" makes one think it is from the Onion!

Why a salad costs more than a Big Mac

provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.
The government also purchases surplus foods like cheese, milk, pork, and beef for distribution to food assistance programs—including school lunches. The government is not required to purchase nutritious foods. 

 Source, and ht
A note on the source, which is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine:

Founded in 1985, PCRM is a nonprofit organization supported by physicians and laypersons who receive Good Medicine each quarter. PCRM programs combine the efforts of medical experts and grassroots individuals.
Leadership
PCRM Board of Directors: Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President; Mark Sklar, M.D., Director; Russell Bunai, M.D., Treasurer and Secretary.

Chart of the day: cost of producing energy

Guns don't kill. Ergo, sodas don't fatten!

We have heard a gazillion times from the NRA that guns don't kill people.  (yeah, right!)  Consistent with Jorge Luis Borges' observation that all we do is retell stories, now Coca Cola offers its own variation of guns don't kill people. This time, it is "Coke didn't make America fat" .... aww, how "sweet" that sounds to my gut :-)  Before I head to the fridge and get myself a can of soda, let me also note that this argument was presented as an op-ed by Coke's CEO in the Wall Street Journal. I tell you, the joke could not get any better.

Now, when I am opposed to federal taxes on soda, it is not because I think sodas are some super-health drinks.  I oppose taxation because (a) this is the kind of policy issue that is best left to state and local governments, (b) the tax has to be very, very, high in order to provide a strong disincentive, and there is no way we would impose that level of a tax anyway, and (c) getting rid of the subsidies for corn and sugar itself will increase the price of soda by an amount comparable to any tax we might add.

So, you see, one does not need a fake argument on sodas and obesity in order to oppose a tax on sodas.  I wish the Coke CEO had not attempted some crazy arguments.

Subsidies and bailouts explained by Calvin and Hobbes!

I joke with my students that everything we need to understand in this world is right there in Calvin and Hobbes comics. Of course, I do use some of them in my classes--particularly Calvin's comments on school and education, and we know he had quite some views :-)

Thanks to Mankiw's post linking up to a Calvin piece, we now can explain why GM or any other business needs a government bailout! What a brain that Bill Watterson had; if only he had not abruptly called it quits :-(

(click on the image for a larger and clearer one)

Eating locally to save the planet? Think again.

A follow-up to an earlier post about food-miles. Ron Bailey cites a study by economic geographer Pierre Desrochers and economic consultant Hiroko Shimizu, who challenge the notion that food miles are a good sustainability indicator. And, importantly:

the debate over food miles is a distraction from the real issues that confront global food production. For instance, rich country subsidies amounting to more than $300
billion per year are severely distorting global agricultural production and trade. If the subsidies were removed, far more agricultural goods would be produced in and imported from developing countries, helping lift millions of people out of poverty. They warn that the food miles campaign is "providing a new set of rhetorical tools to bolster protectionist interests that are fundamentally detrimental to most of humankind." Ultimately, Desrochers and Shimizu's analysis shows that "the concept of food miles is...a profoundly flawed sustainability indicator."

(Big) Brother, can you spare me a dime?

A month ago, I blogged about the big three automakers pushing for subsidies from the feds. Well, they have it, and Rick Newman explains the 25 billion dollar gift check from us, the taxpayers. It gets worse; Newman writes that "There's more aid coming. This year's $25 billion is just a down payment. The automakers now plan to ask the government for another $25 billion in loans next year. It's just spare change, after all."
(via Megan McArdle)

Let them eat (rice) cakes-2

I blogged about research evidence that while the poor, especially in Asia, are indeed eating more meat, this increased consumption is not the cause of the spike in food prices

But, then who cares for research and logic, eh, as the following excerpt from Reason shows:

In a recent interview about the current food crisis, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said, "If part of our problem is that the Chinese are going to eat meat and you've got to have corn and soybeans to feed the Chinese their meat, then why isn't it just as legitimate for the Chinese to go back and eat rice as it is for us to change our policy on corn to ethanol?"
Let them eat rice? So that American taxpayers can continue to pay people to turn corn into fuel?
Silly senator, corn is for food.

Public subsidy: transit versus cars

The following two are typical arguments from the two camps (well, we live in a binary world. so, nothing in the middle!)

From the (moderate) left, Daniel Gross:
Naturally, many urban-dwelling, car-hating socialists (as well as suburban-dwelling, Jeep-driving moderates like me) believe this is precisely the time to put more government funds—not less—into alternate modes of transportation: natural-gas powered buses, bicycle-sharing programs, trains, light-rail systems, subways, ferries, and rickshaws. The notion that the government should invest more in mass-transit infrastructure has always raised conservative hackles.

From the right, Peter Gordon:
Robert Reich is a public intellectual, interviewed in today's NY Times by Deborah Solomon. Among his responses is this: "... public transit has been the poor child of infrastructure spending in America."This is beyond silly and easy to check. The quickest check is at Demographia, where Reich and others can find that in 2006 road and highway subsidies per passenger mile were $0.010 while transit subsidies per passenger-mile were $0.686. These are averages. At the margin, we build rail transit that gets much bigger subsidies.Outsized and ineffectual transit subsidies have been in effect for over 40 years. Most politicians and reporters don't care and neither do many public intellectuals.