Thursday, August 12, 2004
Overworked Americans
It's August and Niall Ferguson chimes in on why Europeans work less than Americans. "In 1999, according to the OECD, the average American in employment worked just under 2,000 hours a year (1,976). The average German worked just 1,535 -- fully 22% less. According to a recent U.S. study, the average Frenchman works a staggering 32% less."I had recently referred to a selection of letters to the editor printed in the NY Times where the common (and predictable) refrain was that we have so much to learn from those Europeans.
Ferguson notes that the differences in work hours did not exist 25 years ago. He warms up Max Weber and concludes that, "the most remarkable thing about the transatlantic divergence in working patterns is that it has coincided almost exactly with a comparable divergence in religiosity, both in terms of observance and belief."
Perhaps. David Brooks evokes Americans' "future mindedness". They have come to expect that they can define and achieve their destiny -- and that it is within their grasp. He calls this their "nobility syndrome". This may dovetail with the religiosity that Ferguson alludes to.
It is certainly a more fascinating discussion than the left's vision of wage slaves, beguiled and indentured ("targeted" is often the favored descriptor) by all the diabolical consumerist (must remember "corporate") propaganda.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Industrial Policy (Part 995)
The LA Times reports: "L.A. City Council Votes to Restrict Superstores ... The law would require studies of possible harm before large centers such as Wal-Mart are built."I imagine that the 13 of 15 L.A. City Council members who voted for this measure also dream of requiring studies of the "possible harm" before anyone can legally file to compete with them at the polls.
For now, the professional harm detectors have a windfall. The influence of politicians and their acolytes is extended. Inefficient retailers get a pass. The poorest customers have to travel further for lower prices and more variety. Entry level jobs are foreclosed, etc., etc., etc.
Conventional measure of the size of government understate the harm that politicians do. The full consequences of this stuff are not so easily detected.
Monday, August 09, 2004
Elections and Markets
Yesterday's NY Times reports that, "Polls Say Kerry. Futures Say Bush". It appears that Bush futures have a slight lead in both of the the major political futures electronic markets, the one at Intrade and the one at the University of Iowa -- and both are contradicted by various election polls.The article, by Daniel Gross, reports that the electronic markets have the better track record in getting presidential election outcomes right. Gross notes that bets on futures markets are by people who are putting their money where their mouths are. He then stumbles by noting that, "The people who trade securities online look a lot more like the crowd at the '21' Club -- most of them affluent white men -- than the voter registration lists."
Huh? Are PC demographic descriptors relevant on any futures market? If so, there is money to be made.
I used to be confused when political pollsters were identified by their party affiliations and leanings. I thought that they were in the business of discovery. So what does it matter what their politics are? A little reflection suggested that their views do matter because polling is really about focus groups and testing campaign themes. It has much less to do with forecasting. Now that advances in communications and funds transfers have made more and more futures markets possible, the forecasting function of political polling is probably on the way out.
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Well-offness
Marginal Revolution includes a nice post on the perennial discussion of what constitutes "well offness", what do happiness surveys tell us, myopia, etc.Priests and professors (and many others) have for years been telling anyone who would listen that they are pursuing all of the false gods, including the worst of them all, Mammon.
This is a discussion that we will always have. Perhaps to the good. In the meantime, can we celebrate a situation where more of us have more free choice over what to pursue than ever?
This usually where the incoherent stumble. An occasional theme of the left is that people have "too many choices" (this is wasteful and/or causes sensory overload and headaches, etc.). Yet, many of the same critics also claim that the evolving built environment, for example, is sterile and devoid of truly "interesting" (to me) choices.
The latter complaint cannot be addressed without reference to microeconomics and scale economies. In open markets, market niches left unattended are unlikely unless the technology is such that profitable scale is much larger then the effective demand size of the niche.
Yet, it is a safe bet that even were all demand niches to coincide with all profitable scales, the discussion of elusive well-offness would proceed. Arguably, it touches on all seven of the deadly sins.
