Greg Mankiw makes a case for graduate school education:
Apart from their bank accounts, Gallup finds education to be the greatest difference between the wealthiest 1% of Americans and everyone else. The Gallup analysis reveals that 72% of the wealthiest Americans have a college degree, compared with 31% of those in the lower 99 percentiles. Furthermore, nearly half of those in the wealthiest group have postgraduate education, versus 16% of all others.
But it’s not education that gets people into the 1%.
It’s IQ and hard work.
Education produces little more than signaling.
A friend posted a humorous advertisement from Columbia, where young women are advocating that ‘natural is better’. Someone asks why this kind of thing happens.
An exacerbated interest in youth and sex is a cyclical expression of human behavior that is usually caused by the intersection of:
(a) the ‘winter’ period of a civilization wherein the institutions that perpetuated the set of forgone opportunity costs we refer to as customs, myths, manners, ethics and morals are insufficient to coordinate status signals in the economy due to a combination of institutional calcification, and
(b) a substantial increase in population causing an over representation of single people of mating age, and
(c) a period of economic prosperity that enables the proletariat access to leisure — usually caused by an increase in technology or shift in trade routes. (Or a decline in the aged population as we saw after the plague as is demonstrated by 13th century french literature.)
The synthetic historians have all discussed this process in one way or another. (Toynbee, Quigley, Durant, Spengler and Braudel.) Strauss and Howe address this somewhat in their books on cyclicality such as ‘Generations’.
The world needs cartoons it seems. In macro economics, these ‘cartoons’ consist of a set of standardized charts the goal of which is to inform policy makers as to the actions required of their monetary policy for the purpose of reducing unemployment by fooling people into spending by using disinformation about their current ‘wealth’. However, like anything else, what you choose to chart either assists or harms in making your case – charts confirm or deny your biases. The current charts used in macro economics reflect the belief that human beings are uniform – at least in the aggregate. Meaning that we’re equal in ability and in our productivity. Which in turn implies a requirement for democratic socialist policies instead of classical liberal policies. This use of aggregates justifies the progressive political presumption. The use of individual statistics on the other hand, justifies freedom, property rights, and all sorts of politically incorrect ‘isms’.
THE IS-LM, and IS-MP CHARTS
Macro economists rely upon these two charts to emphasize either monetary policy and spending for the purpose of creating ‘demand’.
Or monetary policy and spending for the purpose of targeting an interest rate for the purpose of making sure the country isn’t artificially short of cash.
HAYEK’S TRIANGLES
Hayek created charts to show differences in production cycles.
GARRISON’S DIAGRAMS
Roger Garrison created a series of charts to show the intertemporal effect of money and interest – effectively representing the Austrian view graphically.
IS-MP AND THE INTERTEMPORAL MISALLOCATION OF HUMAN CAPITAL
Show how monetary policy, and in fact, all intervention, misallocates human capital.
(UNDONE)
POLITICS
The nolan chart describes the political spectrum. Nolan’s wonderful chart is constructed to construe decision making as a matter of choice between neutral consequences, rather than as a preference between forms of redistributing the gains from trade and exchange – without which there would be nothing to exchange.
KINSELLA’S EVOLUTIONARY CHART
DOOLITTLE’S POLITICAL SPECTRUM CHART
These Axis describe a four sided pyramid with the state on the top. (For the unwashed massess — Axis vs Axes: The plural of axis is “axes”, pronounced ‘AK-SEEZ.)
The Property Economy
X – Axis: State-Monopoly on property VS individual property rights and individual claims on rewards from trade. Libertarian/Commercial/Calculative/Middle Class
Y – Axis: State-Monopoly on gains in production VS Shareholder rights, and shareholder claims on rewards from trade. Progressive/Theological/Rational/Lower Class
The Opportunity Cost Economy
Z – Axis: Formal Institutions: State-Monopoly on behavior (law) VS Voluntary Behavior (religion/philosophy)
Alpha – Axis: Informal Institutions: Opportunity Costs Required (Norms – highly uniform manners, ethics, and morals VS no uniform manners, ethics and morals). Conservative/Military/Legal/Upper Class
(UNDONE: I’ll update this page ater when I get the diagram done.)
TIME PREFERENCE VS POPULATION PREFERENCE IN POLITICAL PREFERENCE, THEN OVERLAY WITH THE HUMAN SENTIMENTS
And then show how time and population preference are gender driven, and class driven.
Then I can show how time preference relates to political preference, and the allocation versus misallocation of human capital..
THREE TYPES OF COERCION AND THE SOCIAL CLASSES
Then show the ‘three types of coercion’ which is implicit in this chart, and universal to the rest of my work.
PER CAPITA GDP AND IQ
Noting the difference between verbal and mathematical.
EDUCATIONAL EFFECTS ON IQCLASS, RACE AND IQGENERATIONAL CYCLES
An article on slate that says that men are homophobic when watching pornography. In other words, this is another feminist-appealing anti-male rant.
The straight male performer must be attractive enough to serve as a prop, but not so attractive that he becomes the object of desire.
Complete nonsense. It’s all about self image and arousal.
Men need to feel dominance. Men are aroused by feelings of dominance over a woman, for the same biological reason women are attracted to alphas that will dominate them (sexually) without being too threatening. Women have a sort of ‘marginal difference in attraction’ depending upon their degree of ‘alphaness’ in relation to other women. They are aroused by men that fit into the spectrum of ‘alphaness’ that is a comparative advantage without being a threat. Women ‘sort’ men that way. (It’s obvious isn’t it?)
In porn, men don’t sort much. They take almost every single opportunity. In life, men take any opportunity that won’t harm their reputation with other men. Women take only those opportunities that won’t harm their reputation with other women.
So, in pornography, it’s that men are ‘unaroused’ by the presence of a more dominant male who they see as a competitor, and therefore reduces their sense of dominance at that moment.
In pornography, men want a stand-in that they can empathize with where they feel dominant. (Just as they feel by watching sports. This is the side effect of our ability to imitate.) Romantic, patient interludes are a female arousal bias not a male one. In fact, Men need to be taught romantic sexual behavior as a skill. It’s not native to male behavior, which thanks to testosterone is more aggressive, and far less patient.
Women demonstrate their alpha desires too — just in different circumstances. Just as women who run cooking shows ‘can’t be too attractive’ or just as Oprah is a ‘safe’ counsellor to middle class white women. (Yes, those are both facts we have a lot of statistical data to support.)
Its the same for both sexes. We need situational dominance. We need to feel our self image is fulfilling to us in relation to other human beings. It’s about the feeling of dominance (or not) that comes from our self image when imitating through observation.
One commenter Lucas states the problem quite clearly:
“I can’t speak for the rest of the men out there but my personal opinion is that watching a woman have a good time and thoroughly enjoying herself is what attracts me to the porn to begin with and I really don’t care what the dude looks like because I’m not watching the porn because of him I’m watching it because of her”
(This article bothered me. It’s yet another self congratulatory absurdly feminist progressive framing of inter-gender relations that is counter to the facts. Men aren’t afraid of being turned on by homosexuality. They just viscerally react to it they way women react to sex with a dirty naked old man, with open bleeding sores, covered in vomit. It’s not complicated. It’s just gross. )
What will happen when (conservatives) control all three branches of government? Not much really. The stalemate will continue indefinitely.
However, if we’re lucky, we will restore our search freedom over equality, restore merit over Harrison-Bergeron’ing, support commercial invention over redistribution, restore the western tradition by eliminating the DOE and teaching history, philosophy and literature, mandate our anglo language, restore our common law and constitution, return sovereignty to the states, and thankfully, reverse the anti-white-male bias and narrative.
The west is special because of balance of power. Balance between states. Between classes. Between the church and state. The anglo west is special because of its class-based system of government, and its use of constitutionalism, common law, and property rights. Despite being the poorest, most remote from the first cities, and the least populous civilization, first Greece then England developed the industrial revolution – science, logic, reason and debate. And it did so because the militial culture of the aristocracy wished to retain their sovereignty while cooperating toward common ends and had to develop debate to do so. This set of affairs led to the last most important talent of the west – which was, that despite small numbers, they were the best warriors on earth.
That is what made the west special and nothing else. And it is that special nature that the left seeks to replace — with the same poverty-inducing authoritarian, egalitarian tyranny-of-the-bottom that had eventually taken over the rest of the world — and which we escaped for nearly half a millenium, until the 20th century liberal took on faith that he had discovered the end of history, and could abandon the political and economic system that made prosperity possible.
The foolhardiness of Schumpeterian Public Intellectuals is writ large on these pages daily. It is silly public intellectuals that bring about tyranny.
Predicting Bubbles on Modeled Behavior:
I think we can see and measure booms and bubbles. I just think we’re lying to ourselves when we say we want to stop them.
We WANT people to live beyond their equilibrial (‘natural’) value to the world market. Bubbles and credit help us do that.
If predicting bubbles meant that the class structure would become even more rigid (it would) then would you want to eliminate bubbles? Or would you simply try to allow them to pop earlier?
We can predict bubbles. Because they’re easy to predict. A bubble occurs whenever people seek to sieze opportunities in a domain in which they have no expertise. ie: when they are gambling on momentum – swarming.
You cannot necessarily deduce a bubble from the trading data as other than some vague heuristic driven by price volatility. But if you survey consumers you can deduce bubbles all the time. If members of the lower middle class, and upper proletariat are speculating then it’s a bubble. If people outside a field are rallying to create speculative gains rather than PRODUCTIVE gains, then it’s a bubble. (PRODUCTIVE meaning that they applied additional capital to the thing that they purchased, prior to reselling it.) There is always value created by speculators who identify asymmetry of information and profit from informing others of that asymmetry. There is no value created by speculators who are swarming information that they do not understand, and where capital is not applied to transform the asset they wish to resell — in effect, where speculators are distorting information in the pricing system. (Ethically, this means liquidity encourages fraud.)
If we are borrowing to create productive increases so that people can live a higher standard of living now than they could in the future if they had the ability to use current knowledge to create current production, then it’s good spending. If we are providing liquidity because of a shortage of ‘money’ (money in the broader sense) then we are helping people to create the highest level of productivity possible. If we are borrowing to to increase consumption without increasing relative production (exports) somewhere else in the economy, then we are not creating productivity and spreading it around, we are just going into debt by consuming now despite not increasing productivity — i.e. the ability to pay it back.
A bubble is a knowledge problem caused by the failure of the pricing system to convey accurate information to participants in the economy. Cheap GENERAL credit allows average consumers to swarm opportunities.
Productivity matters. The inter-temporality of consumption vs production matters. And disconnecting consumption from productivity causes booms and busts.
So, again, maybe we (you) actually want our booms and busts if it gives people the ability to consume during booms that would never be able to consume goods above their economic class otherwise?
But targeting inflation or nominal GDP is too loose a tool for accomplishing policy goals unless the country is small and relatively homogenous.
…here is the long-run trend on private sector service sector employment.
Notice that its just as strong as the last recovery though coming sooner. Not quite as strong as the 80 and 90s.
On the other hand goods and government over that period look like this
To the extent there is a structural transformation afoot in the US economy, this is it.
Yes, the average citizen can attest to the fact that you’re correct simply by casual observation while living daily life.
The problem you’re stating is obvious. But the question that is currently circulating in the popular media is whether increased money supply that increases demand, and whether additional taxation and redistribution, will improve that long term trend, or whether we had better improve our schools, improve our industries, improve our infrastructure, and improve the world marketability of our unskilled, and semi-skilled working classes. We cannot make our lower classes more productive by demonizing our upper classes. And we are too heterogeneous now to form a ‘society’ that will support different classes under the emotional sentiments of tribal nationalism.
Germany promises the working classes skilled labor. America promises the working classes entry into the middle and upper middle classes. But, america’s promise if false. Its just not possible. And what you’re seeing today is the acknowledgement among the laboring classes that their status is depreciating along with their incomes, and that given their ages and knowledge, that the rest of their lives are questionably comfortable due to the false promise of middle class membership — given to them to assuage the natural problem if integration of races and cultures with different potentials both environmental, physical and cultural.
Economics is a subset of politics, not the other way ’round. In the long run we are all human.
Vanessa Friedman of the Financial Times writes about her frustration that the ‘Best Dressed Lists’ actually contain the ‘most influential people’, not the best dressed. See Is Kate Middleton best-dressed or best-addressed?
So anyone want to join me in a campaign to change “Best Dressed List” to “Fashion’s Most Influential”? It would unquestionably bring some rationalism to the choices — though then again, rationalism has never exactly been high on the fashion hot list.
Of course. Fashion, cars and houses, as well as manners, posture, body language, and vocabulary are forms of signaling. Pretty is a commodity. Visit any campus. But alpha status is rare, and humans imitate alphas so that they can enhance their own status.
The most popular posts I have ever written were on fashion. One declaring tattoos out of fashion in the middle class, the other declaring the northwest hiking ‘look’ out of fashion. I should write a fashion and relationship blog. I’d get far more readers. It would be trivially easy to write (because fashion is signaling – and signaling is economics). So why do I spend my time on Political Economy? I don’t know. Masochism. No other rational reason.
In practical terms, Religions establish the terms by which the population consents to be ruled.
Religions differ from systems of ethics, in that they are far harder to alter in response to fashion – ethical systems have a predictable and known life cycle that ends in skepticism and abandonment of the necessary self sacrifice that allows societies to exist as economic entities.
Religions seem to persist on a much longer life cycle. THey can be altered, such as the Germanicization, or the enlightenment of christianity.
I’ll write more on this topic over the next few years. It’s a core theme of my work.
Religions do not need a magical component. Nor do they need a divinity. THey can be constructed without either.
But I have come to believe that religions, as political constructs, are a necessary property of any civilization – of any people, of any government.
I had previously thought that they were simply exceptional pedagogical tools, given the limitations of human youth and the diversity of human age and ability.
But I’m convinced otherwise.
We need a new religion. Because we need a new means of persisting the terms by which we consent to be ruled — governed.
The west is unique and it was superior, because of ONE BELIEF: THat in all things, we should maintain the balance of power.
Christianity can only evaluated as one element of the balance of power. It provided a means by which the collapsing mercantile and bureaucratic south to maintain it’s influence over the militaristic and tribal north. It functioned as a judiciary among the competing european monarchical states. It provided a balance between the state and the individual by establishing the terms by which they would consent to be ruled. It provided a political and military means of balancing the poorer and fragmented west against the wealthier and totalitarian east.
We have all but abandoned christendom in our quest for world dominance – we have done this consciously as cross-civilization traders and conquerors who establish a new ethics based upon the necessities of economics — the ethics of trade and trade alone.
We have all but abandoned christianity as our pseudo-rational basis of ethics, and the underlying system of ethical pedagogy in an effort to build an international empire, and a domestic multi-cultural society, based upon the economics of trade and trade alone.
But we are abandoning the one thing that made the west successful despite it’s weakness, despite it’s poverty, despite it’s small size: the balance of powers.
And a balance of powers is only possible among people with a similar framework of ethics.
To the rest of the world, a balance of power is antithetical.
And a balance of power cannot be enshrined purely in a constitution. The destruction of our constitution by way of the commerce clause, and the conversion of our supreme court from protestant ethical judgements to jewish and catholic judgements is proof enough.
The proletarianization of the political mythology into totalitarian democracy and away from noble or upper-class balance-of-powers, and in particular, the balance of powers between social classes is the cause of our loss of western identity.
We need a reformation.
That reformation needs to specifically state the underlying ethics of the balance of power – where private property for the individual, and the separation of powers, which requires consent of the social classes, is our ethic.
Everything else isn’t progressive. It’s regressive. Regressive into those systems which are used elsewhere but led nowhere.
The industrial revolution happened twice. Once in greece. Once in England. Both times under rule by the middle class under a balance of power.
What makes the west special is competition: the balance of power, and every individual’s commitment to preserving the balance of power, and respecting the consequences of that conflict as beneficial. It is a social system that is antithetical to everyone else on earth.
While the self congratulatory set would love to say we achieved this feat on purpose, through debate and wisdom, that’s entirely false. It is a remnant of tribal heroism. Something else much of the world criticizes us for. (See John Keegan)
While the self congratulatory set would love to say that our success comes from democracy, that’s false. It comes from aristocracy. From a balance of power between small states, who treated the church as a sort of supreme court system. Democracy is a luxury good. It’s something the very wealthy can afford for very short times – it’s a means of spending your trust fund. But it doesn’t make that trust fund.
The west’s “Killer Apps” as Nial Ferguson calls them are, 1) competition, 2) science, 3) property rights, 5) the consumer society 6) the work ethic. It’s these killer apps that created the great divergence between “the west and the rest”.
But those six apps are CAUSED by every individual’s commitment to preserving the balance of power, and competition as a means of determining outcomes.
Under the competitive model, we do not develop consensus.
