Club Troppo

A Twitter randomised trial: "I have a confession to make", writes Andrew Leigh, "I’m a twitter-sceptic." But in keeping with his evidence-based approach to decision making, Andrew Leigh MP is embarking on a one month randomised trial. @aleighmp

Why libertarians need to talk with the left and how to do it: "Between Left and Right, the reality remains that the Left is still closer to our ideals. They are more likely to agree with our social liberalism and foreign policy even though they are economic interventionists." James Peron, Moorfield Storey Blog.

Men who argue with goats: They love a good argument at Menzies House.

… or with Cory Bernardi: "Throughout history it has been demonstrated that any government that becomes too big eventually is forced to accrue a level of debt that cannot be sustained." Cory Bernardi.

The biggest government in the world? "The Congressional Budget Office report … says that annual deficits will remain in the $1 trillion range for the next several years if Bush-era tax cuts slated to expire in December are extended, as commonly assumed." NBC Politics.

So what about the Nordics? "If heavy taxation has harmful economic effects, why have Denmark and Sweden performed similarly to the United States during a period of several decades in which their taxes were much higher than America’s?" Lane Kenworthy.

In praise of private equity: "The difficult truth that virtually no politician is prepared to acknowledge is that the road to job creation runs through job destruction." Reihan Salam.

The introvert’s lament: Social butterflies are annoying. Overdressed Anarchist.

Op shopping: Justin Campbell finds a copy of Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose in an op shop. "I quickly grabbed hold of the book and guarded it in case someone else wanted to buy it", he writes. "The bewildered shopkeeper seemed surprised at my excitement."

The fate of Mrs Petrov’s lost shoe: Apparently Sir Les Paterson has it.

Katie’s Australia Day – Brazilian style! Food blogger Katie Quinn Davies’ Australia Day recipes.

Australia Day from afar: "One of the most surprising things for me to experience out of Australia was people saying–even in the American South!–Australia’s really racist, isn’t it?" Queen Emily, Hoyden About Town.

Drunks draped in flags: "the path that took us here is a complex one. Music festivals, drinking binges, the crystallisation of fears and resentments, the navel gazing over Identity, all that is part of the road, as well as politicians." Kim, Larvatus Prodeo.

The view from Menzies House: Tim Andrews celebrates Australia Day with a whinge about lefties and "self-appointed intellectual elites".

Be as Australian as you want to be: "Let us be frank: anti-racist prejudice is the worst kind of prejudice at all. It denies freedom of expression; it denies freedom of conscience; and most heinous of all, it denies courage." Ben Pobjie.

John Passant reports on the tent embassy protest: "Soon about 200 of the demonstrators moved from the Tent Embassy commemoration to the café to tell Abbott what they thought of him …" En Passant.

Steve Kates on the protests: "I must tell you my disgust is unbounded. We tend not to jail such people, but that is in the way of more fool us than anything." Catallaxy.

Missing the story: The press gallery "shine the light almost exclusively on the confected battle between tweedle dee and tweedle dum – the figureheads at the top of decaying political parties that everyone outside the inbred Canberra vortex can see are just shells of organisations pretending to believe in something beyond power itself." Mr Denmore, The Failed Estate.

Michael loves Heather: "She’s a saint. A princess. A fairy queen. A beautiful, kind, intelligent. imaginative, brave young woman with a wicked sense of humour and a shipload of empathy." Michael Stuchbery gets married.

One year on: "How do you grieve for someone who hurt you profoundly, repeatedly, and tore your family apart? Who was also deeply intelligent, cursed with mental illness, incredibly funny, and when he could be, loving?" Imogen, raw/roar.

What’s So Special about America’s 1%? "If we’re all embedded in a fundamentally unjust, exploitative global economic structure, it’s hard to see why the American 1% should be especially salient." Will Wilkinson, The Moral Sciences Club.

Social justice … Tea Party style: "A common trope for conservative policy intellectuals is that they want to ‘means test’ the welfare state – reduce its availability for those with high wealth and income and focus it on those with the least wealth and income. But the Tea Party base wants the opposite – they are opposed to a welfare state for the poor, young people, undocumented workers and other groups they think are undeserving." Mike Konczal, Rortybomb.

Dogs against Romney: Why is everyone talking about Mitt Romney’s dog?

Blog readers survey: Peter Chen is conducting a survey of blog readers. You can find the survey here: Australian Blog Readers Study (via Andrew Norton).

The Jericho amendments: At Grog’s Gamut Greg Jericho checks out the Australian Public Service Commission’s new guidelines for public servants engaging in public comment. Some of the principles are "so obvious or dumb as could only be written by a public servant", says Jericho, while another is "utterly stupid."

Left-wing Paulbots are go! Left-wingers, greens and progressives should be supporting Ron Paul‘s bid for the Republican nomination, writes Leichhardt Greens Councillor, Daniel Kogoy.

Ron Paul on the "whole global warming terrorism" thing: In 2009 Paul said that the Copenhagen treaty on climate change "can’t help the economy. It has to hurt the economy and it can’t possibly help the environment because they’re totally off track on that. It might turn out to be one of the biggest hoaxes of all history, this whole global warming terrorism that they’ve been using, but we’ll have to just wait and see, but it cannot be helpful. It’s going to hurt everybody.” He made similar comments in an interview with Fox Business (at 7:00).

Industry subsidies and political tribalism: At current levels, subsidies to the car industry are third-order, writes John Quiggin. So why all the fuss? "It’s taken for granted on the cultural right that some technologies and industries (nuclear power, oil, finance) are good and others (wind energy, electric cars, Hollywood) are evil – essentially a mirror image of what they think we on the left think. For people who are supposed to believe in the free market, this is a big problem."

There’s a margin in error: "Like advertising, journalism now is mostly about constructing a version of the truth that suits a chosen market. It’s about making an impact and attracting eyeballs and building a brand. And the greatest shame of it all is that a gullible public buys it." Mr Denmore, The Failed Estate.

Voting is about values not interests: "It isn’t rational to vote for your economic interests. It isn’t rational in the economist’s sense to vote at all. Why not, because your individual vote doesn’t count." The Philosopher’s Beard.

The Great Gatsby Curve: Alan Krueger calls it the ‘Great Gatsby curve’ — the finding that countries that have more inequality across households also have more persistence in income from one generation to the next. As Matthew Yglesias points out, that’s bad news for Republican claims that America doesn’t need to redistribute income because it’s the land of equal opportunity and upward mobility.

Hands up if you want downward mobility: "Someone in society is going to end up doing crappy jobs," writes Megan McArdle, "because trash needs to be hauled and Alzheimer’s patients need to have their diapers changed. The primary job of a middle class parent is to ensure that their children are not those people."

Technological change and economic growth : Steve Kates picks a fight with a ‘socialist’ blogger who claims that free markets drive technological change and generate wealth. “Gimme a break" he says, "It is free markets that drive tech change and generate wealth. But it is not ‘tech change’ as such, but entrepreneurs, those people, like Mitt Romney, who do the driving and if they succeed, end up very wealthy. To present it as ‘tech change’ means that rubbish like the NBN or batts in the belfry might get counted."

Mobile phones and the price of fish: Mobile phones are transforming the way people in countries like India do business. In a 2007 paper economist Robert Jensen explained how access to mobile telecommunications allowed fishermen in Kerala to get the best prices for their catch.

"My mother died in 1976. Is she all right?" Kerryn Goldsworthy visits the supermarket.

The missing liberals: Why is there no liberal party? Because there are so few people who support both economic and social liberal causes, says Andrew Norton. Andrew cites data from the 2010 Australian Election Survey.

Dr Watson vs Dr Ludd: With access to huge databases, expert systems will soon be able to diagnose illness better than doctors, says Alex Tabarrok. Not everyone is convinced.

Penalty rate claims hard to swallow: "To believe that Mr Calombaris would open his restaurants on Sundays only to have them run at a loss is to believe that he’s running some sort of altruistic quasi-charity, an impression he attempts to give by suggesting that he opens on Sundays for reasons of ‘tourism’." Matt Cowgill.

Game of thrones: Greg Jericho is tired of reading about leadership challenges.

Adult content? "I can never understand how it’s ok to see images of a woman with breasts larger than her head, but a tasteful picture of something so natural as breastfeeding is ‘offensive’ to those same people." The Happy Sorceress on the Dave Dorman controversy (via Blue Milk).

Why Boardwalk Empire is more like cinema than tv: "In recent years, television shows have increasingly adopted cinematic tropes. Some of these can be found in current television series, nevertheless Boardwalk Empire is the pinnacle of this trend." I Heart the Talkies.

Equality means never having to drink warm beer: LG’s new ‘blast chiller’ compartment can cool a can of beer in five minutes. But to get this feature you have to buy a fridge that costs more that $2,500. Even super-rich people don’t buy refrigerators by the dozen so according to Matthew Yglesias that means "the incentive to invest money in developing even better appliances is relatively muted." He suggests that rising middle class incomes would encourage appliance makers to introduce more of these kinds of features.

Fairness on a budget: Britain’s Attlee government of 1945-51 built the modern welfare state and delivered greater income equality even though it inherited a debt to GDP ratio three times today’s level, writes Chris Dillow. So why is it so hard to implement egalitarian policies today?

Beyond soundbites: "There’s so much potential for political parties, who are more and more thought to be hollow, soulless things, to allow their MPs to show what they actually believe in and engage with people. Soundbites were useful when someone else controlled how much time you had to make your point, but now there’s no limit to how long MPs can spend arguing their case." Anna Winter on how technology is transforming politics.

How to win a Republican primary: "To survive a Republican debate you are required to hold the incoherent view that the budget should be balanced immediately, taxes cut dramatically, and the major categories of spending (the military, Social Security, Medicare) left largely intact. There is no way to make these numbers add up, and the candidates do not try, relying instead on focus-group tested denunciations of Obama and abstract hostility to the ways of Washington." Jacob Weisberg, Slate.

Are traditional media institutions worth saving? In an age of internet-enabled networks, should established media institutions be allowed to wither away? Dean Starkman says no. Gary Sauer-Thompson isn’t convinced: "Most journalism takes the form of infotainment or partisan political commentary; operates within narrow intellectual boundaries; favours ‘he said she said’ analysis; avoids public policy issues; and doesn’t even bother with facts anymore. Honestly, not much public-interest reporting is produced in Australia’s existing media institutions."

Mr Denmore’s 12-step program for junk media junkies in 2012: Stop watching Q&A, turn off the Insiders, ignore the polls and spend more time at the pub. But what about Andrew Bolt?

Justice without borders: Does justice require rich countries to redistribute resources to poor ones? At Oz Conservative Mark Richardson discusses Kok-Chor Tan’s book, Toleration, Diversity and Global Justice.

What if poor people don’t like money? According to Greg Mankiw: "one reason that people differ in their incomes is that some people care more about having a high income than others." In a post about Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, Bryan Caplan argues that "Leftist outrage over income inequality is therefore deeply misguided." Why? because when you think of low-income people as losers: "you’re falsely assuming that we’re all racing for the same finish line: material success."

Upwards redistribution: "People are inclined to give much more legitimacy to market outcomes than policy outcomes engineered by governments. That is why there is a whole industry devoted to convincing people that the upward redistribution of income over the last three decades, which has given the bulk of economic gains to the One Percent, is really just the result of the natural workings of the market." Dean Baker, CEPR.

Peter Martin’s pursuit of power: Peter Martin discovers an Australian-style powerpoint in Argentina. Argentina is one of a handful of countries (including China) that use the same plug design as Australia.

Missing link is taking a vacation. See you next year!

The destruction of the tea: What did the original tea party patriots stand for? Alfred F. Young looks at the history behind the Boston Tea Party.

Are Slaves Growing Your Fair Trade Cotton? Matthew Yglesias links to a story about child labour on ‘fair trade’ farms in Burkina Faso by Cam Simpson at Bloomberg. According to Yglesias, it’s not just about poor monitoring of a fair trade program, there’s also a link between organic certification and forced labour: "organic agriculture is less capital-intensive and thus more labor-intensive than conventional agriculture, so paying a premium for organic cotton creates an extra incentive to add forced labor into the production mix."

How do rich countries lift up the poor? The answer is something no politician wants to hear — transfer payments. According to Lane Kenworthy, countries that kept transfers rising in line with GDP did better than those that indexed payments to prices. In an article for Pathways magazine he argues that "we shouldn’t pretend that paid work is a realistic route to guaranteeing rising incomes for everyone."

If women do the spending, does it matter that they don’t do the earning? It’s no secret that women earn less than men. But according the the Philosopher’s Beard, women are in charge of most household discretionary spending. "It would seem that a full gender justice analysis of the economy should include not only how gender relates to the composition of household income, but also how household consumption is gendered."

Santa’s other helper: Nice children get presents but what happens to naughty children? According to Michael the Researcher, Santa has a demonic helper who beats naughty children with a swtich and carries them off in sack. In some places he is known as Krampus, in others. Knecht Ruprecht. "My Mother went to a Bavarian all-girl school in Augsburg in the mid-to-late 1940s", writes Michael, "and she remembers when Knecht Ruprecht came into the classroom and took a naughty girl away, kicking and screaming the entire time."

The Humbling of a Pretty Girl: When model and fashion writer Lauren Scruggs walked into a plane propeller the paramedics didn’t think she’d survive. "With the lacerations on her head and the skull fracture, we thought there would be significant brain damage", said one. At Zero at the Bone, Chally writes about the disturbing level of media interest in Scrugg’s ordeal. "We’re taught to admire, and to envy the pretty people", she writes. "We also know that such a hierarchy is unfair. And there’s a heavy pleasure in watching the pretty people be laid low."

When Bad Sex Work Drives out the Good: Many sex workers are victims of human trafficking, writes Marina Adshade. And a new study provides "very good evidence that legalization of prostitution increases human trafficking". Blue Milk also addresses the issue of sex work, provoking an extended conversation in the comments thread.

Obama’s Wonderfully Wrongheaded Speech: The Overdressed Anarchist hasn’t been won over by Obama’s Osawatomie speech. "If the President were serious about sending a message about equality, his Administration would be knocking on Wall Street’s door, SWAT teams in the rear", he writes.

Why the occupiers love Lincoln : When Obama attacked the Wall Street plutocracy he took cover behind Theodore Roosevelt. When Roosevelt attacked the plutocracy he took cover behind Abraham Lincoln. "Want to know what the Occupy Movement is all about? " asks Bejamin Gorman, "Abraham Lincoln knew 150 years ago." Read Lincoln’s First Annual Message from 1861 and you’ll understand why.

Robert Audi and the Separation of Church and State: According to liberal democrats, states must govern on the basis of principles all citizens accept. Religious principles are notoriously controversial so liberal democrats often argue that governments should avoid relying on religious reasons when making policy. Hence the commitment to the separation of church and state and the requirement that citizens bracket off their religious commitments when they take part in public life. But is idea that politics and religion should be kept separate noncontroversial? At New Books in Philosophy Robert Talisse interviews Robert Audi about his new book: Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State.

News isn’t the problem, it’s the advertising markets that are broken: By denying newspapers access to the old sources of advertising revenue the internet has thrown the news business into turmoil. So why is everyone so focused on how news is produced and distributed? According to Joshua Gans,"what we are seeing may not necessarily have anything to do with how news is produced per se but instead the mechanics of the supposedly unseemly advertising side of the equation."

Bank Tellers and ATMs: President Obama keeps saying that ATM are putting bank tellers out of work. Matthew Yglesias isn’t convinced.

Lending is the right model for ebooks: Joshua Gans asks "If lending is the appropriate mode for books, then how would the business of publishing look if it is built around lending rather than ownership?"

Why journalists need Twitter : Often maligned as quick chat for empty headed gossips, Twitter can play a valuable role in news gathering and reporting writes Alan Knight.

The surplus fetish: The "notion that we will be eternally damned in the fires of fiscal hell unless government revenues exceed spending by even a dollar" is a ridiculous idea, says Mr Denmore. But by trying to look like a fiscal tough guy, Wayne Swan has boxed himself into a corner.

Bob Carr is wrong about welfare: Australia’s means-tested welfare system keeps spending down and allows governments to retire debt, says Bob Carr. But Carr is confused says Matt Cowgill. "The ability to pay down debt is obviously a function of both spending and taxes".

A linguistic tax: English is fast becoming Europe’s dominant language says Philippe Van Parijs. In his new book Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, he argues that native English speakers share the benefits of a common language without having to meet the costs. A tax on Anglophone countries would reduce this unfairness. Ingrid Robeyns has started an online reading group at Spongia.

Occupy and the mirage of democratic consensus: "The intransigence of the Occupy movement suggests an unwillingness among its numbers to take seriously the fact of pluralism, and the corollary impossibility of consensus, which makes majoritarian democratic procedures necessary in the first place." Will Wilkinson.

Better schools won’t save the American Dream: Early childhood not schooling holds the key reducing the academic achievement gap, writes Sean Reardon in the Boston Review. The article is part of series: Occupy the Future, that includes contributions from Kenneth Arrow, Rob Reich and others.

The meaning of merit : A meritocracy rewards the hardworking and the virtuous writes Luigi Zingales. But at the Monkey Cage Andrew Gelman disagrees: "In a meritocracy, you can be as hardworking as John Kruk or as virtuous as Kobe Bryant and you’ll still get ahead—-if you have the talent and achievement. Throwing in ‘hardworking’ and ‘virtuous’ seems to me to an attempt (unconscious, I expect) to retroactively assign moral standing to the winners in an economic race."

Poking fun at mummy blogs: Parodies of mummy blogs make Blue Milk laugh, but …

White Ribbon Day: "In an afternoon in Montreal on December 6th 1989, a man massacred 14 of his female classmates. From this horrific action, a nation was brought to the forefront of an issue that had been severely underreported for too long."Lip Magazine.

"White Ribbon Day promotes change by highlighting the positive role that men can play. It encourages all men across the world to take an active stance against violence against women. This Friday, 25 November, is White Ribbon Day, a day when men say it is not okay to use violence against women, when men speak out to change the attitudes and behaviours which allow violence against women to occur and when taking action to address violence against women is celebrated, supported and encouraged." Andrew Leigh.

Louis Althusser and socialist strategy: "Althusser’s career ended in a squalid tragedy when, under the influence of a mental illness that had grown more intense over the years, he strangled his wife, Hélène." Lenin’s Tomb.

Issue of Violence Divides Occupy Protesters: "Is there a place for violence in the Occupy movement?" asks Sayre Quevedo at Turnstyle.

Violence and disruptive power: "We understand the sheepishness about speaking of violence in social movements" writes Lenin in a post on Occupy and disruptive power. "It is not a comforting or politically sympathetic thought that popular violence has been productive; that without it, unjust systems would not have been overturned."

Martin Luther King and non-violent protest: "When is violence justified as a response to manifest and apparently immovable injustice? My answer, with Martin Luther King is: Never, or almost never." John Quiggin.

Pepper spray parodies: When the Lieutenant John Pike used pepper spray against protesters at University of California, Davis, photos of the incident quickly became raw material for satirists. Shane Greenstein at Digitopoly. and tigtog at Hoyden about town have more.

Structural Violence and the US health care system: "The subjective violence of a personal attack, of war, terrorism, or torture is easy to see and to condemn. Structural violence is less visible, more subtle and therefore harder to critique and change. The structural violence of the health-care system in the United States violates distributive justice." Valerie Elverton Dixon, God’s Politics.

Put it up to eleven: "The entire media is shouting ALL the time because they’re worried that if they pull back on their Tube Screamers their highly compressed copy won’t be heard over all the other sources of distraction", says Mr Denmore.

We reject your demand for demands: The Occupy movement’s lack of demands is a strength, writes Tad Tietze. And at the Brookings Institution, Elisabeth Jacobs agrees: "Occupy Wall Street’s lack of explicit demands is smart movement politics for the time being, advantageous for the movement itself and for savvy politicians alike. For a month-old movement with solid popular support, OWS’s demand-free stance makes good sense."

Presidential hopeful Rick Perry has policies… but he can’t remember what they are.

The right-wing hive-mind? At Larvatus Prodeo, commenter Rob wonders about the flood of comments on issues like climate change and refugees. They "have a consistent right wing bias ie the commentators are consistently right wing through and through but yet seemingly they will only let their views be known on about 3 or 4 topics." Something "very planned is obviously going on", says Rob.

A vast right-wing conspiracy? "In the United States of America there is evidence that the right have to hire people to pretend to be right-wing commenters in order to keep up with the genuine enthusiasm and activism of the left in on-line media." Blue Milk (see also: Craigslist ad for right-wing commenters draws suspicion and a few giggles, National Post).

Immigration Restrictions as Affirmative Action: "Conservatives usually think that ‘oppressed minorities’ should spend a lot less time complaining about unfair treatment and a lot more time improving their skills and work ethic. Fair point, but the same holds for native-born Americans who complain that immigrants are taking their jobs." Bryan Caplan at Econlog.

McRib arbitrage: American econo-bloggers are fascinated by the comings and goings of McDonald’s McRib sandwich. It starts with this post by Willy Staley at the Awl. Matthew Yglesias and Alex Tabarrok join in.