links: Krugman on macro and the environment

Well, before that, a summary of Nixon's health reform plan. Pretty similar in spirit to Obama's, but more assertively defined, and maybe further to the left in helping the poor. The country may have moved to the left on gay, women, and black rights, but well to the right on economic issues. AFAIK *Truman's* attempt would have been Medicare for all, essentially, sweeping government insurance a la Canada or Australia.

* "freshwater" economist backlash. These are the "unemployment is voluntary" types if you haven't been keeping up. Chicago school, neo-Friedmanites (more radical than Milton himself.) Followup and dissection of their rage, with brief mention of their mistakes.

* 19th century globalization: the jute industry in Dundee Scotland, using Indian raw materials.

* Even the WTO agrees that carbon tariffs are an allowable and possible essential tool. But free market fundamentalists and fetishists won't.
* Review of a biography of Keynes.

* "Memories of the Carter Administration". Actually on the macroeconomic debate in the late 1970s. Robert Lucas claiming government policies couldn't affect recession or employment, Robert Barro expressing a negative interest in contradictory data. Someone asked him how he could reconcile his model with the severe recession taking place as he spoke. “I’m not interested in the latest residual,” Barro snapped.
** John Quiggin on the same subject. And, back in 2003,

In fact, it’s striking that there is now almost no academic discipline whose conclusions can be considered acceptable to orthodox Republicans. The other social sciences (sociology, anthropology, political science) are even more suspect than economics. The natural sciences are all implicated in support for evolution against creationism, and for their conclusions about global warming, CFCs and other environmental threats. Even the physicists have mostly been sceptical about Star Wars and its offspring. And of course the humanities are beyond the pale.

* Bankers are going straight back to the pay policies that contributed to the current crisis. "In this case populism is good economics." Obama, of course, gives few signs of actually being a populist.

* The low cost of saving the environment. Not a deep essay, but of interest is Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers: earlier this week Pacific Gas and Electric canceled its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the chamber’s “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality” of climate change.
** The missing depth (blogs don't have word limits.) Even Greg Mankiw supports externalty (e.g. pollution) taxes.
** And more depth, graph and better explanation.

A rich news day

* New constitution in North Korea, dropping 'Communism' and enshrining Kim's role as leader. His father's role as president had been left "eternally vacant" in the 1998 constitution, not clear if that changed.
* In American dynastism, Liz Cheney carries on her father's advocacy of torture and fearmongering, along with not contesting an assertion that Obama isn't American.
* One thing about religions, they often introduce holidays for the poor. Maids in Jakarta get Ramadan off, with rich families having to cope with fetching their own glasses of water. Or check into luxury hotels.
* The standoff in Honduras continues, with the ousted President Zelaya having slipped somehow into the Brazilian embassy. I've been sympathetic to the 'coup', but closing radio stations and cracking down on civil liberties burns that up.
* Why is the Supreme Court hearing half as many cases as it used to?
* State Republicans want to contest a health insurance mandate via amending state constitutions. Unclear on the concepts of the supremacy clause or how health reform can work.

* Logicomix, a comic book about Bertrand Russell and the quest for certainty in mathematics.
* Modern miracles: helping the blind see.
* The new education fad: teaching executive function, aka self-control