"Ever wished you could hear the Wonkbloggers just…talking?"

Mmmm. 

No.

I wish I could unhear you just... talking?

Quit talking like that!

What the hell is going on in our culture?

"Government isn't an all-purpose social-utility machine just waiting to help us make better decisions..."

"... if only we'd be willing to give up our stubborn adherence to the principle of individual autonomy."

Even if we were to set aside all our cherished notions about how liberty is intrinsically good, it would still make sense to be skeptical of whether regulators know or care about the full consequences of their regulations.

And:

If helping people involves insulating them from the natural consequences of their actions, this could "nudge" them to be more irrational. For instance, everyone knows that students sometimes act irrationally: they procrastinate, they write substandard papers when they're capable of doing better, they turn work in late, etc. Given these realities, it's an open question how teachers should nudge students to do less of this kind of thing. The teacher who's willing to give any grade from an A+ to an F- might be more effective than the teacher who gives everyone a B+ or A-.

"Nudge" is in quotes because the author of the linked post — disclosure:  he's my son — is talking about an article — which we discussed recently — written by Cass Sunstein, who's made "nudge" his buzzword.

I wonder if the tendency to lean libertarian or fascist has more to do with how much you love autonomy or more to do with how much you trust government.

(Sorry about writing "libertarian or fascist." I know it's inflammatory. I was going to put "right or left," but it just didn't make sense. Some righties are out to control us, and some lefties — especially on some issues — love autonomy.)

"Boys have historically been trained to think that they needn’t obey rules or work hard because..."

"... men used to be able to drop out of high school and still earn wages comparable to better-educated women, thanks to jobs in fields like manufacturing, construction and travel. That’s not the case anymore."

Time for everyone to recognize the great gift of the women's movement:  Everyone needs to buckle down, work hard, and follow rules. 

No wonder they had to drop the word "liberation" from "women's liberation movement." Who could have imagined, circa 1970, that what we'd end up with was grim drudgery for all?

Except the guys won't play along, will they? Consider the strategies. An obvious one is to scale down, never marry, never have children, and live a circumscribed life with a not-too-challenging job, and enjoy however much sex you want via online dating services. Meanwhile, the women can work for their entire lives as hard as they worked in school, just keep going and going, shoehorn in a couple children, work harder and harder to pay for everything they need, including childcare. Work work work.

Grim!

If I were a young woman, I'd be tempted into exactly what I was tempted into when I was a young woman: a life that values beauty, love, and freedom over work. I'm thinking of the hippie movement and — a book I read in the 1970s — "Your Money Or Your Life" (which I see is "Revised and Updated for the 21st Century" — not sure what that means).

Why did Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife risk everything to buy such stupid stuff?

Spending $750,000 in campaign money on... what?! In with the Rolex watch and the furs, there's all this memorabilia: Michael Jackson memorabilia, Bruce Lee memorabilia, Martin Luther King Jr. memorabilia, Malcolm X memorabilia, Jimi Hendrix memorabilia, a football signed by American presidents. So embarrassing.

WaPo columnist  Michelle Singletary says:

Ironically, Jackson and his father in 1999 co-authored a book on personal finance, “It’s About the Money!: How You Can Get Out of Debt, Build Wealth, and Achieve Your Financial Dreams.” The Jacksons wrote: “Many of our churches breed material needs, as do many of our public schools, with peer pressure to buy expensive clothing.”

I was critical of the portions of the book in which the Jacksons found it necessary to chide blacks for what they characterize as shameless spending....

At least the Jacksons are showing remorse....

Before you pass judgment on the Jacksons, think about the mess you might have made of your finances or the financial follies of people you know. It might not be a crime to get what you want (not what you need), but acting as if you are rich without being able to afford it can ruin your life.

Hmm. Using debt to buy stuff is hugely different from diverting money that isn't yours to spend that way. But I guess we can look at Jackson's list of items and use it as an occasion to reflect on the idiotic crap we've felt tempted to buy. Get some distance. What if the newspapers published a list of the 100 stupidest things you've thrown your money away on over the course of a lifetime?

Look around. If you could snap your fingers and cause any item in your house to transform into the cash you spent on it (or even only half of what you spent), what percentage of your possessions would be left? The items suddenly turn into piles of dollar bills. Better gather them up quickly. How much have you got there? Now, bills disappear to eradicate your debts. What do you have left now in your hands and in your house? How do you feel?

And by the way, Singletary said she chided the Jesse Jacksons, Sr. and Jr., for chiding black people for spending too much money on stuff, but then she turned around and chided her readers for spending too much money on stuff. Isn't that a contradiction? Or is it a problem to speak specifically to black people? The Jacksons shouldn't write a book talking specifically to black people? What are the rules here?

Cass Sunstein reviews "Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism."

That's a book by Sarah Conly, published by Cambridge University Press. 206 pages, $95. $95! Fortunately, we cannot be coerced to buy that. I will exercise my autonomy and refrain from buying it. I'll just read Sunstein, for free, here.

[A] significant strand in American culture appears to endorse the central argument of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty....

the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or mental, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.

Sunstein refers to social science research that shows people actually aren't very good at making decisions for themselves. We have "present bias" (and don't pay enough attention to the future), we're bad at assessing probability, and we're "unrealistically optimistic."

Until now, we have lacked a serious philosophical discussion of whether and how recent behavioral findings undermine Mill’s harm principle and thus open the way toward paternalism. Sarah Conly’s illuminating book Against Autonomy provides such a discussion....

To Mill’s claim that individuals are uniquely well situated to know what is best for them, Conly objects that Mill failed to make a critical distinction between means and ends. True, people may know what their ends are, but sometimes they go wrong when they choose how to get them....

If the benefits justify the costs, she is willing to eliminate freedom of choice, not to prevent people from obtaining their own goals but to ensure that they do so....

A natural objection is that autonomy is an end in itself and not merely a means. On this view, people should be entitled to choose as they like, even if they end up choosing poorly. In a free society, people must be allowed to make their own mistakes, and to the extent possible learn from them, rather than facing correction and punishment from bureaucratic meddlers. Conly responds that when government makes (some) decisions for us, we gain not only in personal welfare but also in autonomy, if only because our time is freed up to deal with what most concerns us....

 As for Sunstein himself, he prefers a softer form of government manipulation, described in the article and in his book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness."

"Ironically, for Maker’s Mark drinkers, the best outcome they can hope for..."

"... is that the bad press that surrounded the short-lived reduction in alcohol content will lead to a slump in demand for the product...."

Can you see why? Explanation at the link for why Beam, Inc. could not deal with increased demand by simply raising the price.

"Why have Americans lost their devotion to the future?"

Asks David Brooks, observing that America was built on a "future-oriented mentality," but these days we "sacrifice the future for the sake of the present." Read the whole thing to see if you agree with that premise, which is backed up by assertions like: "The federal government is a machine that takes money from future earners and spends it on health care for retirees." Taking the premise as true, why is it happening? Brooks goes back to the big events that shaped The Greatest Generation:

The Great Depression and World War II forced Americans to live with 16 straight years of scarcity. In the years after the war, people decided they’d had enough. There was what one historian called a “renunciation of renunciation.” We’ve now had a few generations raised with this consumption mind-set. There’s less of a sense that life is a partnership among the dead, the living and the unborn, with obligations to those to come.

Interesting avoidance of the obvious generation that deserves the blame. I'm talking about my generation: The Baby Boomers. We didn't endure the Great Depression and World War II, but we were raised by parents who found it just wonderful to have a predictable quiet life home life, comforts that were perfectly normal to us, but without the prior deprivations, boring and unsatisfying.

Oh, the trouble we made, changing the culture, restructuring the politics, leveraging our numbers. Don't say we didn't look to the future! The future was us getting old.

We set up the benefits programs, and we taught the younger generations to believe in them, deeply and emotionally. We're just trying to get to the end without their noticing what we have done. It's a tricky business, because we want the money to flow into our needs as we struggle to live longer and longer, sucking more and more of the life out of the young before we die.

Wasn't it amazing the way we got you to love Obama — the last of the Baby Boomers (or did you believe him when he said he was post-Boomer?)? Under the banner "HOPE," he got you to believe in a health-care scheme that forces healthy young people to sacrifice your hope of building individual wealth.

Obviously, the story isn't over yet, but what will be left when we're gone? How long will that take? It depends on how securely we've structured this thing, how long your soppy empathy lasts, and whether the "death panels" taunt keeps working to deter you from the kind of self-serving politics from which we ourselves never refrained.

"This Is The Most Depressing Version Of Google Maps I’ve Ever Seen."

What is depressing? That when people get more money they move to the suburbs? That people flock to cities when they are young and at the lower end of the income scale? That childless people often have these 2 characteristics: they aren't making enough money yet and they are comfortable with the housing options in the city? Our easily depressed map viewer assumes he's looking at an image of nothing but racial segregation:

What do you get when you combine Google maps and a bunch of info about household income? Only one of the most fascinating things ever to happen because of the census. Colder colors mean wealthier neighborhoods; warmer colors mean poorer ones. Whoever thought segregation could be this hypnotic, am I right? 

Since you are so fascinated, how about thinking your way out of that hypnosis, which perhaps is something you got put under in college. Wake up. Think of other dimensions. And look up the word "median."

There are 41 sinkholes in the Pennsylvania state capital Harrisburg and the city isn't fixing them.

Too broke. The city borrowed $300 million to upgrade a trash incinerator. Meanwhile, the pipes under the city are a disaster and the sewage plant is polluting the Susquehanna River.

One sinkhole is 50 feet across and 8 feet deep, and they've just put police barricades around it. To deal with the desperate decay, locals are using the old strategy of humor — naming it "Super Sinkhole Walter" and designating it as a sightseeing point of interest on the travel website Foursquare.

"In the ’80s and ’90s, a liberal arts graduate who didn’t know what to do went to law school."

"Now you get $120,000 in debt and a default plan of last resort whose value is just too speculative. Students are voting with their feet. There are going to be massive layoffs in law schools this fall. We won’t have the bodies we need to meet the payroll."

Purchase of the (yester)day.

"Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science" (Fully Revised and Updated) [Paperback] Charles Wheelan (Author), Burton G. Malkiel (Foreword) (Amazon Associates earnings to the blog: $0.91). Thank you, each of the 58 anonymous naked persons, who used the Althouse Amazon portal, adding exactly $0.00 to your own purchase price while once again sending the clear unmistakable message that you enjoy, relish, adore, and treasure the blogger's bloggy blogging as only she can blog.

"Weird things happen when you take price out of the equation for consumers. For one thing, they stop looking for the best price."

Yes. Obvious. I know. But this is NPR talking, which is what struck me.

(The topic is the breast pumps that must be paid for by health insurance companies under Obamacare.)

"More than 280,000 units — nearly half of Manhattan’s apartment stock — is rent-regulated in some fashion."

"These apartments are either godsends to those who occupy them, or daggers that twist in the hearts of everyone else, left to pay market rate or compete for the borough’s remaining vacancies — 2.8 percent of the housing stock, as measured in 2011."

From an article about what counts as "middle class" in Manhattan. It's not so much an amount of money you need to make as it is when you got into the real estate market.

"Men try harder, because they know that women want men who earn more."

"Women don’t because they know that men have different priorities, and because they want to quit the rat-race at some point and have kids, making their tolerance for high debt levels rationally lower."

Says Glenn Reynolds, reacting to this Inside the Law School Scam post about how law school — with its high tuition and iffy job market — is a worse deal for women than for men.

This is getting strangely close to the argument that used to be made for discriminating against women in law school admissions (or for excluding them altogether): Since women are less likely to fully use their legal education, we shouldn't give what could be a man's seat to a woman. Women were suspected of going to law school for ulterior reasons, such as to find a good husband or — crazy ladies! — because they are interested in the topic... intellectually.

"More NYU and Columbia female students or 'sugar babies' are seeking 'sugar daddies' to pay for rising school costs."

"SeekingArrangement.com says NYU was the top school for new sign ups — Columbia is the only Ivy league school to make site's Top 20."

If you'd like all the satisfaction of sending a daughter to college, without that pesky incest taboo, there is a solution for you.

"Study says homeless facilities may increase the value of nearby property."

May... meaning it probably increases the value of the property over there where we'd like to site the facility but not over here where I live.

The study, released in 2008, compared home sale prices before and after the development of Project H.O.M.E. housing facilities and controlled for many other factors that could affect home values, said [Kevin] Gillen, an economist and senior research consultant at the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania....

"These properties were overwhelmingly in distressed neighborhoods. If you were to do the same thing in affluent neighborhoods, it may not bring the same result. But given the choice living next door to a well-maintained homeless facility and a vacant abandoned building, you’ll take the homeless facility," he said.

Boehner: "At one point several weeks ago... the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.' "

"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system."

Boehner's repeated response to that was: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem."

[T]oward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that."

And then there's Harry Reid:

"Those days after Christmas," [Boehner] explains, "I was in Ohio, and Harry's on the Senate floor calling me a dictator and all kinds of nasty things. You know, I don't lose my temper. I never do. But I was shocked at what Harry was saying about me. I came back to town. Saw Harry at the White House. And that was when that was said," he says, referring to a pointed "go [blank] yourself" addressed to Mr. Reid.

It's best, by the way, if you're going to say "Go fuck yourself" never to say it in anger.

There's lots more in that article (in the Wall Street Journal). I was interested in this little bit at the end:

[Boehner] sees debt as almost a moral failing, noting that when he grew up in a "little middle-class, blue-collar neighborhood" outside of Cincinnati, "nobody had debt. It was unheard of. I just don't do debt."

If he's not bullshitting, he's revealing a shocking lack of sophistication. Should families pay rent on apartments until they can put down the entire purchase price of a house? Should businesses expand only through the cash they have on hand? But it's the WSJ that inserts the phrase "almost a moral failing," so I shouldn't read too much into Boehner's simple-Cincinnati-guy posing. He didn't say debt is immoral. Only that he comes from a background where the norm was to follow a budget and pay your bills. How sophisticated is he now about the good use of debt as opposed to the bad? Who knows?

"The breast pump industry is booming, thanks to Obamacare."

"Tucked within the Affordable Care Act is a provision requiring insurance companies to cover 'the costs of renting breastfeeding equipment'..."

“The law states that we must provide rental pumps,” said UnitedHealthcare spokesman Matthew Stearns. “These pumps are hospital-grade, and they are larger, harder to clean and more expensive than personalized pumps for women. We are providing women the option of getting a personal pump in lieu of renting the more-expensive pump.”

People will do what is incentivized. If breastfeeding is — as we've been told — extremely beneficial to the new baby (and the old baby?), then we ought to want to encourage women to do it. We can't force them to do it, but what we can do is make it easier. I'm very interested in the way the health-care law is going to be a mechanism for manipulating human behavior. By requiring the offering of something that feels like a gift, the government manages the moods of women who would be outraged — rightly outraged — to be told they must breastfeed.

Let's say, now that we're all becoming so involved in the overall economics of healthcare, that we wanted to boost the health of the babies in the insurance pool by making every mother breastfeed (unless she can't and gets a doctor's excuse note). You couldn't simple mandate breastfeeding, because it's too intimately concerned with the woman's body. You'd be violating her rights, but you wouldn't even reach that legal question, because it would be too politically ugly to go there. How about imposing higher health-care premiums for women who have babies, then choose not to breastfeed? That's also unpleasant. And how would you spy on women to check what they were doing? You could slap some big tax on baby formula, but that punishes even the women who can't breastfeed, and it nudges people to buy some alternative product — milk being an obvious substitution.

So make the pumps free so the manipulation feels good.

And here's a business sector that will do fabulously well: the pump-makers. The politicians score triply: 1. Female service to baby health is harnessed, 2. Women feel happy about getting things, and 3. A business booms.

ADDED: Times have really changed:

I remember in the early 70s, Ms. Magazine, in its early days, constantly attacked La Leche League, a pro-breastfeeding group. It was considered anti-feminist at the time to encourage women to breastfeed. Breastfeeding promoters had an ulterior motive (according to Ms.): keeping women at home.

The pump is a device to obscure this criticism. It represents a weird kind of freedom. This human organism needs your body, frequently, but you can get your distance if you attach yourself, diligently and efficiently, to the electrical suction machine. The aesthetics of breastfeeding are radically transformed. The leisure and the ease of natural breastfeeding while tending to various household tasks are superseded by a busy schedule stacked with duties — going to work, getting through work while slotting in the regular suctioning of the mammaries, getting home, taking care of all the same household tasks, and slotting in some time to bond with the child. Was this worth it? Hey, don't be glum. Here's a present for you: A milk-extraction machine. Happy?

Fiscal cliffhanging on their every word.

Are you?

"Isn’t there something creepy about Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz having... 'asked his Washington-area employees to write "Come Together" on each customer cup today, tomorrow and Friday, as a gesture to urge leaders to resolve the fiscal cliff'?"

Asks Mickey Kaus.

Did Schultz take a poll of his employees–sorry, “partners,” he calls them–before ordering pressuring asking them to join in this lobbying effort? What if he were, say, the CEO of Chick-fil-A and he “asked” his “partners” to write “Preserve the Family” on the outside of cups and containers?

I’m not saying what Schultz did is or should be illegal, certainly not in a Citizen’s United world. If he wants to run a hybrid coffee-shop-political-organization, that’s fine with me. But maybe he should have made that clear to his workers when they signed up.

What troubles me about the slogan "Come Together" is that it's a pretty obvious reference to the Beatles song that begins with Lennon saying "shoot me" over and over. Given the recent massacre — and the fact that Lennon himself was shot to death — it's not good resonance.

As for an employer telling employees what to say to customers, I've got no legalistic problem with that. The first job I ever had was as a waitress, and I was required to greet the customers with the lengthy "Hello, my name is Ann, and I will be your waitress tonight." How do you give that wooden line a good reading?

I'd much rather say "Come Together," especially if I was serving muddy water, brewed with a mojo filter.