California Comebacks: First Steve Jobs, Now Jerry Brown

Of all the state election results across the nation, few can top the shocking good sense of California voters in approving temporary tax increases to raise $6 billion a year to shore up the state’s tattered public schools and university system. That’s right: There were voters in these hard times agreeing to be taxed despite the “no new taxes” mantra of simplistic conservative politicians.

via nytimes.com

"The ballot measure, Proposition 30, was an audacious gamble by Gov. Jerry Brown".
Just about everyone knows the Steve Jobs comeback story, but just about everyone outside of California has forgotten that Jerry Brown had already served two terms as Governor of California, leaving office the first time in 1983. After that it was all downhill for a long while. He was defeated in his 1982 run for the Senate, and then failed in his third and last bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination, that time against Bill Clinton.
Then in 1999, Brown began his climb back up the political ladder, winning two terms as Mayor of Oakland, and one as California Attorney General, before winning a third term as Governor in 2011.
Jobs will no doubt remain the most popular California comeback hero, but even though I'm a faithful Mac user since 1984 I believe that Brown deserves just as high a place in public esteem thanks to what he has accomplished in this election.
Let's hope that California will once again lead the way, and that voters nationwide will remember that it's worthwhile to pay higher taxes in order to maintain essential public services.
(The above quotations are from today's NYTimes editorial, "Californians Say Yes to Taxes".)

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Simon Johnson: The Importance of Elizabeth Warren - NYTimes.com

One of the most important results on Tuesday was the election of Elizabeth Warren as United States senator from Massachusetts. Her victory matters not only because it helps the Democrats keep control of the Senate but also because Ms. Warren has a track record of speaking truth to authority on financial issues – both to officials in Washington and to powerful people on Wall Street.

via economix.blogs.nytimes.com

This comes from Simon Johnson: The Importance of Elizabeth Warren - NYTimes.com.
I wonder if she could be a serious contender for President in 2016. Too honest, I suppose

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Get Used to it T-Party, The Real America is No longer in the Boondocks

No, you cannot have your country back. America is moving forward.

That’s the message voters sent the Republican Party and its Tea Party wing Tuesday night when they re-elected President Obama and strengthened the Democrats’ control of the Senate.

No amount of outside money or voter suppression or fear mongering or lying — and there was a ton of each — was enough to blunt that message.

President Obama and his formidable campaign machine out-performed the Republicans, holding together a winning coalition that is the face of America’s tomorrow: young voters, urban voters, racially and ethnically diverse voters and women voters.

via campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com

The "Real America", imperfect as it may be, is no longer on a mid American lily-white farm, or in a small town in the hinterland. The Real America is now in the cities and their suburbs. Even those mythical family farms of yore are now owned by millionaires or big corporations. Get used to it Tea Partiers!

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Nancy Folbre: Contraceptive Economics - NYTimes.com

But unintended pregnancies – which account for about half of all pregnancies – have huge economic consequences for women’s employment, family welfare, public spending and children’s health. In a recent Guttmacher Institute study of women at 22 family planning clinics in 13 states, the most frequently cited reason given for using contraception was inability to take care of a baby at the time.

The Guttmacher Institute estimates that unintended pregnancy costs American taxpayers roughly $11 billion each year.

A report by Adam Thomas published in March by the Brookings Institution shows that unintended pregnancies are disproportionately concentrated among women who are unmarried, teenage and poor. It also summarizes evidence that these pregnancies set in motion a series of unfortunate outcomes that effectively reproduce poverty.

Conventional economic theory, still taught in many college classrooms, assumes that individual decisions reflect rational choices. From this perspective, a woman who engages in sexual intercourse without making the effort required to make low-cost methods of contraception succeed (which typically includes finding a partner willing to cooperate, as with use of a condom) must either be unpardonably ignorant or trying to get pregnant.

Behavioral economics, on the other hand, emphasizes that people often lack self-control, particularly when affected by “visceral factors,” such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire.

From this perspective, people need to protect themselves, pre-emptively, from carelessness that can lead to costly consequences. Even small differences in the form protection takes can have significant long-run effects.

Women sometimes forget to take birth control pills or let their prescription lapse. Partly for this reason, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists now prioritizes use of IUDs and hormonal implants. Unpopular among older physicians and older women because they were once considered risky, these methods are now rated quite safe.

Mounting evidence suggests that making these new contraceptive technologies more economically accessible reduces abortions and unwanted births.

via economix.blogs.nytimes.com

Fortunately, we super-humans are all immune to these inconveniences of so-called overwhelming passion. Hmmm. I wonder. Even at age 80 when I have much less temptation, I doubt that.

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S'more thoughts on the marshmallow game and it's ramifications

Everybody reading this has probably run across the persistent (and well-subsidized) narrative that goes something like this: virtually all of the variability we see in wealth can be explained by intelligence, talent and character with luck and inequality of opportunity playing little role in a person's success. In this narrative the labor market is now strongly efficient and the decrease in social mobility is simply the consequence of that current level of efficiency and a very large genetic component associated with those traits needed for success.

via observationalepidemiology.blogspot.fr

Since I reblogged the original, it's my duty to continue with the followup/

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Econbrowser: If You Want Faster Growth...Get out of the Zombie Economy

As in the movie "The Sixth Sense," (in which many ghosts didn't know they are dead and only see what they want to see), for most Americans our auto centric suburban way of life is dead, but most of us don't know it yet, and we only see what we want to see.

via econbrowser.com

It's not my fault. I sold my car.

This is from a comment by one Jeffrey J. Brown on Menzie Chin's blog post.

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Nobel Prizewinners Work Toward Solutions Better Than Socalled Free Markets

A Nobel for Planning?: “The combination of Shapley’s basic theory and Roth’s empirical investigations, experiments and practical design has generated a flourishing field of research and improved the performance of many markets,” said the committee awarding the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

via economistsview.typepad.com

We've all noticed that the influence of powerful players has made the term "free markets" more or less of an oxymoron, but Arindrajit Dube points out that maybe something better is on the way. Hat tip to Mark Thoma who gives us hope that it may be a Nobel for Planning.

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