Disqus - Latest Comments for bartman

Re: The Sound You Hear Is Your Paradigm Shifting

bartman — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:04:54 -0000

Ram: the authors claim that this is different to GNP because GNP only applies to residents of a country who are overseas temporarily. They are talking about tracking the wealth of all people born in a certain place, regardless of where they choose to settle and become citizens.

Wilkinson's rhetoric is overblown and overheated. The statistic in question is not important, not meaningful, and not relevant to anything much.

The results reported are also horribly incorrect in many (probably most) cases, and are at best out of date.

This "paper" stands to validate what any thinking person already knew: people who are able to do so tend to migrate towards places that give them better wealth-generating opportunities. That's why I am in the US, not Canada (where I grew up) or the UK (where I was born.) These people are merely attempting (shoddily) to measure that well-known effect. It certainly isn't important or insightful.

Tracking the flow of remittances does a similar job, but probably better.

Re: The Sound You Hear Is Your Paradigm Shifting

bartman — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:17:28 -0000

Michael:

The "irrelevant" jab was aimed at Wilkinson's breathless hyperbole.

It appears to me that you've simply invented a new metric to show that people move from poor countries to rich ones. Your metric might be novel but the point it serves to illustrate is obvious - indeed, self-evident.

I'm sorry, at first glance I assumed your work a positivist economics paper, and criticized it thusly. After reading your comment, I see that it is in fact normative, and designed to reinforce a previously existing policy position. I mistakenly assumed objectivity, where I should have assumed subjectivity. My error, and I'll take a closer read with that in mind.

(BTW, as a migrant and as a libertarian, I happen to agree with your policy position, but that's neither here nor there.)

The reason I find your work shoddy is that I looked at your numbers for several Arab Gulf states (an area I am familiar with), and found your results to be laughably absurd, prima facie. I haven't read the whole thing, which I will do tonight. I'll then e-mail you if I have any constructive criticisms concerning methodology or conclusion.

Re: Hugo and the Heart

bartman — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:19:59 -0000

John: the first rule of satire is that it should be distinguishable from the real thing.

Timothy: CITGO is a US registered company, so negotiating with it isn't really "international trade."

Chavez is using he wealth of his nation to create a little bit of political mischief in the US. Regardless of what you think of Chavez, this is a transfer of wealth the benefits the US at the cost of the Venezualan public. But if they don't vote him out of office next time, it will be a vindicated action, politically.

Re: Hayek's Method

bartman — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:29:59 -0000

Indeed, thanks, Don. I didn't realize that my way of thinking about society and life had one of those double-barreled 50-cent post-modernist-sounding names, but I guess I'm a methodological individualist without even knowing it.

Re: Are 'Illegal' Immigrants Illegal?

bartman — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 19:19:07 -0000

Pedro Bento:

Why do you think emigrating to Canada is easier or cheaper than emigrating to the US? At the very least, a potential applicant has to pay several thousand dollars in government fees as well as demonstrate that they have sufficient funds to live unsupported for half a year in Canada, which amounts to about $8-$10,000. I recently checked this info out for my Nepalese teaboy, who want to emigrate to Canada. Given his $150/month salary, he'll never even be able to afford to apply.

Secondly, you fail to understand the NAFTA process: the NAFTA visa (TN-1) is limited to a rather short list of professionals who come to work in the US temporarily. Contrary to what you think, Canadians do not have unlimited right of abode and employ in the US. Snowbirds are limited to 90-day stays as visitors.

Re: Having the Constitution for Lunch

bartman — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 21:17:24 -0000

"General welfare" is usually the claim made by the nanny-staters I know.

My argumant that most programs designed to promote the "general welfare" usually promote some "special welfare", but most laypersons can't comprehend the technical differenmce between "special" and "general".

In my book, to promote the general welfare a policy has to improve Pareto-efficiency.

Re: Zero Sum Economics

bartman — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 00:35:19 -0000

Mr. Baker:

Issues of copyright aside (a copyright clearly a net wealth generator), it sounds like you're merely describing existing wealth being transfered via rent-seeking mechanism versus new wealth created by entrepreneurship and trade.

Do you have any sort of empirical estimate of how much of the Forbes 400 money is transferred rents and how much is new wealth?

It's good to see at least one lefty concerned about the size and scope of government.

Re: Commerce Is Not Conquest

bartman — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 05:35:17 -0000

Gene Berman:

The Chinese already build and export many cars. Here in the UAE I could purchase cars made by Haifei, Geely and Chery, as well as 3 or 4 brands of pick-up truck. My favorite is the Great Wall brand :-)

The Haifei Lobo starts at about $4,000.

Re: The Scourge of Economic Nationalism

bartman — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:05:01 -0000

Careful, Martin: in this neck of the woods "Buchananites" means something entirely different.

Re: Demand Slopes Downward

bartman — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 18:37:15 -0000

Uh, Bill, revenues can't be negative. Of course, operating costs may be greater than revenue, thus causing profit (or for a non-profit, operating surplus) to be negative.

Anyway, the cost/benefit calculations for something like the Metro go beyond the revenues. Reducing traffic congestion is worth a great deal to the region.

I'm willing to bet that someone, somewhere in the Metro has at least tried to estimate the price elasticity of demand.

Re: Billboard Jobs

bartman — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 00:06:30 -0000

"The flagman was likely a unionized government employee. If that's the case, I would wager that the flagman was paid a multiple of the minimum wage."

Unlikely. Most highway construction is done by private contractors, and those contractors usually hire teenagers to be flag-persons. That's the way it was when I was in high school.

Re: Facts Vs. Faith

bartman — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 21:44:32 -0000

David:

It is clear to me that you want governments to stop certain economic changes because those changes cause "devestation to families, communities", etc. You wanted the government to force your previous employer to continue employing you, even when it no longer wanted to. Would you like it if the government forced you to continue shopping at your local corner store even if a new, low-priced supermarket opened across town?

Concerning tenure: it is a non-pecuniary benefit. Since university professorships pay comparatively little, it is necesary to provide other employment benefits. If colleges felt like it was in their benefit to get rid of tenure, and hire low-paid Indian professors en masse, they would. There are some lucid reasons why they don't do that. I don't understand why you fail to see them.

Tenure is a tool that allows colleges to pay less to professors.

If you honestly believe that economics professors would advocate different positions if they faced greater job competition, you are seriously deluded. Indeed, professorships are one of the few positions in the US in which full and direct competition with foreign workers exists. If any school wants to hire an Indian or Chinese or Canadian professor, they are basically free to do so, with fewer strings attached than almost any other kind of job.

For the record, I have a non-tenured academic job in the middle east, with a three-month at-will termination clause in a country where about 50% of the population are migrant Indian workers. Thus, I face direct low-cost competition on a daily basis. And yet, I still advocate for free trade and the minimization of governmental interference in markets. How do you square my advocacy with my precarious job position?

Re: Take Note: Irish Immigrants Never Led a Papal Invasion of these United States

bartman — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:25:51 -0000

Dutch hater!

Re: Don't Be Sari

bartman — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:50:59 -0000

What Niraj said. Here in the Middle East, hand-made Persian (or Afghan or Baluchi) rugs are priced about 10 times higher than Belgian machine-made ones, but the merchants seem to have no difficulty selling them.