I believe that universities should hire people with Ph.D.s not because they want people who have achieved distinction in the past, but because they want people who will achieve distinction in the future.

It's the thought that counts . . .

Why spend perfectly good money on a gift someone will hate when you can find something they'll hate just as much in your own basement?

I believe that when a university becomes unable to staff its course offerings to the point that students are regularly enouraged to fulfil their requirements at a different institution, that university is being overly ambitious in both its course offerings and its requirements.

I Know It Pisses You Off, But

Last week, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and current Harvard University professor Greg Mankiw asserted that if the Obama administration rolled back the Bush tax cuts, he might no longer write a column for the newspaper. After taxes, there simply isn't enough reward in it. This, of course, has infuriated those who support the tax increase; one colleague of mine (and a colleague that I respect, like, and appreciate) responded with a resounding, "Oh, what a freaking selfish prick is Mankiw . . . "

And my friend may be right (though I cannot claim to have knowledge whether Mankiw is either freaking or selfish or a prick), but my friend misses two very important points. First, whatever he thinks of Mankiw and his selfishness, Mankiw is demonstrating that actions have consequences--if you increase the tax on an activity, you'll get less of it. Study after study has demonstrated that even addictive behaviors like smoking respond predictably to taxation. And so, if you increase the tax on being wealthy, which often follows as a result of taking unusual risks or having extraordinary talents, then you'll get fewer people taking risks and fewer people exercising their talents. And it should not come as a surprise that the rich are more sensitive to tax changes--increase income taxes on someone whose budget is tight, and they'll still go to work every day. But the rich, with income beyond their needs, have the luxury of simply reducing their effort with little consequence for their lifestyle.

In other words, Mankiw is purposefully and pointedly, through his actions, making the larger point that there are thousands and thousands of people at the top of the income ladder whose behavior will mimic his own. And perhaps these people, too, are all freaking selfish pricks. But that's out of your hands, my friend, and irrelevant for policymakers who must, when designing policy such as a tax increase, account only for the rich's behaviors and not their attitudes. Raising taxes will reduce investment and innovation and activity, and you may not like that, but it is what it is. No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it's still a pig.

The second point that eludes my friend, when he calls Mankiw a selfish freaking prick for cutting back work when taxes rise, is this: It's. Not. Your. Money! My friend wants Mankiw to continue working, regardless of the cost or benefit to Mankiw. And he wants this not because it does Mankiw any good, but because when Mankiw works, my friend receives the benefits Mankiw's taxes provide. And so my friend asks Greg Mankiw, who is no stranger to hard work, to work some more and pay some more so that my friend can pay less.


And so, dear friend, I ask the same of you. If you really believe that it's okay to ask Mankiw to work out of the goodness of his heart so that your life can be a bit easier, then it seems only fair that you to sacrifice your evenings and your weekends and take a job at the Home Depot or Baldwin City Market so that others' lives would be easier. And make it a low-paying job, please, or donate your salary to the federal government, because I want you to know in your heart that you are not working for the money it brings you (lest someone have the temerity to call you a freaking selfish prick), but so that the taxes you earn can be put to good service helping those below you on the income ladder.


In the end, it's not really the money we're talking about, it's the work. Mankiw wishes to work less, and you condemn him for it. If you are to point an accusing finger at those richer than you who don't wish to fill their every waking moment with work on your behalf, then you must also be willing to stand in their shoes and fill your every waking moment with work on behalf of those poorer than you.

The President's Right-hand Man has resigned . . .

Not Joe Biden, but Lawrence Summers, his chief economic advisor. Summers will return to Harvard, where he has a professorship in economics, and where more famously he was pressured to resign as president after making some much-misinterpreted comments about the abilities of men and women in science.

Summers has had a distinguished academic career (it does take some qualifications to get tenure at Harvard, after all), and is known predominantly as a macroeconomist. Perhaps this is why he was tapped to serve as Treasury Secretary under Clinton. But one of the pieces of his work (with Andrei Schleifer and Lawrence Katz) I find most interesting cuts to the core of family relations: how often children visit their parents in nursing homes.  Here is their work in a nutshell:

1) Children of rich parents visit more often than children of poor parents.
2) Result 1) holds only if there is more than one child.
3) In the instance of one-child families, there is no difference in visitation rates among rich and poor.

In other words, children visit their nursing-home-ridden parents because there's money on the line. But money is only on the line when there's competition for that money in the form of siblings.

Ah, family!

Something Pithy:

One of my all-time favorite students bestowed this bit of wisdom on me:  Declaring something 'priceless' is just a way to get people to pay nothing for things that are worth something.

A short one-liner . . .

I believe there is a big difference between a society in which 95% of the people decide to each sacrifice a little to help the other 5%, and a society in which 90% of the people agree to take a lot from the remaining 10% and parcel it out among themselves.