"The fundamental libertarian error here is to treat the individual rather than the family as the benefit recipient."
This is by no means unique to libertarians. Our entire society is structured around the individual, which is really weird considering that the first, most important, job of literally every human society is to produce and raise the next generation. Seems like successful societies would encourage family formation instead of maximal individual autonomy at all costs.
This is a problem that cultural Darwinism will take care of. But that's a bad solution, at least for us.
Yes, agree Brian. Every successful culture in the world and that produces offspring believe and support a strong family culture and structure. The family is the basic unit for survival, not the individual. The nation state wants individuals because they are easier to mold and use more utilitarian. Same as why they did away with Catholicism back in the day the state wanted their land, and the church didn't adhere and always listen to the state or elites, the royalty back then. They tried to listen to God, not man. Yes, that didn't always work out (they are human and all humans are born sinners and sin) but they tried and wanted to.
No family no kids. Unless we can start getting them from test tubes BUT who raises them? The state? State run homes? oh boy that sounds wonderful.
The state already "raises" them in state school from age 3 (free preschool here in CA, yeah!) I'm teaching Huxley's brave New World starting next week. Every time I teach this book, I'm struct by the fact that our elites view it not as a warning but a how-to-manual.
I think there's also an element of "you become what you measure". For decades, GDP has been THE metric for our society. I'm an economist, and GDP is important. But focusing obsessively on it is counterproductive. EG: one of the best ways to raise GDP is to push women out of the home and into the paid workforce. Both the woman's salary and the (previously unneeded) daycare are both suddenly included in GDP. On paper, your economy grew; in reality, it probably got worse, since daycare is almost always inferior to Mom.
There's no official measurement of female GDP contribution, but I had Claude run the calculations for me based on women's labor force participation rates. Roughly half a point of GDP growth per year was due to the inflow of women into the workforce in the 70's and 80's. Less later since most women who could be pushed into paid employment already had been. Half a point of GDP growth annually for 20 years is HUGE!
Also, yes GDP is as sterile as most economists thinking and talking. It needs to be used with other metrics describing peoples lifestyle improvements. If not GDP to me is just another number.
Bhutan has tried Gross Happiness Product (an attempt to solve the money!=marginal-utility problem all economists know about but refuse to mention). I'm not sure how it's been going though.
I would argue that the bigger problem in modern economics is all the economists trying to blind themselves to the cost of defending the commons. Particularly when it comes to trade. There is a cost to keeping arsenic out of the drinking water and protecting shipping in the Red Sea, yet we're told over and over that we can't include non-tariff trade barrier in our trade agreements, as well as the freedom of navigation has to apply to all not just our responsible allies.
Instead they just look at the short term effect on GDP caused by allowing companies to move production to Mexico or China, while we borrow more and more to replace all the weapons and munitions spent protecting an ever growing number of defense free riders.
You're correct that there are a lot of systemic problems in economic modelling, but if you had the pick the single most widespread one that infects everything, it's the mismatch between "willingness to pay" and "marginal utility". In my HS econ classes I touch on this briefly, but very rapidly shift from utiulity to money because there's no solution to the "how to sum marginal utility across a population" problem. However, it remains a very serious problem that should be considered every time an economist predicts ANTYTHING from a model.
Yes, happiness is a hard thing it's so subjective. I've always had a problem with the happiness thing in general. The pursuit of happiness? Don't believe we were put here to seek out happiness? Here to experience life? find God? Oh well just me I guess.
Bhutan? (Nepal is next to them) I worked in Afghanistan for years with Nepalese people and they were the kindest hard working sincere, beautiful people I have ever met. I've always wanted to go to Nepal just to be around their culture again, they were awesome. Hope they never get too westernized and lose their culture and society to the multi-cultural nihilistic crap exposed today.
My only issue with this ideological reasoning is that it assumes women weren't always part of the work force. Yet in reality, a family farm relied on women working to produce everything from canned goods to clothes, as well as helping in the fields during peak labor needs like planting and harvesting. Same was true for the local general store or even the blacksmiths shop.
So yes, we need to figure this out so that moms can spend more time with their small children, but at the same time recognize that women have always been a very important part of the economy.
Unless those products are made for commercial sale, they are not part of GDP. In fact, her making them lowers GDP on paper since it results in that family buying fewer mass-produced canned foods and clothing.
Note: I'm by no means implying that women were not "working" at all (as a stay-at-home Dad now, I know well what it takes to maintain a family) only that their work didn't count as part of economic statistics. But I'm a good example: when I left IT consulting, America lost about $150K a year in GDP. If the overriding goal is higher GDP, I should have stayed in the workforce and hired a nanny, even if she consumed 70% of my net salary. And yet almost no one (incl my wife or I) would say that would be a "better' outcome for our kids or our family.
You jumped right over my point. Most women did in fact help to one extent or another with producing products or services for commercial sale.
Calvin College's mother helped make cheese on the dairy side of the family farm, then helped make and bottle maple syrup on the sugar maple side. She continued to do so even after her son was in the oval office.
Back in merry old England, canal boats were often manned by husband, wife and even the children. With the wives helping to load and unload as well as taking turns at the helm.
By the time we were measuring GDP, millions of working mother were contributing many hours each week on family farms, sailing schooners, general stores, and artisanal workshops for which they were never formally paid. In my own family life, there was a few years as my father's business slowly went bankrupt that my mother replaced a couple of paid employees with effectively unpaid labor to try and keep things afloat.
So those that believe there was ever a time in which the majority of women were somehow not involved in the broader economy are the ones misreading history and trying to create something that never existed. Yes we need to do a better job of creating flexibility for young women so they can more easily have the time needed to raise kids and enjoy motherhood, but the desire to have more in life will always find women helping increase the family fortune in whatever ways they reasonably can.
“‘companies have a “jarring” skepticism of higher ed thanks to a new generation of degree holders who lack key skills like handling uncertainty, compromising, and absorbing feedback’ . . . .”
This is most likely not higher ed’s problem. It’s likely a problem of the let’s-sculpt-kids-into-grade-and-credential-seekers industry, which is the environment in which the children our new aristocracy of meritocrats grow up.
If the ploys used by the hedge funds, etc are legal or gray area stuff, the fault lies with Congress and/or the people at Treasury that write the regulations. Probably gray area stuff as vagueness is endemic in that world. So do the reviews, rewrite the regulations or statutes and perhaps fire some Treasury employees. Hedge funds are a plague but it is government that created the opportunity.
Hooray, Oren scrounged up something potentially productive for Treasury to spend its time on. As DonOrenomics record-breaking deficits pile up, we need every penny Scott can uncover so I wish him well. Let's hope he's more successful than his failed effort to impact bond markets, interest rates don't seem to be cooperating. Scott may also be busy implementing the other "new" right policy Don floated, inflating our way out of our debt crisis. That should calm things down... But they better hurry, Don's approval rating on the economy continues to plummet, he's now sunk even lower than his fellow incoherent octogenarian-Joepa.
Oren also recounts several China related news items, but somehow missed the biggest one, Don's summit with Xi. Don was in rare form as he showed Xi who was boss. Since he incessantly rails against communism, it was stunning to see Chinese state media welcomed into the White House while the "free" US media was barred for being mean to him. He failed to confront Xi over China's assistance in targeting/killing our soldiers in the "new" right/MAGA Middle East war, but did manage to offer him sales of our weapons systems while continuing to withhold sales to Taiwan. Sadly, he didn't muster a conversation about AI, er, SI regulation. The highlight for Don was giving Xi a tour of his helipad, ballroom, and autopen photo wall. I wonder if he gave him a look at secret plans for the sniper's nest he's now touting for his triumphal arch?
"The fundamental libertarian error here is to treat the individual rather than the family as the benefit recipient."
This is by no means unique to libertarians. Our entire society is structured around the individual, which is really weird considering that the first, most important, job of literally every human society is to produce and raise the next generation. Seems like successful societies would encourage family formation instead of maximal individual autonomy at all costs.
This is a problem that cultural Darwinism will take care of. But that's a bad solution, at least for us.
Yes, agree Brian. Every successful culture in the world and that produces offspring believe and support a strong family culture and structure. The family is the basic unit for survival, not the individual. The nation state wants individuals because they are easier to mold and use more utilitarian. Same as why they did away with Catholicism back in the day the state wanted their land, and the church didn't adhere and always listen to the state or elites, the royalty back then. They tried to listen to God, not man. Yes, that didn't always work out (they are human and all humans are born sinners and sin) but they tried and wanted to.
No family no kids. Unless we can start getting them from test tubes BUT who raises them? The state? State run homes? oh boy that sounds wonderful.
The state already "raises" them in state school from age 3 (free preschool here in CA, yeah!) I'm teaching Huxley's brave New World starting next week. Every time I teach this book, I'm struct by the fact that our elites view it not as a warning but a how-to-manual.
I think there's also an element of "you become what you measure". For decades, GDP has been THE metric for our society. I'm an economist, and GDP is important. But focusing obsessively on it is counterproductive. EG: one of the best ways to raise GDP is to push women out of the home and into the paid workforce. Both the woman's salary and the (previously unneeded) daycare are both suddenly included in GDP. On paper, your economy grew; in reality, it probably got worse, since daycare is almost always inferior to Mom.
There's no official measurement of female GDP contribution, but I had Claude run the calculations for me based on women's labor force participation rates. Roughly half a point of GDP growth per year was due to the inflow of women into the workforce in the 70's and 80's. Less later since most women who could be pushed into paid employment already had been. Half a point of GDP growth annually for 20 years is HUGE!
Concur Brian. I agree with you fully.
Also, yes GDP is as sterile as most economists thinking and talking. It needs to be used with other metrics describing peoples lifestyle improvements. If not GDP to me is just another number.
Bhutan has tried Gross Happiness Product (an attempt to solve the money!=marginal-utility problem all economists know about but refuse to mention). I'm not sure how it's been going though.
I would argue that the bigger problem in modern economics is all the economists trying to blind themselves to the cost of defending the commons. Particularly when it comes to trade. There is a cost to keeping arsenic out of the drinking water and protecting shipping in the Red Sea, yet we're told over and over that we can't include non-tariff trade barrier in our trade agreements, as well as the freedom of navigation has to apply to all not just our responsible allies.
Instead they just look at the short term effect on GDP caused by allowing companies to move production to Mexico or China, while we borrow more and more to replace all the weapons and munitions spent protecting an ever growing number of defense free riders.
You're correct that there are a lot of systemic problems in economic modelling, but if you had the pick the single most widespread one that infects everything, it's the mismatch between "willingness to pay" and "marginal utility". In my HS econ classes I touch on this briefly, but very rapidly shift from utiulity to money because there's no solution to the "how to sum marginal utility across a population" problem. However, it remains a very serious problem that should be considered every time an economist predicts ANTYTHING from a model.
Yes, happiness is a hard thing it's so subjective. I've always had a problem with the happiness thing in general. The pursuit of happiness? Don't believe we were put here to seek out happiness? Here to experience life? find God? Oh well just me I guess.
Bhutan? (Nepal is next to them) I worked in Afghanistan for years with Nepalese people and they were the kindest hard working sincere, beautiful people I have ever met. I've always wanted to go to Nepal just to be around their culture again, they were awesome. Hope they never get too westernized and lose their culture and society to the multi-cultural nihilistic crap exposed today.
Yeah, I edited my comment to reflect Bhutan before you types yours, since I'd displaced which country adopted the GHP formula.
My only issue with this ideological reasoning is that it assumes women weren't always part of the work force. Yet in reality, a family farm relied on women working to produce everything from canned goods to clothes, as well as helping in the fields during peak labor needs like planting and harvesting. Same was true for the local general store or even the blacksmiths shop.
So yes, we need to figure this out so that moms can spend more time with their small children, but at the same time recognize that women have always been a very important part of the economy.
Unless those products are made for commercial sale, they are not part of GDP. In fact, her making them lowers GDP on paper since it results in that family buying fewer mass-produced canned foods and clothing.
Note: I'm by no means implying that women were not "working" at all (as a stay-at-home Dad now, I know well what it takes to maintain a family) only that their work didn't count as part of economic statistics. But I'm a good example: when I left IT consulting, America lost about $150K a year in GDP. If the overriding goal is higher GDP, I should have stayed in the workforce and hired a nanny, even if she consumed 70% of my net salary. And yet almost no one (incl my wife or I) would say that would be a "better' outcome for our kids or our family.
You jumped right over my point. Most women did in fact help to one extent or another with producing products or services for commercial sale.
Calvin College's mother helped make cheese on the dairy side of the family farm, then helped make and bottle maple syrup on the sugar maple side. She continued to do so even after her son was in the oval office.
Back in merry old England, canal boats were often manned by husband, wife and even the children. With the wives helping to load and unload as well as taking turns at the helm.
By the time we were measuring GDP, millions of working mother were contributing many hours each week on family farms, sailing schooners, general stores, and artisanal workshops for which they were never formally paid. In my own family life, there was a few years as my father's business slowly went bankrupt that my mother replaced a couple of paid employees with effectively unpaid labor to try and keep things afloat.
So those that believe there was ever a time in which the majority of women were somehow not involved in the broader economy are the ones misreading history and trying to create something that never existed. Yes we need to do a better job of creating flexibility for young women so they can more easily have the time needed to raise kids and enjoy motherhood, but the desire to have more in life will always find women helping increase the family fortune in whatever ways they reasonably can.
Some legacy programs like Social Security are built around the family as it existed in 1935. This leads to a massive subsidy of women by men.
It's about time, don't you think?
“‘companies have a “jarring” skepticism of higher ed thanks to a new generation of degree holders who lack key skills like handling uncertainty, compromising, and absorbing feedback’ . . . .”
This is most likely not higher ed’s problem. It’s likely a problem of the let’s-sculpt-kids-into-grade-and-credential-seekers industry, which is the environment in which the children our new aristocracy of meritocrats grow up.
If the ploys used by the hedge funds, etc are legal or gray area stuff, the fault lies with Congress and/or the people at Treasury that write the regulations. Probably gray area stuff as vagueness is endemic in that world. So do the reviews, rewrite the regulations or statutes and perhaps fire some Treasury employees. Hedge funds are a plague but it is government that created the opportunity.
Great column in the FT yesterday………
omg the universities teach citizenship! we are goners for sure. Please don't go there.
It's great that Oren Cass supports the international organized crime syndicate operating out of the Pork Store, aka the White House!
Hooray, Oren scrounged up something potentially productive for Treasury to spend its time on. As DonOrenomics record-breaking deficits pile up, we need every penny Scott can uncover so I wish him well. Let's hope he's more successful than his failed effort to impact bond markets, interest rates don't seem to be cooperating. Scott may also be busy implementing the other "new" right policy Don floated, inflating our way out of our debt crisis. That should calm things down... But they better hurry, Don's approval rating on the economy continues to plummet, he's now sunk even lower than his fellow incoherent octogenarian-Joepa.
Oren also recounts several China related news items, but somehow missed the biggest one, Don's summit with Xi. Don was in rare form as he showed Xi who was boss. Since he incessantly rails against communism, it was stunning to see Chinese state media welcomed into the White House while the "free" US media was barred for being mean to him. He failed to confront Xi over China's assistance in targeting/killing our soldiers in the "new" right/MAGA Middle East war, but did manage to offer him sales of our weapons systems while continuing to withhold sales to Taiwan. Sadly, he didn't muster a conversation about AI, er, SI regulation. The highlight for Don was giving Xi a tour of his helipad, ballroom, and autopen photo wall. I wonder if he gave him a look at secret plans for the sniper's nest he's now touting for his triumphal arch?
And your Trump Denial Syndrome is in full flower. The truth often hurts, but, truth trumps tribe. Besides, in your heart, you know I'm right:).
Karl, your TDS is acting up again. Go easy on yourself.