Things to Read at Night on March 5, 2014
Must-Reads:
-
Aaron Carroll and Austin Frakt: Zombie Medicaid arguments: “They just won’t die…. We want to focus on the first statement, the one that declares that Medicaid doesn’t improve patients’ health. That’s not true…. There are lots of legitimate claims to make against Medicaid. It under-reimburses physicians, for instance, causing access problems in some areas and for some beneficiaries…. But the natural response to saying docs don’t get paid enough would be to increase Medicaid funding to improve that. Gutting the program will do the opposite…. We look forward to a continuing and lively debate on how to reform the health care system. But declaring that health insurance in the form of Medicaid hurts people or ‘doesn’t work’ ignores the real good that it does…. Let’s listen to each other’s arguments and respond to them, instead of repeating talking points past each other.”
-
Jon Aziz: Why Is the American internet so slow?: “Other countries have done more to ensure that the market is open to competition. A 2006 study comparing the American and South Korean broadband markets concluded: ‘[T]he South Korean market was able to grow rapidly due to fierce competition in the market, mostly facilitated by the Korean government’s open access rule and policy choices more favorable to new entrants rather than to the incumbents. Furthermore, near monopoly control of the residential communications infrastructure by cable operators and telephone companies manifests itself as relatively high pricing and lower quality in the U.S. [Professor Richard Taylor and Eun-A Park via Academic.edu]’ And the gap between the U.S. and Korea has only grown wider since then…”
Should-Reads:
-
Neil Fligstein: The Role of “Macroeconomics” as a Sensemaking and Cultural Frame
-
Ryan Cooper: Free Money for Everyone: “How would you like to get $2,000 in free money today, fresh off the government printing presses? And what if I told you it wouldn’t just be a nice windfall for you and your friends and family, but that we’d do it for all Americans on an ongoing basis, and that doing so would solve our crippling problem of mass unemployment?… The key idea behind such a program has a longstanding, bipartisan economic pedigree…. Milton Friedman suggested that monetary policy could never fail to cure mass unemployment, because as a last resort the central bank could just drop cash out of helicopters—an enticing analogy that former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke borrowed in a 2002 speech, earning himself the persistent nickname of ‘Helicopter Ben’…. In 2008, George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi engineered the tax rebate stimulus, in which everyone received a check in the mail—paid for, eventually, with fresh new money. Studies have found that this stimulus worked quite well; it was just overwhelmed by the Great Recession…”
-
DJW: Fixing the op-ed page: “he staggering and utter vacuity and general uselessness of the non-Krugman op-ed writers…. I want to… question the model: Why 6-7 people writing twice a week? The defects of this model seem obvious to me…. My preferred model [:]… a stable of 30-50 regular writers, drawing from academics, journalists, and others who have something to day, but wouldn’t or couldn’t commit to a full time op-ed job. When someone uses the platform to pursue an important story over several columns (say, Herbert on Tulia) bump them up in the rotation…. The benefits seem obvious: less tendencies toward village group-think, more thoughtful contributions, less ‘story of the week’ silliness, more people writing about something they actually know about, etc.”
-
Scott Lemieux: The Majoritarian Difficulty: “Damon Linker’s concern trolling notwithstanding, using embarrassingly specious ‘religious freedom’ arguments as a pretext to continue the longstanding conservative war on civil rights doesn’t appear to be fooling anybody. But here’s one reason they’re riding this dead Thurmond so hard: ‘According to a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, only 41 percent of Americans oppose allowing same-sex couples to marry. But that same 41 percent has a highly skewed perception of where the rest of the country stands: nearly two-thirds of same-sex marriage opponents erroneously think most Americans agree with them. And only two in 10 same-sex marriage opponents realize that the majority of Americans support marriage equality.’ Schiavo II: Electric Boogaloo. Only in 2004, I think the media was much more likely to take conservative overestimation of their own support at face value.”
|
Should Be Aware of:
-
Martin Wolf: There is no easy path to democracy: “Could Ukraine become a stable liberal democracy? The answer to this question has to be: yes. Will Ukraine become a stable liberal democracy? The answer to that is: we do not know. We do know that other countries have reached the destination. But we also know that universal suffrage democracy is a delicate plant, particularly in its early years. What has happened to young democracies in, say, Egypt, Thailand, Russia and Ukraine underlines that truth. Democracy is delicate because it is a complex and, in crucial respects, unnatural game. My starting point is that government accountable to the governed is the only form suitable for grown-ups. All other forms of government treat people as children. In the past, when most people were illiterate, such paternalism might have been justified. That can no longer be true. As the population becomes more informed, governments that treat their peoples in this way will be less acceptable. I expect (or hope) that, in the long run, this will be true even of China.”
-
Kim Severson: Troubles at Women’s Prison Test Alabama – NYTimes.com: “For a female inmate, there are few places worse than the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. Corrections officers have raped, beaten and harassed women inside the aging prison here for at least 18 years, according to an unfolding Justice Department investigation. More than a third of the employees have had sex with prisoners, which is sometimes the only currency for basics like toilet paper and tampons.”
And:
- Şevket Pamuka and Maya Shatzmiller: Plagues, Wages, and Economic Change in the Islamic Middle East, 700–1500
Dan McCrum: Insurers will destroy themselves to nudge us into robot utopia |