Things to Read on the Afternoon of February 10, 2014

Must-Reads:

1. CBO: Frequently Asked Questions About CBO’s Estimates of the Labor Market Effects of the Affordable Care Act: “‘Q: Will 2.5 Million People Lose Their Jobs in 2024 Because of the ACA?’ A: No, we would not describe our estimates in that way. We wrote in the report: “CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor.”… Because the longer-term reduction in work is expected to come almost entirely from a decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply in response to the changes in their incentives, we do not think it is accurate to say that the reduction stems from people “losing” their jobs.”

2. John Quiggin: Macroeconomics made easy?: “I’ve just received a book entitled Big ideas in Macroeconomics: A nontechnical view by Kartik Athreya…. The new book is an attempt to simplify things…. The easiest way to see why the book is so striking is to list some topics that do not appear in the index (and are not discussed, or only mentioned in passing, in the text)… unemployment, inflation, recession, depression, business cycle, Phillips curve, NAIRU, Taylor Rule, money, monetary policy and fiscal policy. By contrast, the book includes a lengthy treatment of such topics as Bayes-Nash equilibrium in game theory, intertemporal optimization of consumption and the theory of mechanism design. If you think that this sounds like Hamlet not merely without the Prince, but without anyone in Elsinore, from King Hamlet’s Ghost to Fortinbras, that’s because you are expecting the wrong play…. There is almost zero intersection between Big Ideas in Macroeconomics and what I would think of as macroeconomics. It’s not so much that I think Athreya is wrong is that we are talking past each other. As Charles Goodhart said of DSGE, Athreya’s version of macro excludes everything in which I am interested.”

3. Ezra Klein: Comment on Paul Krugman’s “Who’s Savvy Now?”: “I don’t quite understand the model of politics underlying the backlash-to-the-backlash over the CBO report. The theory is that though the GOP’s initial spin on the report was wrong it’s meta-right because the lies will be used to power effective attack ads in the fall–and in politics, what’s true, and what voters can be tricked into believing is true, are two equally valid categories for inquiry. You see this model of politics… particularly during elections… wall-to-wall coverage of gaffes not because anyone believes the gaffe was important, but because they believe it might end up in attack ads. Beneath that model of politics lies an assumption that an important scarcity in politics is ‘lines that can be used in attack ads’, and so every time one party or the other finds one of those lines, it’s a big deal. This seems to me to wildly underestimate the creativity of the people who make attack ads…”

4. John Quiggin: Work and Beyond: “Ross Douthat… link[ed] to… [my] reflecting on Keynes ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’…. Now he’s addressed the topic in the New York Times…. There’s some interesting food for thought… mixed up with some silly stuff reflecting his job as the NY Times token Republican…. He has to do some damage control over the… Repub lie… Obamacare will cost 2.5 million jobs. As Douthat delicately puts it ‘this is not exactly right’. But, although his heart clearly isn’t it, he tries to construct a narrative in which the Repubs might be right for the wrong reasons…. More interesting though, is Douthat’s discussion comparing idealised hopes for a post-work society with the reality in which well-educated professionals are working longer hours than ever, while… poorer men have withdrawn from the formal labour force….”

Should-Reads:

• Jason Sattler: HCAN: 27,000 Will Die Because Republican States Refuse To Expand Medicaid

• Greg Sargent: The GOP dance on immigration: “John Boehner’s suggestion that immigration reform will be ‘difficult’ because so many Republicans distrust Obama… offer[s] a useful window into what’s really bedeviling Republicans on this issue in spite of Boehner’s goal, which plainly is to get to Yes. The New York Times[‘s Carl Hulse] has a remarkable piece of reporting that demonstrates the real state of play in an admirably unvarnished way. The gist: Boehner wants reform. But distrust of Obama is not the real reason rank and file House Republicans are hesitant to embrace it. Rather, the driving motive is worry that acting now will hurt GOP chances in 2014, because of the base’s fear and loathing of Obama…”

• Paul Krugman: Who’s Savvy Now?: “Via Digby, Jay Rosen has a very good piece on how some reporting on the CBO report was distorted by what he calls the ‘cult of the savvy’… a value system… where being in the know about political maneuvering is considered all-important, whereas understanding the actual policy issue is for the drones…. My read… is that the CBO affair actually ended up hurting Republicans… the story… ‘CBO predicts massive job losses’ [turned into] ‘Republicans lie about CBO report’…. Republicans ended up losing the week. So the savvy cultists were wrong even on their own terms. And notice why they were wrong: It never occurred to them that understanding the real issues might matter, and so they were caught completely off guard when Republican lies about policy matters produced a backlash. So here’s a radical thought: Maybe the truly savvy thing is to take policy seriously, not to pretend that it’s all a game, and that only you understand the rules?”

• Jason Linkins: The Cult Of The Savvy Slays The Congressional Budget Office: Your Sunday Morning Conversation: “This is why the gut feelings that the CBO report generates are more important to Chuck Todd than the actual facts. This is why a Politico newsletter cites the facts and then dismisses them, because you’ll never ‘win the morning’ with an explanation, or evincing concern for ordinary people. And this is why the unluckiest of all receive ‘the Full Cillizza’. That thing where you acknowledge that facts exist, but insist that ‘perceptions’ are more important… [and] go on to… denigrate the work of those who attempt to trade in facts, and insist that… a media that trades in truth… [is] stupid and not even worth attempting. Per Cillizza: ‘I would say to those critics: You overestimate the media’s ability to (a) cut through the clutter or (b) change peoples’ minds about what’s true and what’s not.’… The mindset that leads a person to suspend their own good sense and ability to explain acquired knowledge for the sake of marveling at the ways shadows dance on the wall is the same one that leads a grown man[, the Washington Post’s Phillip Rucker,] to lumber after Mitt Romney like an ungainly puppy, shouting ‘What about your gaffes?’ as if that’s the question that’s going to yield a motherlode of important journalism…”

Sandhya Somashekhar: They quit their jobs, thanks to the health law | The Intercept | Sochi Weather: Temperature Hit 60 | Families USA: “62 Percent of Poll Respondents in Deep South Support Expansion of the Medicaid Program” | Jonathan Geeting: It’s an Automatic: The Road to a Future of Driverless Cars, Dense Streets and Supreme Mobility |

Should Be Aware of:

1. Scott Lemieux: Today In the Heritage Uncertainty Principle: “Shorter Jonah Goldberg: ‘This new Democratic argument about how it’s good that people will no longer be dependent on their current employer for insurance is, apart from the fact that it’s admittedly correct, really dumb. It was, after all, the only thing the ACA was intended to accomplish, how lame is that? ONE SEVENTH OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMY DEATH PANELS BENGHAZI’.”

2. Dread Pirate Mistermix: Drumthwacket is Stalag 13: “And Chris Christie is Sgt Schultz: ‘The memo from Gov. Chris Christie’s office attacking former appointee David Wildstein’s credibility landed with a thud. It was a striking and deeply personal broadside coming from a chief executive of a state, and even his allies called it a mistake’, Politico reports. ‘But one important person hadn’t seen the missive ahead of time: the governor himself. Christie’s aides did not run the document – which took the extraordinary step of highlighting incidents from Wildstein’s high school days – by the governor before they sent it out, according to two people familiar with the matter. Instead, someone tucked the high school lines into a daily briefing email to the governor’s supporters, and blasted it out earlier than planned. Another round of unflattering news coverage ensued.’ This little piece of spin is so stupid that the one thing we can be sure of is that it was leaked to Politico without Christie’s knowledge.”

3. Jay Rosen: The Personal Franchise Model in Journalism:

And:

Jeff Zommer: The Greater the Turmoil, the Stronger the Dollar. Again | Christopher J. Neely: Lessons from the Taper Tantrum |