Enlighten Radio Podcasts:Podcast: The Are You Crazy Health and Wellness Show: -- The Insanity of Addiction Treatment

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Blog: Enlighten Radio Podcasts
Post: Podcast: The Are You Crazy Health and Wellness Show: -- The Insanity of Addiction Treatment
Link: http://podcasts.enlightenradio.org/2017/08/podcast-are-you-crazy-health-and.html

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Enlighten Radio Podcasts:Winners and Losers - Aug 29, 2017 -- Kim Jon Un, Brexitism and Labor, how to brush your teeth...

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Blog: Enlighten Radio Podcasts
Post: Winners and Losers - Aug 29, 2017 -- Kim Jon Un, Brexitism and Labor, how to brush your teeth...
Link: http://podcasts.enlightenradio.org/2017/08/winners-and-losers-aug-29-2017-kim-jon.html

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Yellen's Odds of Being Reappointed Get Slimmer [feedly]

Yellen's Odds of Being Reappointed Get Slimmer
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/08/yellens-odds-of-being-reappointed-get-slimmer.html

Tim Duy:

Yellen's Odds of Being Reappointed Get Slimmer: The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual Jackson Hole conference offered little direct insight into the path of monetary policy for this year and next. But that doesn't mean it was a nonevent. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that the already small odds of Chair Janet Yellen being reappointed by the Trump administration when her term ends in February just got a lot slimmer. ...Continued at Bloomberg Prophets...

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

House Speaker Paul Ryan gets innovative in spreading misleading international tax comparisons [feedly]

House Speaker Paul Ryan gets innovative in spreading misleading international tax comparisons
http://www.epi.org/blog/house-speaker-paul-ryan-gets-innovative-in-spreading-misleading-international-tax-comparisons/

During a town hall on Monday, House Speaker Paul Ryan trotted out a standard and misleading talking point, claiming that the international competitiveness of U.S. corporations is damaged by an allegedly too-high corporate income tax rate.

"I was just meeting with a father/son business in—I was doing office hours in Janesville today. I met with a father/son business in—down in south central Wisconsin. I don't want to tell their names because I don't want to, you know, get them grief. But down in Genoa City, they have an electricity business. They make electrical parts for Snap-on and other companies.

Their biggest competitor is Canada, a company in Canada. Their tax rate—they're a corporation, small business, 35 percent. You know what the Canadian tax rate is? Fifteen percent. Eight out of 10 businesses in America file their taxes as people, as individuals. We call them, like, Subchapter S corporations, LLCs. Their top effective tax rate is 44.6 percent. Canadians are at 15 percent. The Irish at 12.5 percent. China, 25 percent."

As I noted a couple weeks ago, the most common version of this talking point just compares the statutory U.S. corporate tax rate to the statutory corporate rate in other countries. This is already awfully misleading because what corporations actually pay (their effective rate) is far less than the 35 percent statutory rate, thanks to a corporate tax code riddled with loopholes. It's hard to come up with an exact number, but studies have found effective federal corporate tax rates ranging between 12.5 and 19.4 percent—a far cry from 35 percent.

Read more

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

EJMR needs to end [feedly]

EJMR needs to end
https://digitopoly.org/2017/08/27/ejmr-needs-to-end/

Over a week ago, Justin Wolfers wrote in the New York Times about new research by Alice Wu (a Berkeley undergraduate student with skills in machine learning). Her paperexamined discussions on the website Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR) and found that women who were discussed on the site were more likely to have personal rather than academic comments; although that is a kind interpretation. Indeed, women were subjected to more of what can clearly be termed verbal abuse, slander and threats than men.

As one indicator the 30 words most uniquely associated with discussions of women were: hotter, lesbian, bb (internet speak for "baby"), sexism, tits, anal, marrying, feminazi, slut, hot, vagina, boobs, pregnant, pregnancy, cute, marry, levy, gorgeous, horny, crush, beautiful, secretary, dump, shopping, date, nonprofit, intentions, sexy, dated and prostitute. By contrast the words most uniquely associate with men were juicy, keys, adviser, bully, prepare, fought, wharton, austrian, fieckers, homo, genes, e7ee, mathematician, advisor, burning, pricing, philly, band, kfc, nobel, cmt, amusing, greatest, textbook, goals, irate, roof, pointing, episode, tries.

As a reflection of the economics profession, it was not a pretty picture.

My initial reaction to this was that this type of thing was not uncommon for the Internet and in terms of gender issues in economics we had much more important things to worry about. I wasn't necessarily alone: Tyler Cowen published this thoughtful piece on the problems of having a tenure system. See also Diane Coyle in the Financial Times.

As you can see from the title of this post, I have changed my mind. EJMR is a problem and we need to do something about it. My reasoning is this: it does not take much searching through the site to see just how badly women are treated. Wu's research, if anything, understates the whole problem because it looks at words, not context. The context ain't pretty.

But the key is that it is specific women. There is hardly a woman in economics that, at one time or another, hasn't received derogatory statements on the site. And from following Twitter discussion on this, those comments invariably come from people who have encountered them in real life. In other words, if you are a woman attending a conference or seminar, you can look out at a sea of people with the knowledge that one or more of them has, in the worst cases, threatened you with violence. They have done so anonymously which only makes it worse. EJMR makes women in our profession profoundly unsafe. This is something that is shockingly awful and cannot be dismissed lightly. The site is causing considerable external harm. It is not some private community but one, precisely because it is an insiders forum, doing more harm than good.

What can we do about this? One option would be for EJMR to change its ways. But we do not even know who runs it. The whole thing is under a cloak of anonymity which is something that should also disturb us.

A simple way to start that change would be to actually take Wu's research and ban all of the words she has identified as being associated with stereotyping. The research is there, it could be simply implemented.

That would be a start but, as you can imagine, it might quickly evolve away. We need something stronger.

My more significant thought is a simple one and, if I may add, an economic one: follow the money. As a website, EJMR makes its money from ads. (One service values it at almost $100,000). There are two types of ads on the site.

The first are Google Ad Sense ads. These are ads served up by Google and feature advertisers like the Financial Times. Google have terms and conditions, however, and the one on "dangerous and derogatory content" seems to fit the bill:

We believe strongly in freedom of expression, but we don't permit monetization of dangerous or derogatory content. For this reason, Google ads may not be placed on pages containing content that:

• Threatens or advocates for harm on oneself or others;
• Harasses, intimidates or bullies an individual or group of individuals;
• Incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.

You can complain about any site here and I have done just that (citing Wu's research). One could also do that pointing to particular posts.

The second type of ad appears to be a permanent one for Econ-Jobs.com. This is a website run by a Mr David Jones in the UK. But that site is funded by the economics profession in the placement of job ads. They are not affiliated (to the best of my knowledge) with EJMR but this looks like an important financial relationship for EJMR. In other words, who is funding EJMR? We are!

I contacted the support site for Econ-Jobs a few days ago and they are looking into the issue. However, in the meantime, I do not see how any employer of economists can advertise on Econ-Jobs knowing their positions will show up on EJMR.

Now some may query whether doing something to harm EJMR is an assault on free speech. I am not proposing a government law. Nor am I proposing that they cannot exist even if I don't want them to. To be sure, I believe it is possible to have a site for discussing 'inside economics' stuff without the assaults on individual members of the profession that we see here. So in principle, things could evolve.

My point is that, while it is what it is, we don't have to fund it. We don't have to support advertisers or advertising platforms that fund it.

[Update #1 (August 28, 2017): Not long after this post went up, a new post from the owner of EJMR (going by the name of Kirk) appeared. It led with this:

EJMR has and always will condemn sexism. Over the years the site has become much better at tackling attempts to post sexist content, with a growing team of moderators, stronger moderation policy, and a programmed bot to auto-delete offensive posts. Indeed I believe most of the words that were cited as most offensive in the study were on the auto-delete bot for over a year, so you would not be able to find them with recent data. Unfortunately the bot would not have deleted these words in old posts, as the bot only targets recent posts to keep its load on the server low.

To help remedy this, last Wednesday I backdated the bot so it would auto delete all old posts with the offending words.

If someone wishes to suggest any words that should be added to the auto-delete bot they can ask the moderators.

This is (was) my first suggestion above and so it is good to see that it is being done. Some quick searching on the site indicated for me that this may well be the case. I want to acknowledge this as a positive step. And it may well satisfy Google Ad Sense.

That said, unfortunately, the site has managed to attract a set of users who continue to generate the harm we have seen over the years. What needs to be done is for a repeat study by Wu (or someone else) that examines the site in six months to a year to see if there has been a change. Statistical evidence convinced us there was a problem. Statistical evidence will convince us there is no longer a problem.]

[Update #2 (August 28, 2017): As of this morning (7am), Econ-Jobs.com advertisements are not on EJMR. I do not know if this is permanent but my objection to Econ-Jobs.com was that its ads for jobs were appearing on EJMR. If that is no longer the case, there is no reason to stop using Econ-Jobs. I will continue to monitor this and update if the change should not prove permanent.]

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Re: [socialist-econ] Should-Read: Matthew Yglesias : Steve Bannon’s “economic nationalism” is total nonsense : "'Economic nationalism' has g... [feedly]

You're right, John.  Well worth the read.  The writer framed good points very well.

On Aug 25, 2017 1:32 PM, "John Case" <jcase4218@gmail.com> wrote:

Should-Read: Matthew Yglesias : Steve Bannon's "economic nationalism" is total nonsense : "'Economic nationalism' has g...
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/08/should-read-matthew-yglesias-steve-bannons-economic-nationalism-is-total-nonsense-economic-nationalism-has.html

Should-Read: Matthew Yglesias: Steve Bannon's "economic nationalism" is total nonsense: "'Economic nationalism' has grave flaws as an ideology beyond Trump's racism, lack of policy knowledge, and personal indiscipline... https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/21/16165348/steve-bannon-economic-nationalism

...The idea that the United States as a whole is locked in zero-sum economic competition with other countries or that average Americans could become wealthier at the expense of foreigners is simply wrong. At best, it's an analytical error... At worst, it's a con job... to distract middle- and working-class Americans from very real questions about the domestic distribution of economic resources by casting aspersions on foreigners.... The extent of expert consensus on the economic impact of both trade and immigration is important to understand.... Both sides of the argument agree that the typical American was made better-off by trade with China. By the same token, the entire bitter argument among labor economists about immigration and wages is about whether or not immigrants have depressed the incomes of native-born high school dropouts.... But... only 8 percent of the native population lacks a high school diploma. Both sides agree that most Americans are benefitting from immigration....

Globalization is, fundamentally, an enormous opportunity for almost everyone in the world.... The United States has... taken advantage of it in order to obtain cheaper manufacturing goods for domestic consumers.... But note that just as manufacturing-focused globalization hasn't been bad for most Americans, shifting emphasis to professional services would hardly hurt foreigners. Creating broad and clear pathways for foreigners to train to US standards and then move here to work as doctors, dentists, and nurses would be great for most Americans while also creating great new economic opportunities for foreigners. All policy choices involve winners and losers, but the tradeoff is almost never the kind of strict country versus country battle that Bannonism implies....

While Americans who follow politics were obsessing over the latest ups and downs of the Trump Show this summer, real policy changes that are important to wealthy business interests continued to roll out of DC.... Nestlé is not particularly nationalistic, but they do enjoy selling bottled water. Luckily for them, last Thursday the Interior Department decided to reverse restrictions on bringing bottled water into national parks. The Trump administration was also hard at work last week on making it easier for nursing homes that provide substandard care to avoid legal liability. Like Trump's effort to let Sinclair Broadcasting violate longstanding media concentration rules, make workplaces less safe for the people who work in them, reduce workers' overtime pay, and make it easier for financial advisers to rip off their clients, there hasn't been a lot of tweeting about these two regulatory actions.

Instead, Trump feeds the public a steady diet of racial conflict hoping that if he punches nonwhite America hard enough, white America will be so busy gawking they won't notice their pockets are being picked too. This is a time-honored hustle in American politics, and Trump grasps its operation intuitively. And he also grasps in a way that Bannon may not that "economic nationalism" is useful as an extension of the hustle and no further. Adding immigrants and the Chinese to the scapegoat list alongside the traditional African-American targets makes for a more compelling narrative, and it's let him bring the scam to parts of the urban North that have traditionally been too overwhelmingly white for the standard race hustle to seem compelling.... There's nothing to mourn in the failure to build a more substantive vision of "economic nationalism" because the vision itself never made sense...

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

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Enlighten Radio:Enlighten Radio Update - August 27, 2017

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Blog: Enlighten Radio
Post: Enlighten Radio Update - August 27, 2017
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/08/enlighten-radio-update-august-27-2017.html

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