Bullshit in America

This is from ABC's John Stossel special Bailouts and Bull, originally titled Bullshit in America. This is my favorite segment, on the "struggling middle class." All six segments are great, though. You can watch them here.

GMU in the Marketplace of Ideas

In 2002, when I decided to pursue my Bachelor's of Science in Economics at George Mason University, my decision seemed, at least on the surface, a bit risky. Mason was (and, as far as general rankings go, still is) seen as second-to-third-tier school. As a non-local, I was paying significantly higher tuition prices than locals who were opting to go to Mason for less-than intellectual reasons. Worst of all, my grades could have gotten me into a more prestigious institution, whose degree would have given me more marketability after graduation. Yet I still chose Mason.

The "why" of my decision became abundantly clear on arrival. Mason Economics' distinct, radical, intellectual culture attracted some of the best economic faculty in the country. Still, my exposure to Mason's economics education was limited to campus, to the classroom. It was a private, hard to describe experience; it was difficult to communicate the unique (sometimes oddball) point of view of the faculty to those who had not shared the experience first hand.

This is no longer the case.

GMU Econ professors are everywhere now. Their primary claim to fame (besides the prestige of the two Nobel Laureates in the faculty), is their blogging work: theirs are some of the most popular economics blogs on the web. It has translated to a plethora of op-eds, television appearances, magazine articles, podcasts. (Their blogging, with the help of the 2006 basketball team, has resulted in positive attention for the school, too.) The brand is now known as "Masonomics." The Economist has recently taken notice of this phenominon:

AT THE Kaufmann bloggers forum Don Boudreaux, chair of the economics department at George Mason University, said he rewards and encourages blogging amongst his faculty. Perhaps that's why George Mason’s department produces some of the most popular economics blogs. Professors at other universities lamented that this is not typical. Blogging is usually considered a source of distraction that sucks up valuable research time.
...

Compared to other economics departments, George Mason appears to have developed a comparative advantage in blogging. Lots of top departments produce good research and competition for talent (both new professors and graduate students) is fierce. Anecdotally, it sounds as if George Mason may actually be attracting more quality students and faculty because of the higher profile it gained from blogging.

Blogging may take away from the time professors at George Mason spend doing research. But if blogging is their comparative advantage to professors at, say, Harvard, it may be the most effective means to increase the quality and reputation of the department.

It is not completely surprising that this happened at George Mason. They also may have benefited from the Flutie effect. The past success of its basketball team may have also increased the quality of the university. The advertising effect of a successful sports team brings in revenue (by galvanising alumni with deep pockets) and increases the quality of students (by encouraging more students to apply). However, the Flutie effect generally only really benefits a university if the school turns out to be of high quality but would have otherwise been unknown. Perhaps that explains why blogging may have produced a Flutie effect on the George Mason econ department. They have not completely given up on research.

Joseph Lawler, of The American Spectator, responding to the Economist article writes:

I'm almost tempted to say that I've learned more reading Marginal Revolution, Econlog, Cafe Hayek, and Overcoming Bias than I did getting a degree in economics from a top-20 university. By maintaining these blogs GMU economists have raised the level of discourse with non-economists from basically zero. The GMU economists are not the only economics bloggers, obviously, and they trade arguments and observations with economists from other schools. Before blogs, this running debate and commentary simply was not available to anyone who didn't read the very narrow and officiated arguments in scholarly journals.

An economic historian once mentioned to me that half of all published economic research articles go uncited (except for by their own authors). Which do you think is more valuable: a medium that's one-half totally ignored, or a medium that attracts millions to read and comment every single day? I'll leave you to answer that one but as for me I wouldn't want to be limited to Tyler Cowen's thoughts just a few times a year.

Yet competing economics departments have criticized the new-found prominence of Masonomics. GMU Econ professor Peter Boettke writes:

There is a growing impression that all we do at GMU is public intellectual work in economics (blogs, trade books, op-eds, magazine articles, podcasts, TV shows, etc.) and that little scientific work goes on (journal articles and university press books, presentations at research seminiars and scientific conferences, etc.). A recent graduate from a rather low ranked PhD program actually told one of our students at the AEA meetings that 'Nobody at GMU is a serious economist, they are all philosophers who don't know technical economics.' Such ignorance could be dismissed if it was isolated, but this charge is often repeated by faculty members at would-be rival graduate programs.

Professor Boettke goes on to refute those claims, but that's beside the point. The only way bad economic ideas are defeated is through discourse in the marketplace of ideas. Mason is now a prominent voice for capitalism, one that was rarely heard in the past. The intellectual heft of Masonomics must be defended, yes. But, given the current political climate, Mason's ideological prominence is just as important.

The Heresies of Michael Steele

The NYT reports on some heretical remarks made by Michael Steele, the RNC chairman. First on abortion:

Mr. Steele said that Roe v. Wade was “wrongly decided” and that states should decide the issue. But he also said that the issue was one of “individual choice” and that women had the right to choose abortion. (The R.N.C.’s platform states the party’s opposition to abortion rights.)

And on homosexuality:

Asked whether homosexuality is a choice, Mr. Steele responded no. “I think that there’s a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can’t simply say, oh, like, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being gay,’” Mr. Steele said. “It’s like saying, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being black.’

The Republican party's backwards positions on the above issues is a function of their religiosity, which they sorely need to shed if they're to remain politically relevant. It looks like Steele, the new face of the GOP, is trying to do just that (or he is just really sloppy with his words).

It will take more than this meager effort, however: Steele has already hastily "clarified" his remarks on abortion, following a swift conservative backlash.

Thanks, But No Thanks

NYT:

As public outrage swells over the rapidly growing cost of bailing out financial institutions, the Obama administration and lawmakers are attaching more and more strings to rescue funds.

The conditions are necessary to prevent Wall Street executives from paying lavish bonuses and buying corporate jets, some experts say, but others say the conditions go beyond protecting taxpayers and border on social engineering.

Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to return the bailout money. The list includes small banks like the TCF Financial Corporation of Wayzata, Minn., and Iberia Bank of Lafayette, La., as well as giants like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.
....

Take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing-finance companies that the government now controls. In recent months, they have been told to spend billions of dollars buying bundles of mortgages for which there are no other buyers, and to let homeowners refinance their loans — even if they have no equity.

Such commands are echoes of the 1990s, when Fannie and Freddie tried to balance dueling mandates that required them to make a profit for their shareholders and to serve a public mission of increasing homeownership.

In service of both shareholders and what they asserted was the public good, they borrowed extensively in order to buy and hold mortgages in their own investment portfolios. They purchased billions of dollars in risky subprime mortgages.

As a consequence of having a public mandate, they also had a credit line with the Treasury and their risky business strategies were viewed by the markets as being guaranteed by the government.

Future Good News

The X axis is age, beginning with age 18 on the far left. Yellow is the percentage of respondents who replied "none" for religion. (Click on image to enlarge.)

[HT Sullivan]

Good News

From the Washington Post:

The percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, and those who do are increasingly identifying themselves without traditional denomination labels, according to a major study of U.S. religion being released today.
....

The only group that grew in every U.S. state since the 2001 survey was people saying they had "no" religion; the survey says this group is now 15 percent of the population. Silk said this group is likely responsible for the shrinking percentage of Christians in the United States.

Northern New England has surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country; 34 percent of Vermont residents say they have "no religion." The report said that the country has a "growing non-religious or irreligious minority." Twenty-seven percent of those interviewed said they did not expect to have a religious funeral or service when they died, and 30 percent of people who had married said their service was not religious. Those questions weren't asked in previous surveys.

On Pretention

BBC News reports on a UK poll, which reveals that two-thirds of the sample admitted to having lied about reading a classic novel "to impress someone." The most lied-about book: Orwell's 1984 (42%). Remarkably, the highly-accessible dystopian novel beat out War and Peace (31%) and Ulysses (25%).

I can't understand how a person can get away with this without being exposed as a phony. Are these people not being asked follow-up questions? Worse, lying about reading books one has no interest in only acknowledges and bolsters the influence that pretentious "taste-makers" wield in the world of the middle and upper brow.

What do people actually like to read?

Asked which authors they really enjoyed reading, more than six out of 10 (61%) chose Harry Potter author JK Rowling, nearly a third (32%) ticked legal thriller writer John Grisham.

More than a fifth (22%) chose Shopaholic author Sophie Kinsella.

I would guess that an intelligent person is more likely to lie in these circumstances, for fear of the dreaded raised eyebrow. In a way, this is the inverse of someone calling a popular or low brow favorite a "guilty pleasure." Chuck Klosterman wrote a brilliant critique of this trend for Esquire a while back:

In and of itself, the phrase "guilty pleasure" seems like a reasonable way to describe certain activities. For example, it is pleasurable to snort cocaine in public restrooms, and it always makes you feel guilty; as such, lavatory cocaine fits perfectly into this category. Drinking more than five glasses of gin before (or during) work generally qualifies as a guilty pleasure. So does having sex with people you barely know, having sex with people you actively hate, and/or having sex with people you barely know but whom your girlfriend used to live with during college (and will now consequently hate). These are all guilty pleasures in a technical sense. However, almost no one who uses the term "guilty pleasure" is referring to activities like these. People who use this term are usually talking about why they like Joan of Arcadia, or the music of Nelly, or Patrick Swayze's Road House. This troubles me for two reasons: Labeling things like Patrick Swayze movies a guilty pleasure implies that a) people should feel bad for liking things they sincerely enjoy, and b) if these same people were not somehow coerced into watching Road House every time it's on TBS, they'd probably be reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Both of these assumptions are wrong.

Klosterman is especially insightful in his analysis of the psychology of those who use the term "guilty pleasure":

[They] fail to realize is that the only people who believe in some kind of universal taste—a consensual demarcation between what's artistically good and what's artistically bad—are insecure, uncreative elitists who need to use somebody else's art to validate their own limited worldview. It never matters what you like; what matters is why you like it. (Emphases added.)

It also doesn't matter if you have no interest in reading a book some critic thinks you "need" to read. You can be an intelligent, well-rounded person and still like Jurassic Park. (The same is not true if you are a fan of its sequel, The Lost Word, however -- that book truly sucked.)