Health Links

The Washington Post presents what is says are "five myths" about why Americans are fat

Which is better: eating one big meal, or many small meals?  It depends which study you believe.

The Senate has successfully blocked the FDA from limiting the amount of potatoes served in school meals

Here's the rundown on the study we discussed in class finding that decrease in smoking rates explains a small portion of the weight gain in the U.S. over the past few decades.

And here's a discussion of another study that finds that the average American needs to cut 240 calories per day to bring Americans' weights back to 1978 levels . . . and includes a discussion of how we could go about doing that

Lastly, here's the chart examining the 100+ causes of obesity that we discussed in class

Economic Links

Here's an excellent piece from Sunday's NY Times comparing the growth in societal equality with the concurrent decline in economic equality in the United States.

It's a puzzle: one dispossessed group after another — blacks, women, Hispanics and gays — has been gradually accepted in the United States, granted equal rights and brought into the mainstream. At the same time, in economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world.

Sociologist Jerome Karabel's explanation is that no “advanced democracy is as obsessed with equality of opportunity or as relatively unconcerned with equality of condition.”

Meanwhile, the Wall St. Journal ran a piece discussing the increasing volatility of wealth in America: at the same time that the incomes of the top 1% began to take off, those same incomes started to rise and dip far more than other Americans'.  The piece also looks at the unfinished 90,000 square foot house in Florida that would have been the largest in the country.

A new poll on the Occupy Wall Street movement finds that 32% approve, 29% disapprove, and 40% don't have an opinion:

But opinions are clear about Wall Street itself. Eight in ten say Wall Street bankers are greedy, 77% say they're overpaid, and two-thirds say Wall Street bankers are dishonest, a number that has gone up by a third in roughly two decades.

Economists say the next decade will bring many new jobs for machines, but few for people.

Nick Kristof argues that the real solution to income inequality in this country is intensive early childhood education.

Here's a report comparing growth in inequality across OECD countries

Links 10-24-11

Here are some interesting graphs from a forthcoming book on shifts in the American electorate.  Among other trends, professionals have voted increasingly for Democratic candidates while Owners and Proprietors and have voted increasingly for Republican candidates.

Here's an analysis of Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan that finds that the bottom 90% of wage-earners would pay more under the plan.  Those findings have received a great deal of media attention . . .

So watch to see if Cain's poll numbers fall . . . as of the writing of this post, he leads Romney and Perry 26% to 25.5% to 12.5% in the average of the past six polls.

The NY Times Editorial page runs down a list of problems Alabama has experienced since the implementation of their new immigration law and concludes that "it's what they asked for"

How Congress shapes your commute

For those of you who wrote papers proposing policies that would encourage more commuters to use public transportation or bikes, or to carpool, you may want read about how Congress shapes your commute. Under federal law, employers can reimburse employees up to $230 per month in parking costs, tax-free. For the moment, they can do the same for public transportation, but that will soon revert back to the previous cap of $100.

Read more to find out what happened when workers were offered cash instead of transportation reimbursements . . .

Occupy Wall Street

In case you've had your head in the sand the past couple weeks, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement is the new media sensation.

CNN compares the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Tea Party movement.  So does Jon Stewart.  And, writing for the Washington Post, David Meyer argues that the movement learned a lot from the Tea Party.

On many levels, the comparison makes sense.  Read the beginning lyrics to this newly popular anthem and try to decide for which movement it was written:

Pay no attention to the people in the street,
Crying out for accountability.
Make a joke of what we believe;
Say we don't matter 'cuz you disagree.
Pretend you're kings, sit on your throne;
Look down your noses at the peasants below.



Here's the back story on the song

Who are the Protesters?

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) first expressed his concern about the "growing mobs" of OWS protesters, but later expressed some empathy, saying that "people are upset and they're justifiably frustrated."

Though unpopular in many places, most New York residents approve of the protesters.  Writing for the NY Times, Nick Kristof compares the OWS folks to those who protested in Egypt.


But, counter to conventional wisdom, Nate Silver points out that protests had larger turnouts in the West than in the East, and argues that the movement is much more popular in places with lots of self-identified liberals than registered Democrats.


The NY Times asked bankers privately what they thought of the protests, and the reaction wasn't too kind.

“Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” said one top hedge fund manager. “It’s not a middle-class uprising,” adds another veteran bank executive. “It’s fringe groups. It’s people who have the time to do this.”

What do They Want?

Many protesters cite economic inequality and disproportionate accrual of wealth by the top 1%: the upstart website New Bottom Line has the simple tagline "fighting for an economy that works for all of us".  Business Insider posts four charts that might explain the movement, which focus on the fortunes of corporations and the wealthiest Americans relative to the country as a whole.

Here's an updated version of the chart that we discussed in class, which displays the median income of each quintile plus the top 5% from 1966-2010 in addition to the median income of the top 1%, 0.1% and .001% from 1966-2008.  From 1966-1979, all grew relatively equally (between 6 and 25% total), while from 1980-2008, growth ranged from 0% for the bottom quintile to 641% for the top .001%.

Sources: Current Population Survey posted by the U.S. Census Bureau and IRS calculations posted by Emmanuel Saez

What will Happen?

Nobody's quite sure whether the protests will strengthen or fizzle out or whether they'll bring about any policy changes.  Indeed, many of the protesters seem rather unsure exactly what type of policy changes they want.

Robert Samuelson says that while "inequality is a new fault line . . . the backlash against the rich is the start of debate, not the end".

David Brooks seems unimpressed. He writes that "The Occupy Wall Street movement may look radical, but its members’ ideas are less radical than those you might hear at your average Rotary Club" and refers to them as "small thinkers"

Don’t be fooled by the clichés of protest movements past. The most radical people today are the ones that look the most boring. It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behavior from top to bottom.

Links 10-19-11

Here's one way to spur innovation and job growth: pledge hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and infrastructure improvements to the prestigious school that will open a branch engineering campus in your city.  That's what NYC is doing in order to spur an East Coast version of Silicon Valley: Cornell and Stanford currently look like the front-runners.

Grover Norquist says he's not a huge fan of Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan because "it gives you three taxes, all of which could grow".  Norquist said he'd prefer to keep the present system and "prune it back like a rose bush".

And here's a chart capturing the liberal objection to the plan: that it (according to one calculation) lowers taxes for the rich while raising them for the poor and middle class.

Despite the criticisms, Cain's fast-rising poll numbers seem to have convinced Rick Perry that he should introduce his own flat-tax proposal . . . which he plans to do next week

We talked about Pigovian taxes in class . . . a new CDC study found that each serving of alcohol costs the country about $2 in social costs spread across federal, state, and local governments, drinkers, drinkers' families, health care providers, and victims.  The CDC director summarized the study as finding that "binge drinking results in binge spending".

David Brooks argues that while the media focuses on the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protesters, most Americans are in the middle of a "great restoration" with a back-to-basics financial focus characterized by three things: 1.) people returning to spending more than they take in (e.g. no more credit card debt); 2.) re-establishing the link between effort and reward (e.g. no more bailouts); and 3.) the resurgence of loyalty (e.g. working for one company rather than 5 or 10).

A new CNN poll finds declining support for the death penalty: from 56% in 2003 to 53% in 2009 to 48% (versus 50% who'd prefer life in prison) today.

Another new poll (this one by Gallup) is the first to find that a plurality support marijuana legalization, with 50% in favor and 46% opposed (the link also looks at trends in support over time).

If Republicans are right, we might be seeing an unintended consequence of the financial reform legislation.  The bill passed in Congress capped banks' processing fees for a debit card swipe at 24 cents -- the previous average was 40 cents.  Bank of America was recently the first major bank to announce consumer fees for debit card use ($5 per month, in their case).

And in a story that has nothing to do with politics but has generated substantial interest, the owner of a zoo in Zanesville, OH allegedly released most of his animals and then shot himself.  Police have been busily tracking down either 48 or 51 wild animals, including bears, tigers, wolves, and monkeys.

Environmental Policy Links

The shrimp haul in the Gulf of Mexico this year may be down by as much as 80% according to preliminary reports.  It's too early to draw conclusions yet, but many suspect it has something to do with the BP oil leak of last summer.

The Economist argues that while the solar industry is taking off, the wasteful subsidies that created it remain unjustifiable

The NY Times asks "where did global warming go?" and compares beliefs, rhetoric, and actions regarding climate change in the U.S. now to the U.S. in 2009 and the rest of the world now.

Here's an interactive activity that illustrates how cap and trade works under various scenarios