Elect an economist to Congress

Michigan economics grad student Daniel Marcin takes on 12th District incumbent (since before I was born) John Dingleberry.

I wish him well. I even agree with most of his positions, though he should be clearer that the post office loses its legal monopoly under his proposed scheme. Oh, and carbon taxes good, CAFE standards bad. But he knows that.

Plus, and this is pure bonus goodness, Dan did his undergraduate work at Maryland, so corrupt old lefty Dingell had just better Fear the Turtle.

Junior job talk skit

A skit about junior job talks from the Wisconsin economics winter party. Actually, my senior job talk there was a lot like this too.

Good stuff, and good preparation for our students on the market.

Movie: The Descendants

A.O. Scott at the New York Times liked "The Descendants" better than I did, but I still liked it very much. We are in agreement about the very strong supporting cast. The writing is also exemplary, as is the cinematography. I found George Clooney just a bit less compelling here than in Up In the Air, and I could have done without the vaguely political land development subplot. But, overall, a fine mix of comedy and drama.

Recommended.

An enviable sentence

This is the best sentence I read all day:

The business school is the place on campus where only the library books are unemployed.

I will not credit the colleague whose email contained it and must surely note that I like it not because of any concerns about Michigan's business (or busyness, as yet another colleague would have it) school, which has very fine students and faculty, but rather just because it is so clever with language.

Snyder on Michigan workforce development

Michigan governor Rick Snyder offers his thoughts and proposals for redesigning Michigan's workforce development system. The workforce development system is a catch-all term for the various employment and training programs financed under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) along with the lower end of the state higher education system (i.e the community colleges and the directional schools) and various other bits. Annarbor.com has a summary and a link to the underlying document.

My read is that Snyder's proposal is a bit of a mixed bag. It is not clear, for example, what value there is to having the state run its own on-line site to match employers and workers when there already are some very good ones out there, such as monster.com. Providing labor market information can be useful if it is done well; similarly the "career investment calculator" will be good or awful depending on the details of implementation. The evidence base for self-employment assistance for the unemployed is a mixed bag, but you can find some support for it. I do very much like his idea of allowing in more skilled immigrants. And so on and so on.

Evidence, huh?

From Brookings, a call for using actual evaluation evidence to make budget decisions.

The awe-inspiring non-seriousness of the current US policy formation among members of both the red and blue teams is well illustrated by the fact that such a piece has to be written.

How do these people look themselves in the mirror? It truly is beyond me. The only possible legitimate justification for taking money by force from people (that would be taxes) and spending it on social programs (other than straight transfers) can be that it is being spent on programs that have credibly been shown to pass serious cost-benefit tests. What percentage of US social pending meets this test? One? Less than one?

Sigh.

Finding the secret nuclear bunker

Hat tip: Arthur Robson on Facebook