Assorted links

1. Exploring the underground economy in San Antonio. I especially like the underground bakers.

2. On pizza.

3. Brink Lindsey on Paul Krugman.

4. Creepy abandoned places.

5. Brad DeLong defends Megan McArdle of the Atlantic from the NYT Ombudsperson.

Various hat tips.

Are layoffs unethical?

Ah the rarified sensibilities of the NYT "ethicist" who is apparently unfamiliar with the notion of employment at will. Or perhaps he thinks that workers have a similar duty to firms when they quit for other jobs when the times are good?

As I have noted before, there are good reasons to think that CEO salaries may well be too large, but that is unrelated to the layoff issue. People with high salaries should have the same ethical obligations with low salaries.

We treat almost all people as objects almost all the time. It could be no other way because both time and emotional resources are quite finite indeed. Should I bond with the pilots of the planes I fly? How about the all the people who designed and built the bridges I drive on? That would take a lot of our time. Maybe we should just all do our jobs and save the hugs for those close to us.

European systems of unemployment insurance are very generous, almost certainly more generous would be optimal from the standpoint of workers deciding ex ante behind a veil of ignorance. There is a literature on this about which, rather obviously, the NYT ethicist remains in complete ignorance.

UI in the US includes automatic extended benefits (up to a year) in areas of high unemployment. Major plant closings and such elicit rapid response teams from the active labor market policy agencies - imagine government workers swooping down in black helicopters while wearing DOL-ETA windbreakers. Services are provided, among them classroom training in skills for other occupations. These programs have so much stimulus money they are having trouble coping with it administratively. But looking all that stuff up would require more work than rambling on about the cool tractor videos are Caterpillars website.

Not impressive.

Hat tip: Jessica Goldberg

The missing men on campus

A conference report from Inside Higher Ed on the declining proportion of men among college students.

In terms of solutions:

In terms of strategies and recommendations, Edwards and Harris suggested first giving college men permission to stop performing and to be themselves. “It’s really about creating some kind of balance to the external pressure,” said Harris. “We talk about challenge and support, challenging the negative behavior.”

Edwards and Harris also recommended providing opportunities for critical self-reflection about what it means to be a man – “to disrupt the functioning of hegemonic masculinity” – including through facilitated student affairs programming and academic courses (a course in women’s studies, for instance). They recommended a need to build "cultural competence" for faculty and staff in issues of gender. While many in the audience lauded the transformative impact of small group discussions among men, one common point was the need for a facilitator who really understands gender dynamics.

A few thoughts:

1. I am pretty sure I know the sign of the effect of mandatory women's studies classes on male college enrollments. This seems like a singularly bad idea.

2. The norms against studying too hard, or at least appearing to do so, affect women as well. I remain quite surprised by how difficult it is to get undergraduates to talk in class here at Michigan (or indeed to give any public sign of being interested in the course material). Discussions one-on-one with students suggest it is all about norms and signaling. An odd equilibrium for a place where 1/3 of the students are paying 30K/year to attend.

3. It would be interesting to see how male student norms around work and public displays of interest in the material and related behaviors vary across majors. Certainly the computer science classes I took at Washington in my undergrad days had very different social norms than the economics courses. Maybe the norms vary with the fraction of men in the class? Or maybe they vary with the popularity or economic payoff to the major? There is lots of work here for enterprising sociologists of education and gender.

Hat tip: instapundit

Avoid jail in Arizona

PHOENIX - An Arizona inmate who died after spending nearly four hours in the desert heat was left in an outdoor holding cell for twice as long as she should have been, the state prisons director said Wednesday.

Three corrections officers have been put on paid leave while the state investigates Wednesday's heat-related death of Marcia Powell, who was left in her unshaded cell in 103-degree heat at a prison in Goodyear.

"The death of Marcia Powell is a tragedy and a failure," prisons director Charles Ryan said. "The investigation will determine whether there was negligence and will tell us how to remedy our failures."

Powell, who was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution, was placed alone in the cell while being moved to an onsite detention unit. Ryan said officers placed Powell in the cell after a disturbance at the detention unit, but he would not elaborate on the nature of the disturbance.

This story seems to me to miss two larger points: first, why do they have outdoor holding cells in Arizona? That seems nuts on the face of it. And why would anyone be serving 27 months for prostitution? Sad and preventable and unlikely to have any real effects given the nature of the victim.

Hat tip: theagitator.com

Assorted links

1. Things every geek should know. By this standard, I am not much of a geek at all, which is good to know.

2. I enjoy William Shatner more than the average person, but this might be a bit much.

3. A fine rant from Nick Gillespie.

4. Fine quotes, including one from JJH, from the epigraph competition for the marginal revolution team's new textbooks.

5. One of the great things about being a parent is that you can buy toys you want on the pretense that they are for your child.

Brand loyalty and Chipotle

A campaign of resistance has been launched against the new ads and menu items from Chipotle by the folks at cheapotle.com. I quite liked the old ads as well - they were distinctive and fun and played a role in making the brand enjoyable for me.

At the same time, it is clear to me that chipotle needs to do something as it has passed its initial phase of hipness and rapid growth and entered into a more mature phase of business life. Starbuck's is facing much the same challenge at the moment as well. When Chipotle came to the strip mall by the University of Maryland's College Park campus when I was teaching there, it had lines out the door at lunchtime every single weekday that classes were in session for over a year. Now, partly this reflects the fact that the lunch options within walking distance of campus in College Park kinda suck. But there is more than that. The new Chipotle in Ann Arbor, amazingly the first within walking distance of central campus, never has more than four of five people in line when I go there to get lunch. There are people in the restaurant but I have never seen it particularly crowded.

I think the current Chipotle response to both changing economic circumstances and a new stage of the business life cycle is partly right and partly wrong. Introducing less expensive menu items makes sense during a recession and adding to the menu as a way of generating fresh interest makes sense more generally (though part of Chipotle's charm is its very simple menu). Abandoning the attitude that animated the earlier ad campaigns and helped to define and popularize the brand does not.

Culture clash in Chicago

Neither side comes out looking very good in this one, though my sense is that the folks at founding bloggers would differ with my view on that:




What it does illustrate is the cultural and intellectual chasm between the coastal elites and the flyover folks.