Capital Commerce
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One Way To Reduce Healthcare Costs From Obesity
Continue reading… 4 CommentsUPDATED 09/01/2009: Well as anyone who has read this has noticed, I misinterpreted this study pretty badly. The study actually found that higher wages had the REVERSE effect than that I suggested: they encourage grazing because their time becomes more valuable, and they don't dedicate time to actual eating.
Obesity has become almost more of an economic issue than a health issue in recent years, as policymakers propose various taxes, labelling regulations and bans on trans fats. Many of these policies are sold as partial solutions to the explosion of healthcare costs. But a new economics paper suggests that simply making people richer is a powerful way to promote healthier eating habits and create a drop in BMI (body-mass index a common measure of obesity.)
A problem boosting obesity among Americans is "grazing." These are the midnight snacks, extra trips to the cookie jar and linners (that's the extra meal between lunch and dinner) that we're all guilty of. How do you reduce grazing? Daniel Hamermesh of the University of Texas found that higher wages meant less grazing. Here's why:
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Has The Stimulus Created Great Places To Find Jobs?
Continue reading… 1 CommentI've been thinking more about Liz's list of the 10 Best Places To Find A Job, which is really about the cities in America where employment has been steadiest. I think an issue to look at in regards to this list more relevant than taxes (which I tackled yesterday) is the stimulus. Obama's stimulus package was supposed to shore up employment. So I thought it would be interesting to see if these cities with steady employment can thank the stimulus for their well-being.
So we need to look at where the money is going. ProPublica has a handy ranking of stimulus recipients by state and county. Across all 50 states (plus DC), the average per capita stimulus spending is $432.22.
I looked at the 10 counties where Liz's 10 cities are located. How much per capital stimulus spending are they getting? Here's what I found:
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Taxes And The Best Places To Find A Job
Continue reading… 2 CommentsI was looking at my colleague Liz Wolgemuth's list of the best places to find a job. This got me thinking—what role have taxes played determining which places have had steady employment? Depending on your ideology, you might have one of two predictions: First, places with high taxes might have better public infrastructure and programs to provide jobs and stymie job losses. Second, you might think that high taxes will impede recovery, while areas with lower taxes get a competitive advantage that attracts jobs.
As we've seen before, when regions of the country have problems (or avoid problems), people often look to ideologically-polarizing policies like tax rates for answers.
But if one examines the tax burdens in the ten states in which Liz's employment-steady cities are located, we see just how little local policies like taxation matter.
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Maybe Cash For Clunkers Helped The Economy After All?
Continue reading… 13 CommentsHas cash-for-clunkers stimulated the economy? I argued that it's too early to tell because all we know is that there have been car sales. But Daniel Gross at Slate makes the case that the evidence is in, and cash-for-clunkers gets a pretty good return as stimulus:
If we use Taylor's estimate, about 250,000 extra cars were purchased (40 percent of 625,000). And if each cost $29,000, those sales generated about $7.3 billion in revenue in the space of a few weeks. That's a pretty good return on $2.6 billion in government spending. Let's be more conservative. Say only 20 percent of the clunker traders were extra demand, and the cars they bought cost $25,000 each. That's still an extra $3.125 billion in sales for dealers.
Gross compares that return to an estimated $1.9 billion return in new retail spending from $3 billion in tax rebates.
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Are Earmarks Always Pork Barrel?
Continue reading… 2 CommentsThe New York Times Economix blog had a modest defense of earmarks last week. Catherine Rampell argued that if you look at this list of the recipients of earmarks, you'll find that the biggest beneficiaries are institutions of higher education—not the "pork" and "waste" we usually associate with earmarks.
But is that jump to conclusion accurate? Are earmarks to benefit higher education really devoid of waste?
I looked at the details of some of the top earmarks to colleges and universities from that list. I was actually surprised by how much of the money went to research honest-to-goodness public goods problems that might be difficult for the private sector to replicate, such as forensic sciences or extreme weather protection.
Then there's stuff like this:
- $800,000 to the University of South Alabama for oyster rehabilitation
- $1 million to North Carolina State University for textile research
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Obama Wants More Bernanke
Continue reading… 1 CommentPresident Obama has announced today that he will nominate Ben Bernanke for a second term. That news surely has disappointed critics of both Bernanke and Alan Greenspan—critics who want a Fed chairman more skeptical of free markets. But, in terms of avoiding a future financial crisis, how much would taking the Fed in a different direction even matter? Read my previous thoughts here.
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Whither Joe The Plumber?
Continue reading… 3 CommentsHere's one good job to have in a recession: conservative economic populist. I don't know how many people remember the strange phenomenon of "Joe the Plumber" from a year ago, but I can never forget him. A post I wrote partially defending Joe Wurzelbacher (but not agreeing with his political opinions) garnered me lots of angry comments on my old blog.
But among conservative activists, Wurzelbacher's 15 minutes are far from up. Dave Weigel, reporting from the RightOnline conference in Pittsburgh, has a tidbit about just how lucrative it still is to be Joe the Plumber.
But the activists found some unity listening to Joe Wurzelbacher, still a sought-after conservative speaker who can charge as much as $10,000 for eight-minute speeches, 11 months after he argued about tax rates with then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) during a campaign stop in Ohio. He was welcomed, and mobbed for photos, as the first American to get the kind of full-bore smear campaign that was now directed at “Tea Party” activists and Flip camera-wielding conservatives going to town halls to tell congressmen that they were shredding the Constitution. “Let’s try to make this an American movement,” said Wurzelbacher, “not a Republican movement, not a Democrat movement. You guys are empowering Americans again. Don’t forget that.”
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How Recessions Can Help
Continue reading… 0 CommentsRecessions usually mean more creation of start-up businesses. When people get laid off, they often use their unemployment as an opportunity to start the business they always dreamed about—or, because the job market is so bad, they have no choice but to become entrepreneurs.
But more businesses doesn't necessarily mean better businesses. A Kauffman Foundation study found that more of the businesses being started last year are businesses with lower-income-potential—think more grocery stores rather than more software firms.
But this article in yesterday's New York Times gives the other side of the story. Sometimes recessions not only create entrepreneurs, but strengthen them:
But research on what is known as post-traumatic growth has found that some people become more resilient when faced with adversity, says Shawn Achor, a Harvard researcher. Creativity surges, he says, as they adapt to a new situation. “Their brain is actually learning at a faster pace than when they are not challenged,” Mr. Achor says. “As a result of this, some individuals, the accidental entrepreneurs, they are the ones who in the midst of crisis actually respond with growth.”
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Did Cash For Clunkers Work?
Continue reading… 8 CommentsAt Slate's Big Money, Matthew DeBord declares that cash-for-clunkers (and the broader auto bailout) is victorious:
The U.S. industrial economy is moving again. Workers are going back to work. Consumers are able to buy large and expensive forms of personal transportation, into which they will put gasoline provided by giant international oil companies. Loans are being made. Money is changing hands. In the real economy, not the elite casino located in Bubbleville, aka Lower Manhattan.
...Maybe what’s good for General Motors, and the rest of the U.S. auto industry, is still good for the United States.
But wait a minute—the fact that money is exchanging hands does not immediately lead to the conclusion that these programs are good for the economy.
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The Betting Odds On The Public Option
Continue reading… 3 CommentsThe big political question on everyone's minds around the country, but especially in Washington, is "Is the public option dead?" A cursory read of newspaper headlines might suggest that it is indeed dead, but others say not much has changed and the administration is still pursuing it.
Amidst all this speculation, I thought it would be interesting to see what people predict when they actually put their money on the table. So I checked Intrade's prediction market on the question of "Will a federal government-run health insurance plan be approved in the U.S.?" The result is that Intrade users have put the odds at under 35 percent currently. That's fallen from a peak of 51.5 percent when Intrade opened that particular market in June.
But it hasn't been a straight fall since then. Actually, just a few days ago, the market hit its low, below 20 percent. It has since rebounded back into the 30s, and almost back to the level it was last week. That development gives some ammunition to those who argue that the administration's recent waffling on just how much it will pursue the public option really hasn't changed much. Obama has never been dead-set on a public option.
