Friday Reads

Good Morning!

I’m still trying to recover from the flu and the MRSA infection.  I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping. The antibiotics are really nasty. I haven’t been able to stomach my coffee for nearly two weeks.  I wonder if I should just stick with green tea from now on?

There’s an interesting retort by Mark Thoma to a Matt Yglesias article suggesting that Obama supports Mercantilism.  That’s the precursor to Capitalism that was actually the basis of our country’s economy when it was founded.  Contrary to Republican lore, capitalism has its roots in mercantilism but really didn’t develop until the 1800s during the industrial age. As usual, Ygelsias’ understanding of economics is cursory and Thoma has no problem correcting his mistakes.

Here are what I think of as the “tenets of Mercantilism.” I’ll let you decide the extent to which they accord with the president’s policies:

Mercantilists believed gold and silver are the most desirable forms of wealth. They also believed that the wealth of a nation depended upon the quantity of gold and silver in its possession. To maximize their holding of gold and silver, countries should maintain a positive balance of trade (with every country in the early years, but in later years they thought that an overall positive balance of payments was the goal, not a positive balance with every country you trade with).

They did not see lowering costs of production, or production in general, as creating wealth. This was a time when guilds produced most goods, and they were very inefficient. Thus, there was no notion of say, using division of labor and innovation to reduce costs and gain a competitive advantage over other producers (producers were not thought to add any value to production — this was a big part of their belief that economics was a zero-sum game — when they looked at their society and history, they didn’t see much in terms of productivity led growth, or much growth at all, the key was to maximize your share of the wealth that existed rather than try to gain wealth through productive innovations). The key to wealth was arbitrage and astute trading, not production. So trade — and merchants who could win the trade battle — were the focus of attention. Nations became strong by winning the zero-sum trade game.

They promoted nationalism. Since everyone cannot have a positive trade balance – they saw trade as a zero-sum game – a country needs to be powerful in order to compete effectively. This led to a desire for a strong military, a strong navy in particular (many advocated war on land and war at sea as ways to increase wealth).

They promoted protectionism in all its guises to maximize exports and minimize imports.

They supported colonization. This was a source of cheap raw materials, and a captive market to sell the finished goods. This essentially creates monopoly power since they did not let other countries trade with their colonies.

There’s a lot more tenets that have no relation to Obama’s policies or modern economics for that matter.  Why do all these journalists  try to be armchair economists?

The man who said he’d rather be a decent one term president than have a second term says he wants a second term “badly”.

President Barack Obama today signaled an aggressive tact [sic] for his early re-election campaign, critiquing his Republican opponents by name and insisting he’s ready to “fight with every fiber of my being” for a second term.

“How much do you want it?” ABC News’ Diane Sawyer asked Obama during an exclusive interview in Las Vegas.

“Badly,” the president said, “because I think the country needs it.”

“Whoever wins the Republican primary is going to be a standard bearer for a vision of the country that I don’t think reflects who we are,” Obama said.

“I’m going to fight as hard as I can with every fiber of my being to make sure that we continue on a path that I think will restore the American dream,” he said.

Obama pushed back against what he called Republicans’ “rhetorical flourishes,” including Newt Gingrich’s oft-repeated contention that Obama is the “food stamp president.”

“First of all, I don’t put people on food stamps,” Obama said. “People become eligible for food stamps. Second of all, the initial expansion of food-stamp eligibility happened under my Republican predecessor, not under me. No. 3, when you have a disastrous economic crash that results in 8 million people losing their jobs, more people are going to need more support from government.”

“The larger point is this: that there’s going to be a debate over the next eight, nine, 10 months about how to move the country forward,” he said. “They’ve got an argument. They will make it forcefully. I think it’s an argument that is wrong.”

We’ll have to have Dr. Boomer look at the methodology on this one: Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice.

There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

“Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood,” he said.

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

“They’ve pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics,” said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. “When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it’s bound to upset somebody.”

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]

“The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this,” Nosek said, referring to the new study. “It’s not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists.”

The Republican debate last night opened with a free for all on immigration.

“The idea that I am anti-immigrant is repulsive,” former Massachusetts governor Romney told Gingrich following the former House Speaker’s live accusation. “You should apologize.”

Gingrich and Romney are running ads against one another in the state, where they are currently neck-and-neck in current state polling.

Gingrich and Romney have both committed to heavily campaigning in Florida where 50 delegates are up for grabs for a single candidate in the Jan. 31 primary. (Florida chose to flout Republican National Committee rules and allocate all of their delegates in a winner-take-all system.)

Texas Rep. Ron Paul has chosen not to actively campaign in the state and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has been non-committal regarding whether he will even hold an Election Night party there.

In a rare moment of solidarity in the debate, Santorum and Gingrich voiced support for Romney’s “self-deportation” theory, which suggests illegal immigrants will leave the United States if they can’t find suitable employment.

“I actually agree with Governor Romney,” Santorum said. “We have to have a country that not only do you repect the law when you come here, you respect the law when you stay here.”

Barney Frank has announced his marriage plans with his longtime partner Jim.

Frank and Ready plan to wed in Massachusetts. Frank’s home state is one of six states, in addition to the District of Columbia, that permits gay marriage.

Frank announced in November that he would be retiring from Congress after 16 terms to pursue other opportunities. In 1987, Frank disclosed that he was gay, becoming the first openly gay member of Congress.

Ready and Frank have known each other since they met in 2005 at a fundraiser in Maine, and began a relationship in January of 2007 after Ready’s partner died. Ready works as a photographer and has a small buisness doing custom awnings, carpentry, painting, and welding according to Frank’s office.

Ready, like many political spouses, has occasionally found himself in the headlines. He was arrested in 2007 for growing marijuana outside his Maine home; Frank was present at the time he was arrested. Ready later pleaded guilty to a fine for civil possession, and related charges were dropped.

“I told him that our relationship could not develop if he could not promise me that he would not repeat this. He apologized, with great sincerity I believe, and he made that promise and has lived up to it,” Frank said in a statement in 2010.

Frank’s vows come at a crucial time for the gay-rights movement. In Maryland, New Jersey and Washington, bills that would legalize same-sex marriage are poised to pass this legislative session.

So, that’s some of the headlines that I’m following.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?