Blogging resumes in 2011.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I'm looking at old columns, trying to write a "lessons of the decade" piece for Sunday, Dec. 26th. Came upon this one, which I wrote five years ago.

If you haven't gotten a Christmas card from me, don't think I hate you or have decided to kick you out of my will.

I am doing you, me and the spirits of economic efficiency a favor by unilaterally disarming in the hazardous and costly escalation of Hallmark exchanges. This is according to the smartest minds of "game theory" economics, which is all about helping us live happily together despite our worst instincts.If you thought saving the planet from World War III was the most important accomplishment of Nobel laureate Thomas C. Schelling, think again.

Schelling, emeritus professor at the University of Maryland and co-recipient of the economics Nobel in Stockholm this month, laid the groundwork for ending the mutually assured "Season's Greetings" that darkens so many doors this time of year.

In his 1978 book, Micromotives and Macrobehavior, Schelling described the spiral of fears and assumptions that leads to wasteful holiday-card procurement.

"People feel obliged to send cards to people from whom they expect to receive them, often knowing that they will receive them only because the senders expect to receive cards in return," he wrote. "People sometimes send cards only because, cards having been sent for several years, cessation might signal something. People send cards early to avoid the suspicion that they were sent only after one had already been received."

Oh, the excess.

"Sensible people who might readily agree to stop bothering each other with Christmas cards find it embarrassing, or not quite worth the trouble, to reach such agreement," Schelling added.

British economist Tim Harford noted Schelling's observations in the Financial Times a few weeks ago, and he, too, lamented the "grim ritual" of reciprocal felicitation pursued by some families. "Both would prefer to stop," he says, "but neither is going to be the first to do so. `Exchange' is not the right word here. `Vendetta' is more accurate."

Schelling is best known for describing competitive tradeoffs in defense and offense that underlay the Cold War. Nuclear holocaust was avoided because Moscow and Washington publicly promised to blow each other to smithereens in the event of a first strike by the other, and both believed it.

Schelling's prescription for Christmas and Hanukkah cards, however, is different. All address lists and holiday-card obligations, wrote the Nobel laureate, should be liquidated in a sort of "bankruptcy" proceeding in the form of a bonfire.

So, to everybody: I love you and value your friendship and wish you the best holiday ever. Therefore I am not sending you a card.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

For decades cities have been billing taxpayers to build convention centers, finding that the space isn't fully utilized and then deciding that the solution is to expand the convention center. The rationale, of course, is that the city loses certain conventions by not having half a million square feet or whatever of exhibit space. This may be true. But when every city tries to be competitive for the megaconventions by building megaconvention centers, it creates a lot of wasted space.

Baltimore's existing convention center isn't that old. It opened in 1997. Now the Greater Baltimore Committee is talking about basically doubling the exhibit space as well as adding a too-large arena of 18,500 seats. And which major-league hockey team will be playing here to fill up all those chairs? The new convention center would have 600,000 square feet of exhibit space, Ed Gunts reports.

The Washington D.C. convention center has 700,000 square feet of exhibit space. In Seattle they're talking about doubling the convention exhibit space to 600,000 square feet. They're considering similar expansions in Indianapolis and Oklahoma City. And so forth. Like all these projects, the proposed Baltimore expansion would be paid for largely by taxpayers. Is that a good use of your money?

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Corporate welfare
        

Get rid of Obamacare. Deregulate medical insurance. Raise the eligibility age for Medicare. But wait! I'm not done. You then repurpose Medicare as catastrophic reinsurance for everybody. That preserves a private market for health insurance and increases individual incentives for cost-saving, taking care of yourself etc. But at a certain level of individual annual medical expense the reinsurance kicks in, keeping the most expensive cases out of the private system.

That makes the private system more affordable while shielding people from the cost of catastrophic illness. (UPDATE: It's also a political compromise between those who want to socialize everythig and those who want to privatize everything. You socialize the catastrophic part with a single payer -- Medicare. You keep the non-Medicaid, noncatastrophic part private.)

This idea is not mine. It's from Kim Meyers via Tyler Cowen on Marginal Revolution:

If in a calendar year a person has in excess of $100,000 in medical expense they are transferred over to Medicare, regardless of age.

The remainder of the citizenry is able to choose from a competitive insurance market, which is essentially selling $100,000 “Term” health insurance policies.

That is from Kim Meyers of Northwestern. As she notes in an email to me, this can be combined with health savings accounts and various kinds of deregulation for the coverage of the lesser expenses. You also can raise the Medicare eligiblity age and I would say you could raise it to a very high level indeed.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)
Categories: Health Care
        

This is the lowest level for the 4-week moving average since the first week in August 2008. The level is still high, but the decline in the 4-week average is good news.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: The Great Recession
        

China is often criticized for its attempted censorship of the Internet, but the U.S. Air Force apparently admires what China is doing. AP reports that the Air Force has blocked access to media sites that publish Wikileaks documents. Brainless bureaucracy in action. What's so pitiful is the futility. Do the Air Force brass think they will prevent service personnel from seeing the cables if they want to? At least China's censorship often works.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Air Force is blocking computer access to The New York Times and other media sites that published sensitive diplomatic documents released by the Internet site WikiLeaks, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Air Force Maj. Toni Tones said more than 25 websites have been blocked and cannot be viewed by any Air Force computer. The ban -- aimed at preventing the viewing of classified information -- does not apply to personal computers.

She said the action was taken by the 24th Air Force, which is commanded by Maj. Gen. Richard Webber and is responsible for cyberwarfare and computer security for the service. The move was approved by Air Force lawyers, she said.

The Army and Navy say they have not taken similar actions.

This kind of nonsense is coming from the White House, too.

The White House on Dec. 3 formally reminded all federal employees and government contractors that anyone without a security clearance is not permitted to read classified documents, such as the diplomatic messages published by WikiLeaks, even on a personal computer at home outside work hours.

It was not immediately clear how the U.S. government would enforce this, but the White House said employees who inadvertently viewed the information should contact their U.S. security offices at work.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The medical-device industry has a great excuse for having their salesmen and women intrude into the cauterization lab and other clinical settings. These people, who are often paid based on how many products they push, who usually have no formal medical education, are there to train the cardiologists "to make sure" the devices "are being utilized in a safe and effective manner," the Abbott Labs tells Tricia Bishop in today's story.

Thanks, Abbott, but when I'm on the table with a catheter in my chest I'd just as soon leave the treatment to the cardiologist. Selling jet engines to Boeing is an important job, but they don't let the Pratt & Whitney salesmen hang out in the cockpit at 30,000 feet.

Dr. Mark Midei's lawyer defends his close relationship with Abbott by saying it's not unusual in the medical-device business. That's a point in Midei's favor, but it's an indictment of the larger industry.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Health Care
        

Faithful readers know I signed a three-year electricity deal with Washington Gas Energy Services at 10.8 cents per kilwatt hour a while back. Anybody in Maryland can now shop for electricity just as we all shopped for long-distance phone service in the 1990s. Since Baltimore Gas & Electric's default kilowatt price fell below 10.8 cents on Oct. 1 and offers from independent suppliers fell even further, I decided to pay an early-termination penalty to WGES and sign up with somebody else.

My new vendor: Castlebridge Energy. Price: 9.2 cents per kilowatt hour, which is among the lowest listed by the Maryland Office of People's Counsel, which is always a good shopping resource. (The OPC site also lists deals for wind energy.) Not only is the Castlebridge price good; there is no early-exit penalty if prices drop further and you want to switch to a new deal. You give them 60 days' notice and you're out. Most companies make you pay extra if you dump the contract before it officially expires.

(WGES has an even lower price -- 9.0 cents. And you can get 8.9 cents through some dealers. But WGES doesn't allow people like me who terminate existing contracts to immediately re-sign with them.)

The switching process so far has gone smoothly. WGES promptly took me off their customer list and charged the correct early-exit fee. I assume Castlebridge will be the vendor of record for the bill I get at the end of December. We use about 900 kwh a month, on average, so we'll spend about $170 less over the next year than if we had stuck with the 10.8-cent WGES deal. Of course, the $126 early-cancellation fee paid to WGES wipes out much of that savings. However the WGES deal didn't expire until mid-2012, so we'll go on saving during that year.

ALERT: If you switch to WGES, Castlebridge or another independent electricity supplier, that will NOT affect the Peak Rewards you get from BGE for allowing them to cycle your AC off and on in the summertime. You'll remain in the Peak Rewards program and continue to get rebates for cutting expensive electricity use. BGE is always your local utility no matter whom you buy your electric supply from, just as Verizon/Bell Atlantic was always your local phone company in the 1990s no matter whom your long-distance company was.
(This is the most frequently asked question of all FAQs on this blog.)

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: BGE/electricity
        

According to a complaint filed by the board on August 17, 2010 [1], DeMaio committed a number of standard-of-care violations by placing multiple stents in areas of insignificant or moderate disease; performing multiple angiograms in patients who were asymptomatic and had normal stress tests; unnecessarily implanting an ICD in two patients; failing to adequately inform patients of risks; and failing to obtain informed consent for the off-label use of a device in one patient. In two examples of cases that have made headlines in the Austin American-Statesman, which first reported on the situation, one patient reputedly received more than 30 stents, while another patient—who died—received more than 20.

In his long interview with heartwire, DeMaio took pains to describe the complex cases at the heart of the board complaints. For the patient who died, in whom he'd implanted at least 21 stents and subsequently a defibrillator (DeMaio did fellowships in both EP and interventional cardiology), DeMaio stressed that this was a patient with recurrent ventricular tachycardia postprocedure and that the decision to implant the defibrillator—and ultimately to switch it off—was made with the patient and family's consent and that this is not one of the lawsuits against him. The board complaint, by contrast, says that implantation of the ICD was contraindicated, given the patient's "compromised" condition.

As for the patient who received 32 stents, DeMaio notes that the stents were implanted over successive years, for two acute MIs as well as additional severe blockages treated electively at different times. In this particular case, after having implanted more than 10 stents on two separate occasions, DeMaio scheduled the patient for CABG only to have the patient insist on being taken off the surgery list and demand stents instead.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Health Care
        

Granted, I'm dumb about politics. Legislatures, politicians and voters constantly surprise me with this or that. But it's really really hard to imagine the General Assembly paving the way for slots at Laurel Park. Hanah Cho reported on Friday that, despite everything, Penn National, Frank Stronach's partner in the Maryland Jockey Club, said it would seek slots at Laurel.

Meanwhile, the tracks' minority owner, Penn National Gaming, said it would pursue slots at Laurel Park, which means lobbying to change the state constitution to allow a second casino in Anne Arundel County when the General Assembly reconvenes next month. Amending the constitution is a complicated and uncertain process.

The Jockey Club could have had Laurel slots, but it blew it. It could have submitted a bid for slots that was on time and included the required deposit. It didn't. It might have succeeded in challenging David Cordish's competing slots proposal on technical grounds. It couldn't. It might have won the November referendum outlawing Cordish's project at Arundel Mills. It lost.

Due process would seem to have been tried, tested and exhausted. And granting a Laurel license would be grossly unfair to Cordish, who competed fairly under the rules that looked for all the world to be permanent and unchanging. Give us a break, Penn National.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Slots
        

Good Jobs First, which has been tracking and inveighing against dumb corporate welfare since the 1990s, has a new report on how well states disclose the details of economic development subsidies. If states are going to create a double-standard taxation system -- one for the suckers who pay sticker price, another for the companies that can wheedle tax discounts and subsidies out of the pols -- the least states can do is disclose what they're doing. Most of them don't. At least not very well.

Maryland did poorly, getting a D+, but that's not unusual. (Good Jobs First graded on a kind of reverse curve, refusing to give credit for subpar performance.) For example, Maryland has no online portal to disclose recipients of Enterprise Zone tax credits, the report said. However, Maryland did disclose details of financing made through its Maryland Economic Development Assistance Authority Fund, the report said.

Maryland does a much poorer job disclosing details of economic development incentives than it did disclosing details of stimulus spending, said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonprofit based in Washington.

"Despite winning both of our recovery act competitions, reporting on federal money, Maryland is very much in the middle of the pack when it comes to reporting on its own money," LeRoy said.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Corporate welfare
        

A developing theme in the Wikileaks cables is the extent to which the world's diplomats are merely corporate salesmen who get to wear striped pants and go to state dinners every once in a while. Check out The Guardian's story on intense pressure from Libya to release the Lockerbie bomber before he died and the consternation it caused among British diplomats. Kadifi threatened to cut off "all UK commercial activity" in Libya if the killer wasn't released, and the British ambassador to Tripoli "expressed relief" according to the U.S. cable, when that happened. Of course BP British Petroleum has huge interests in Libya.

U.S. diplomats spent enormous amounts of energy a few years ago trying to make sure Norway bought Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter. (Norway did, spurning a Swedish plane.) This has prompted cackling from Democrats about "the way the Bush administration turned our Foreign Service into salesmen for Lockheed Martin."

Dude, every administration, Republican and Democrat, is a branch of the Fortune 500 sales force. Here's another story from The Guardian, this one on the Obama administration:

The US lobbied Russia this year on behalf of Visa and MasterCard in an attempt to ensure the payment companies were not "adversely affected" by new legislation, according to American diplomats in Moscow.

A state department cable released this afternoon by WikiLeaks reveals that US diplomats intervened to try to amend a draft law going through Russia's Duma. Their explicit aim was to ensure the new law did not "disadvantage" the two US firms, the cable states.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

George Mason U's Bryan Caplan adds to the growing conversation on neurological diversity (to which the GMU folks are contributing quite a bit) by suggesting that if you don't quite fit in, if you're the kind of person who gets bored beyond belief watching "Glee," if you find it hard to locate other people like you to hang out with, the answer is to create more people like you by having children.

Caplan:

The lesson: As your weirdness increases, so does your incentive to have kids. If you like football and American Idol, you're never really alone. You don't need to build a Xanadu for yourself. But if you're a lonely misfit, oddball, freak, or weirdo, then find a like-minded spouse and make new life together. Let the normals laugh at you. You'll have each other.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I agree with Stuart Levine, quoted in Annie Linkskey's story today on the state buyouts, who said the deal seems small. Fifteen thousands dollars doesn't seem like much of an incentive to get somebody to say goodbye to a steady income. And $200 per year of service? Come on. If you want to retire, why not work another year instead of taking the buyout? Most employees would be tens of thousands of dollars ahead. Many state employees probably have spouses who have lost or are worried about private-sector jobs. That's another disincentive to leave.

The state's great post-employment health plan may ease people's concerns about retiring, however. The problem with buyouts in the private sector is that if you're younger than 65 you have to worry about health coverage. If you've put in enough service for the state and you're under 65, your medical plan continues in retirement pretty much as it did when you were employed.

In any event, the story already has 45 Facebook "likes." So maybe I'm wrong.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Paul Thacker at the Project on Government Oversight, posts on Abbott Laboratories' apparent desire to see me in a cast and on the fabulous barbecue party thrown by Abbott at the house of Dr. Mark Midei.                                                  

As Thacker notes, only the best barbecue would do for the party, which cost Abbott $1,235. Whoever planned the party ordered from Andy Nelson's Southern Pit Barbecue, which the City Paper says "is still the best barbecue in town."

Here is an excerpt of the CP review from last week:

You smell Andy Nelson’s Southern Pit Barbecue before you see it. A whiff of woodsmoke, sweet and lingering, like the smell of burning leaves in the late autumn air, pulls you along York Road to the barbecue joint so familiar that even the big pig on the roof no longer stands out in the commercial landscape. It just belongs there.

Andy Nelson’s has been smoking meats in the neighborhood since 1981, beginning as a seasonal stand at neighboring Valley View Farms and branching out to its current location about 10 years ago. This is more than enough time to cultivate perfection. The spot is habitually voted Best Barbecue by City Paper staff and readers, and Andy Nelson’s name comes up over and over on discussion boards like Chowhound when a Baltimore newbie asks where to find the best barbecue. A recent visit to check up on the small restaurant proves that the folks at Andy Nelson’s are not resting on their laurels (or their woodpile).

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Health Care
        

A cold weather forecast has pulled natural gas prices up from an eight-year low, Bloomberg reports. That will probably be reflected in BGE's residential natural gas price for January.

But while prices may have notched up, they're rising from really low levels. The recession and a worldwide natural-gas glut have depressed gas prices and profits. The default natural gas price for BGE customers this month (the floating price you get if you don't lock in with another supplier) is 63.71 cents per therm, the lowest price for December since at least 2003.

The best one-year fixed price from competitive suppliers listed on the Office of People's Counsel Web site (look on the mid-right side of the page; click on "Natural Gas Retail Supplier Prices") is from Washington Gas Energy Services, at 66 cents per therm.

Bloomberg:

Gas advanced 3.2 percent after the National Weather Service reduced its temperature forecasts for eastern states from Dec. 11 to Dec. 15. Gas prices were trading at the lowest level since 2002 for the beginning of December.

“Cold weather is the primary driver of gas prices,” said Brad Florer, a trader at Kottke Associates Inc., an energy trading firm in Louisville, Kentucky. “It looks like below- normal temperatures are going to hang on for most of the month, and that’s stifling the selling and lifting gas off the bottom.”

Posted by Jay Hancock at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: BGE/electricity
        

I'm glad to say that nobody has dragged me into an alley and kicked my butt for writing this column on heart stents, as was suggested in an email by a top executive at Abbott Laboratories. (See Tricia Bishop's story in today's paper on the relationship between stent-maker Abbott Labs and Dr. Mark Midei, alleged to have implanted hundreds of unneeded coronary artery stents in patients at St. Joseph Medical Center. More on this in tomorrow's column.)

Bishop reports on findings by an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over Medicare. The committee subpoenaed records from St. Joseph and from Abbott, who treated Dr. Midei like a celebrity and paid for parties at his house because he installed so many of their stents. But starting in 2013 you won't need a Senate investigation to learn of these deals. The Physician Payments Sunshine Act, part of the health-care reform legislation, requires pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers to disclose payments to docs to the government, which will make them public.

Vermont and other states have already started requiring this kind of disclosure. The embarrassment factor appears to have diminished the gravy flowing from the medical industry to the medical caregivers. Here's a good piece from Kaiser Health News:

The overall dollar value of gifts to Vermont physicians "has been going down steadily for the last three years," says Wendy Morgan, chief of the state attorney general's public protection division. "I think there are more health care providers who won’t accept gifts."

Vermont lawmakers want to make sure of that. Last year they amended the law to ban most gifts outright, including food, which accounted for $800,000 of the 2009 total.

The other states with similar legislation, Massachusetts and Minnesota, have also outlawed many forms of corporate gift-giving, although they do allow doctors to accept speaking fees and most product samples. All three states allow research grants.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Health Care
        

Today's column is about the factors that seem to point to a slowdown in extraordinary Chinese growth. The leadership wants the economy to continue expanding at an annual pace of 10 percent or so, but it will be increasingly challenging for the economy to accomplish that. Part of it is just the tyranny of arithmetic. As growth keeps compounding and per-capita incomes draw closer to the global mean, it's harder to keep up the pace. (Of course, however, much of China is still poor by world standards. Its per-capita GDP of $6,800 is a small fraction of the United States' $46,000, according to IMF figures.)

I didn't have room in the column to get into a Chinese slowdown's implications, which would be powerful and mixed. The immediate effect -- a slowing of the growth in living standards, of the rate at which people are rising from poverty -- would be negative. And if it destabilized the regime, or even if it made the leadership feel threatened, a Chinese "growth recession" (nobody is predicting the economy to actually shrink anytime soon; a big setback for China would be for growth to fall below 7 percent) could have dire global effects. You could expect to see tensions rise over Taiwan and other Beijing territorial claims, as the regime sought to distract attention from a disappointing economy. Any economic setback is unlikely to stop China from continuing to build up its military.

Some in Washington are worried about China's rise as a global competitor, but an economically struggling China might pose an even bigger threat. North Korea has one of the weakest, most miserable economies in the world, but that hasn't stopped -- indeed it has everything to do with -- it being a very dangerous global actor. The best outcome for China and Washington would be for China to let the renminbi rise to its natural value. That would level the playing field for international trade. But it would also raise China's standard of living versus the world, let the Chinese buy more from United States and other nations and set the stage for the rise of a consumer economy and the next stage of China's growth.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: China
        

Unemployment rose and employers added fewer jobs than expected last month, the Labor Department announced this morning. Employers added only 39,000 jobs last month. Analysts had expected a bump of about 150,000. In prior months this year you could blame poor employment results on the Census. The program was laying off tens of thousands of temporary workers, which depressed the overall job-growth results. The the Census has pretty much downsized by now, so the shrinkage in government jobs last month is about something else -- perhaps states laying off employees now that federal stimulus money is running out.

But there are some slightly bright spots. Private employers added another 50,000 jobs last month, indicating that at least some businesses see growth perking up. The increase in unemployment from 9.6 percent to 9.8 percent may actually be (sort of) a silver lining if it indicates people are returning to the job market because they see prospects picking up. (The Labor Department counts you as unemployed only if you're actively looking for a job.) Of course the impending termination of unemployment benefits for many Americans may be a more likely reason for more people seeking jobs.

Other reasons to not be completely dejected: New applications for unemployment benefits have been falling substantially recently. And the Labor Department has shown a pattern this year of underestimating payroll job growth, a pattern that was repeated in recent months. October job growth was 172,000, revised upward from 151,000. And September's job loss was revised from 41,000 to 24,000. Still, we're trying to put makeup on a warthog, here. The economy needs to be adding at least 200,000 jobs a month to reduce unemployment, and it's clear that's not happening.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: The Great Recession
        

John Scheinman of Thoroughbred Times gets what I think is the first interview with Frank Stronach, who runs Pimlico and Laurel Park through MI Developments, since I talked to him three weeks ago. Don't worry, says Frank, everything will be fine!

From the Thoroughbred Times story:

“I will come down to Maryland next week,” Stronach said Thursday from his native Austria. “We’ll try to find common ground. It has to be done quickly. We’ve got a good relationship with the horsemen; the racing commission trusts us too.”

Stronach declined to comment on the status of a winter meeting in 2011 at Laurel Park; the fall meeting concludes December 18, and no arrangements for racing or simulcasting are scheduled beyond December 31—jeopardizing the future of thousands of racing-related jobs in Maryland. The four off-track outlets in the state also would lose their signals.

The lack of an agreement for 2011 also throws into doubt the future of the Preakness Stakes (G1), middle leg of the Triple Crown.

AP also appears to have reached Stronach. Story here.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Slots
        

John-John Williams has a piece in today's paper on the arms race among Baltimore hospitals to offer patients the most luxury.

Hospitals are vying for patients through upscale services, including complimentary valet parking, house musicians and round-the-clock room-service meals. In the Baltimore region, where top-rated hospitals abound, the competition can be fierce, and these added perks can tip the scales for potential patients.

OK, there is a quality-of-care argument to be made for private rooms. Patients without roommates tend to catch fewer bugs from other patients. And 32-inch flat-screen TVs in every room will not by themselves break the back of the national economy. But attempts to make hospitals look like the Grand Hyatt betray wider flaws in the health-care system.

Patients love these upgrades in the same way that they love the latest and most in operations and tests. And why not? Even though many of these items may contribute little or nothing to improving patient health, patients for the most part don't have to worry about the extra cost -- at least not directly. So why not demand the in-house harpists and palatial lobbies? It's not your money -- until your insurance premiums and federal taxes get raised to pay for it all.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Health Care
        

In trying to decide whether NYT columnist Tom Friedman is a Top 100 Global Thinker or just a hack (as determined by Salon), Dan Drezner uses Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy as a point of comparison. He excerpts a recent Shaughnessy column, which argues that the Red Sox should make a ridiculously high offer for Derek Jeter even though Jeter is the enemy and approaching the end of his career.

This, Drezner avers, is below the standards of even a bad Tom Friedman column:

I've just wasted untold minutes and several neurons of brainpower to explain why Shaughnessy's column might be the stupidest sports column I've read this year. It's not even stupid in an interesting way -- it's just a brainless rant. Arguing when and why Tom Friedman is wrong doesn't feel like the same waste of time to me.

But Dan. Friedman is writing about war, peace, trade, toil and the fate of nations. Shaughnessy is writing about... the Red Sox. Who cares?

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Thanks to all for your suggestions on sources for data on federal pay raises over the years. One reader referenced this Congressional Research Paper by Patrick Purcell, which has a year-by-year schedule of increases for what looks like wages/salaries for federal civilian pay. I want to confirm that that's what it is -- annual pay raises not inclusive of benefits costs for health care and so forth. And in any event, something doesn't make sense to me. As Purcell notes, federal pay raises are supposed to be in line with private sector pay, as measured by the Labor Department's Employment Cost Index:

The uniform nationwide annual adjustment to the general schedule pay scale is based on the average pay raise received by workers in the private sector from year to year. The Pay Comparability Act specifies that the nationwide pay raises for federal white-collar GS workers are to be one-half percentage point less than private sector wage increases, as measured by the ECI. The increase is computed by comparing the ECI for the third quarter of the previous calendar year to the ECI in the third quarter of the calendar year before that.

But the figures I can find don't jibe. Purcell says that the percentage change in federal civil service pay the last three years (2008, 2009, 2010) was 3.5 percent, 3.9 percent and 2.0 percent. But the percentage change from Q3 to Q3 in private sector wages and salaries as measured by the Employment Cost Index for the corresponding (previous) year was less: 3.4 percent, 2.9 percent and 1.4 percent. And I haven't found any figures for total compensation for federal employees (including health care benefits). My guess would be that federal benefit costs have risen faster than those for the private sector in recent years.

Didn't hear back from Congressional Research Service. OPM called back this morning. Perhaps clarity will arrive.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

So says ComScore:

RESTON, VA, December 1, 2010 – comScore (NASDAQ : SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 29 days of the November – December 2010 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $13.55 billion has been spent online, marking a 13-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. Cyber Monday reached $1.028 billion in online spending, up 16 percent versus year ago, representing the heaviest online spending day in history and the first to surpass the billion-dollar threshold.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

One mark of economic ascendancy is the ability of a country's elite to move international art markets. The Chinese are succeeding by this measure, as by so many others. Just as the Japanese piled into impressionists and other European art in the 1980s, the Chinese have developed a taste for Picasso. Specifically, for the works, largely depreciated by critics, that Picasso turned out late in life. From Bloomberg:

Last week, Christie's and Sotheby's achieved similar results at their New York auction houses with Chinese collectors bidding aggressively on most lots. Christie's sold Picasso's Faune, Femme Nu et Mousquetaire, a raunchy drawing made in 1967, for $1.3 million—$500,000 more than its presale estimate—as well as the 1964 painting Le Peintre et Son Modèle, which met heightened expectations by fetching nearly $3 million. At Sotheby's, Picasso's Homme au Fanion (1969) brought in $5.4 million. "It's a very sound market and a very real market," says Giovanna Bertazzoni, the head of Modern and Impressionist art at Christie's London. "It's not a bubble."

Well, maybe not.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: China