Saturday, December 29, 2007

Wall Street Journal Polling Data

This is a great glimpse of how the candidates are faring among different demographic and geographic groups.

Friday, December 28, 2007

10 New Year's Wishes for 2008

1) No Hillary
2) No Obama
3) A New York Giants Super Bowl Victory
4) Status Quo on Health Care (if there’s a Democratic President and Congress)
5) Major comprehensive Health Care Reform (if the Republicans make a sweep)
6) A New York Yankees World Series Victory
7) A doubling of my blog’s readership (this will bring total eyeballs to 8. For any Democrats reading this, that’s 4 people)
8) Catch Osama
9) No nukes for Iran
10) A New York Times cease fire on Rudy

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Can U.S. Troops Leave Iraq Anytime Soon?

After watching this video of American soldiers training Iraqi soldiers, the clear answer is: No, we're screwed.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Newt Gingrich On The Free Market vs. Government Bureaucracy



Newt makes his first appearance on The East Village Republican.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Are U.S. Sugar Quotas Making Us Fat?

This week WebMD reported that we are “Drinking ourselves to obesity -- Americans now get nearly twice as many calories from beverages as they did in the 1960s.” This isn’t surprising. Obesity rates have ballooned to over 30% of the adult population – double what they were in the early 1980s. But what’s changed about our beverages?

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Around the same time these obesity rates began to rise, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) started finding its way into many of our favorite food and drink products. Its critics call it the “Devil’s Candy” and it is thought of as one of the natural food movement’s evil-doers, along with MSG, Trans Fats, and Partially Hydrogenated Oil. HFCS sweetens obvious favorites like Coke, Pepsi, and Snapple iced tea, but it also lurks in unexpected places like Ritz crackers, Wonder bread, and Campbell’s tomato soup.

How Protectionism Brought Us HFCS
In the book, “Fat Land,” journalist Greg Critser makes the case that U.S. policies that aimed to stabilize food prices and support corn production in the 1970s led to a glut of corn and then HFCS. Anti free market trade legislation sought to protect domestic sugar producers from international markets, which in turn drove up the cost of sugar and made alternatives like corn-derived sweeteners very attractive to food and beverage makers. An article in the Economist summed up the situation well: "Outrageous import quotas keep the domestic price of sugar at double that of the world price."

This is clearly a case of protectionism for the benefit of powerful domestic producers and is simply bad policy. U.S. steel quotas illustrates the issue well. When the government protected the steel industry from foreign competition, the price of steel skyrocketed. Shielded by this false market mechanism, the steel business appeared healthy and employment grew. But trade restrictions neither create nor destroy jobs; they reallocate them. Employment in businesses using steel, like auto and appliance manufacturers, paid higher prices and lost their ability to compete in international markets. For the American consumer, the cost of a Chevy was now more expensive (or lower quality) due to the higher prices that General Motors had to pay for steel. A cheaper, higher quality Toyota suddenly became a very attractive option. Ultimately, output and employment shrank in the U.S. automobile business and offset any gains in the steel industry.

But how did bad trade policy drive American obesity rates?

No simple explanation
The answer is a bit tricky. Like everyone else, I’ve been hearing all the bad things about HFCS. The story goes like this:
1. Its introduction strongly correlates with obesity rates
2. The body processes the fructose differently than it does old-fashioned cane or beet sugar, which alters the way metabolic-regulating hormones function. It also forces the liver to deliver more fat into the bloodstream.
But according to an article in the NY Times,
“the name "high-fructose corn syrup" is something of a misnomer. It is high only in relation to regular corn syrup, not to sugar. The version of high-fructose corn syrup used in sodas and other sweetened drinks consists of 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose, very similar to white sugar, which is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose. The form of high-fructose corn syrup used in other products like breads, jams and yogurt — 42 percent fructose and 58 percent glucose — is actually lower in fructose than white sugar.”

The hypothesis has been mistaken for sound science, as most scientists believe the idea that HFCS is bad for us is tenuous at best.

What about the strong correlation between obesity rates and HFCS?

HFCS is responsible, but indirectly. Around the same time sugar quotas made HFCS a very cheap alternative, consumer behavior began to undergo significant changes. Manufacturers were able to makes lots of sweet stuff on the cheap and Americans officially entered into its Super Size Me mentality. The same NY Times article reports:

“From 1980 to 2000, per-person consumption of sweetened soda rose by 40 percent, to 440 12-ounce cans a year, according to the Agriculture Department's Economic Research Service. During roughly the same period, the inflation-adjusted price of soda declined by about one-third, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

“In 1983, for example, 7-Eleven rolled out its 44-ounce soda and, in 1988, the huge 64-ounce. And McDonald's began supersizing its drinks in the late 80's.”

Who knows?
So we’ve basically got a bunch of hypotheses, but it’s highly possible that the nutritional value (or lack thereof) of HFCS isn’t making us fat, but the overwhelming prevalence of cheap, over-sweetened food and beverage products that Americans consume on a yearly basis.

Our inability to control our appetite for sweets isn’t grounds for making U.S. trade policy, but it is certainly an example of the unintended consequences of barriers to the free market. The protection of one resource may tilt the balance towards another, often with poor results.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Wing Suit


Check out this piece in the New York Times about the wing suit, an amazing invention that could replace the parachute some day.

If diplomacy fails, perhaps we'll be landing in Tehran with these things in ten years.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Two Funny Brits Explain the Subprime Mess

This is from the award-winning satirical British TV show, "Bremner, Bird and Fortune." It's actually quite informative.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Rappin' bout Econ 101

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Sean Penn, are you listening?



This NY Times Op-Ed from the former commander in chief of the Venezuelan Army says Hugo Chavez has democracy on the retreat in Caracas:

"Venezuela will thrive only when all its citizens truly have a stake in society. Consolidating more power in the presidency through insidious constitutional reforms will not bring that about."

What Trent Lott's Retirement Says About U.S. Politics

This is an interesting article from Wednesday’s Washington Post, about Minority Whip Trent Lott’s retirement and the Senate’s fading ability to compromise across party lines.

The piece states, “A major overhaul of the nation's immigration laws went down in flames. Just two of a dozen annual spending bills passed Congress, and one of those was vetoed. Repeated efforts to force a course change in Iraq ended in recrimination and stalemate. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) filed 56 motions to break off filibusters to try to complete legislation, a total that is nearing the record of 61 such "cloture motions" in a two-year Congress.

“Lott's departure from Capitol Hill in the coming weeks after 34 years in Congress -- 16 in the House, 18 in the Senate -- is further evidence that bonhomie and cross-party negotiating are losing their currency, even in the backslapping Senate.”

The truth is, the legislature isn't becoming partisan – it’s been that way for a long time. But it does feel like we’re living in a totally polarized political environment. Perhaps my view is skewed because I live in the East Village, in New York City -- the locus of liberalism on the East Coast.

I once worked next to a copywriter who would have loud daily conversations with his work partner likening Israel to Al-Qaeda, wishing for centralized government, and spewing hateful 9/11 conspiracies about President Bush and Dick Cheney. I'd overheard enough one day and defended some reasonable conservative ideals. I suddenly became branded throughout the company as a right-wing nut. In fact, the Chief Creative Officer, who I was friendly with, came up to me at a work function and said, “I never would have thought you were a Republican … you seemed … so normal.” I keep my name off this blog because it would be bad for my career.

To be fair, I’m sure the same scenario in reverse occurs in Lubbock, Lincoln, and Salt Lake. But it tells me that we’re spreading further apart on issues that used to be considered private or local. Many of today’s key debates were once deemed the domain of individuals, families, towns, and states. They’ve unfortunately become national and are consistently shaped by those on the margins –- left and right. I’m a die hard conservative on fiscal policy, foreign policy, and ideas about government’s role in our lives, but I believe that reasonable people, red and blue, can come to some consensus about topics like immigration, social security, and abortion.

Even better, perhaps our national debates on these hot button issues should be kicked back to the local level and not be national at all. Should we have really been discussing the fate of Terry Schiavo on a national scale? Do we really need federal government dictating appropriate sexual health lessons in schools when needs are different in Vermont, Harlem, and Kansas? Conversely, why can’t I decide what to do with my retirement funds? The dead-on-arrival plan to invest 3% of our own SS money in a private account is not that radical.

This polarization of politics shows me that we shouldn't be leaving everything up to the politicians. I don't want a bunch of backslapping, pork-slopping legislators deciding what the future of healthcare looks like for my generation. The Bridge to Nowhere is not just in Alaska. In the incompetent hands of beaurocrats, it potentially leads to our future as well.