Europe, like the US, subsidizes the installation of solar panels. So, we subsidize things to make the prices to consumers go down and encourage the industry. Then when the industry is encouraged and prices do go down, we pass tariffs to make prices go up.  This is almost as fun as oil, which we subsidize to make prices go down, then pass regulations to try to stop people from using it.

vía The Grumpy Economist: Solar Panel Tariffs.

Medicine has been so focused on what doctors can do in the hospital that it has barely even begun to figure out what can be done in the home. But the home is where elderly patients spend most of their time. It’s where they take their medicine and eat their meals, and it’s where they fall into funks and trip over the corner of the carpet. It’s where a trained medical professional can see a bad turn before it turns into a catastrophe. Medicine, however, has been reluctant to intrude into homes.

vía If this was a pill, you’d do anything to get it.

Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope.

[...]

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.

vía Amazon Kindle: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Perennial Classics).

[R]educir conceptualmente el programa a una estrategia “de contención” de la pobreza, nos parece una visión poco afortunada acerca de la forma en que las nuevas autoridades revelan su menosprecio a los grandes avances en la institucionalidad de la política social de Estado, principalmente los que se habían venido generando en los últimos años, a partir de la expedición de la Ley General de Desarrollo Social y la Ley Federal de Presupuesto y Responsabilidad Hacendaria, entre otras.

De esta forma, parece que Oportunidades se ha vuelto un programa “incómodo” en términos de rentabilidad electoral, porque, a diferencia de la Cruzada Nacional contra el Hambre, posee mecanismos de corresponsabilidad de los beneficiarios, de seguimiento y evaluación que permitan verificar si se alcanzarán los objetivos y metas propuestas.

vía Las reformas a Oportunidades, premio con castigo – Grupo Milenio.

On the basis of your research, do you think that rent is an important source of the recent growth in income inequality?

ES: If we define rent in terms of situations where pay doesn’t correspond to what economists call ‘marginal productivity’—that is, the economic contribution a person is providing—I would say yes, because the evolution of income concentration over time and across countries has a number of features that are inconsistent with the story where pay is everywhere equal to productivity.

vía Boston Review — Emmanuel Saez and David Grusky: Taxing Away Inequality.

En 1969, Richard Maxwell Brown publicó una interesante apología del vigilantismo en Estados Unidos. Según él, en la historia estadounidense predominó siempre un vigilantismo constructivo, que movilizaba al conjunto de la comunidad para acabar con revoltosos, maleantes y demás gentuza: era un recurso de civilización.

vía Vigilantismo :: Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo :: La Razón :: 26 de febrero de 2013.

In the decade since 9/11, the U.S. government has used a wide variety of tactics against terrorists. It’s invaded countries where they operated (and ones where they didn’t). It’s tried to win the backing of foreign populations in which the terrorists hide. And it’s sent commandos and deadly flying robots to kill them one by one.

One thing it hasn’t done, until now: troll them.

Within the State Department, a Silicon Valley veteran has quietly launched an improbable new initiative to annoy, frustrate and humiliate denizens of online extremist forums.

Newest U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy: Trolling | Danger Room | Wired.com.

1. Los EUA tienen un sistema fiscal progresivo (En realidad, los impuestos pagados asemejan una tasa fija)

2. Los EUA son la tierra de la oportunidad (No estoy muy de acuerdo con que sea un mito, pero al menos la información a la que vincula, de Pew, me parece de excelente calidad y da pie a interesantes discusiones. Sobre el tema, me vino a la mente el excelente libro Human Capitalism)

3. El rescate financiero funcionó. (La gente sigue perdiendo sus casas.)

4. Los datos de los ciudadanos americanos son protegidos por su gobierno (Ni hablar.)

5. EUA se está recuperando de la crisis financiera. (Salarios y empleo no han crecido desde entonces.)

vía Five false myths that make liberals feel good « mathbabe.

GE just announced a partnership with Google to license Google maps for use in its geographic information system (GIS) dubbed Smallworld. Smallworld is a set of software tools used by engineers to help design and manage things like electric grids, pipelines, telecom networks and other large, critical systems of stuff that guys in trucks tend to keep an eye on. Ironically, Smallworld is about to get a lot bigger as it opens its walled garden up to Google Maps. But Google Maps could start to evolve too as the mapping needs of this new set of industrial users starts banging away on it.

Just as office-bound folks started to bring their tablets, smartphones and other consumer tech to work because it just worked better, GE landed on Google Maps for its accuracy and familiarity, says Bryan Friehauf, the product line leader of software solutions for GE’s Digital Energy business. “Everyone has such high expectations around the quality of these kinds of tools because of their own consumer experience,” Friehauf says. “Those expectations and how we use technology is now going into the industrial realm. We can roll out Google Maps, and I don’t have to have a manual for it, millions of people are already familiar with it.”

vía Google Maps, Now in Industrial Strength! | Wired Business | Wired.com.

The point is not to be heartless — government programs or not, life on the lower end of America’s economic and social spectrum is pretty awful. The point is, if we seriously want to address the problems of the “working poor,” if we want policies that actually work rather than spew a lot of TV time and make us feel good, let us paint a vaguely realistic picture of what their life is like. Absolutely nobody (except perhaps illegal aliens) is trying to support a family on $14,500 from a full time minimum wage job, period. The actual economic life of the “working poor” is a welter of government programs, transitory employment, and a lot of illegal activity

And, one huge problem facing people who do work full time and earn minimum wage is the astounding marginal tax rates that our various social programs imply. In fact, much of the raise from $7.25 to $9.00 will be taken away. Even more of a raise to $20 an hour will be taken away. The structure of our programs that are supposed to help people are instead trapping them.

Yes indeed, let us help families to “finally get ahead!” Let us talk about lousy schools, incentive-destroying social programs, horrendous violence, life-destroying incarceration, and the war on drugs run amok. The minimum wage may slightly help the few who can get such jobs, and put such entry-level jobs slightly more out of reach for many others. But it’s just irrelevant to the real, first-order problems such families face.

vía The Grumpy Economist: Two cents on the minimum wage.