In his recent column at the Washington Post Robert Samuelson explores Tyler Cowen’s suggestion that “complacency” could explain our present slow economic growth:

We don’t move to new jobs as much as we once did; the cross-state rate of migration is down roughly 50 percent from its 1948-71 average. We don’t form new companies as fast as before; he cites one study estimating that start-ups now represent only 7 percent to 8 percent of firms, down from 12 percent to 13 percent in the 1980s. We increasingly cluster with people “like us” — in class, educational background — by marrying them and living in the same neighborhoods.

In isolation, none of these trends may be crippling, but collectively they undermine the economy’s flexibility and its “dynamism,” says Cowen. If people won’t move for work, some productive jobs will go unfilled. The growing segregation by background and lifestyles reinforces the reluctance to move. The scarcity of start-ups hampers job creation and higher living standards.

There may be some complacency involved but I don’t think that complacency, implicitly defined by Dr. Cowen as “increasingly valuing security and stability”, quite captures what’s happening.

The dictionary definition of “complacency” is:

self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies “When it comes to safety, complacency can be dangerous”.

and I believe that other explanations are more credible in explaining today’s lack of “dynamism”:

1. Managers have other alternatives to domestic investment for producing business growth or, at least, preventing business decline including overseas investment and rent-seeking, cf. the GM bail-out.
2. As I’ve mentioned before, large companies with the clout to get legislation enacted in their favor or engage in “lawfare” to prevent competition can inhibit start-ups.
3. Inadequate demand can make increased investment look less attractive.
4. Getting into other lines of business (particularly financial) may be a less risky way of producing business growth than expanding present business lines. It’s hard to imagine Henry Ford letting the auto business founder to become a banker. Or Tom Edison deciding that it made more sense to become a financier than invent the light bulb. Present day managers probably do not have that commitment. A company that was formerly a manufacturer may in effect become a wholesaler today through out-sourcing their manufacturing. And so on.
5. Multiple career households may make families “stickier” than they used to be. My mother-in-law followed my father-in-law anywhere he needed to go for work. If she’d had a career of her own, particularly one that paid more money or that wasn’t particularly portable, staying put even in the face of his unemployment could just be making the best of a bad situation rather than complacency.
6. Mortgages that are “underwater”, in which people owe more than than their houses are worth, make people less likely to move for work. The percentage of underwater mortgages tends to be inversely correlated with high unemployment rates particularly in regions where property values aren’t being pushed up by other factors, e.g. the Upper Midwest.
7. There actually might be some people somewhere who won’t move for work because of high levels of public services where they are, AKA the “Great Vacation” theory of economic turndown, but I think it’s pretty rare.

and any number of other factors. I wouldn’t count those so much as complacency as financial realities.

Yes, I watched President Trump’s speech last night. I thought that as a piece of rhetoric is was better than most of the breed. I thought that the organizational device he used throughout the speech, first saying what his administration had done with respect to some topic, then outlining the principles guiding the actions, was effective. I also noticed a variety of rhetorical devices including anaphora, hyperphora, juxtaposition, and appeal to emotion that were used effectively. Whoever wrote the speech knew what he or she was doing or at least had some exposure to the genre.

As I generally do I also watched part of the speech on Youtube with the sound off. President Trump has a much flatter affect than I anticipated. That probably serves him well in negotiations.

That’s all I have to say.

The LA Times reports that a state-level single payer health insurance system is being pitched for the state of California:

With President Trump now vowing to put forward a replacement for the Affordable Care Act in March, some California politicians and healthcare advocates are once again promoting the idea of a state-run “single-payer” system that operates like Medicare.

Backers say the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s promise to repeal Obamacare presents California with a chance to rethink how healthcare is delivered to its 39 million residents.

“Why wouldn’t we take this as an opportunity to create what we want in California?” Dr. Mitch Katz, head of L.A. County’s health department, said at a conference in December. He mentioned a single-payer system as a possible solution.

Maybe we should start a pool. When will California adopt its own single-payer system?

I also wonder what the actuarial assumptions would be for the viability of such a system.

At RealClearLife they report on a medical condition they characterize as “extremely rare”:

Scientists are finding one woman’s case particularly memorable.

As The Guardian reports, 51-year-old Jill Price was the first person in history to be diagnosed with “superior autobiographical memory,” and is one of just a handful of individuals known in the world who suffer from it. What exactly does that mean? She’s remembered everything—dates, situations, and other parts of life’s minutia—since 1980.

Where she was, who she was with, what was playing on the television — it’s all burned into her memory.

The only surprising thing to me in this is that they’re calling it “extremely rare”. I think it’s just underdiagnosed.

Chicago’s homicide rate for the year-to-date is running higher than last year’s, probably facilitated by the warmer than usual weather in February. Last year’s homicide rate here was nearing the highest on record, the previous record having been set 25 years ago.

For those of you who envision a future world without work, these homicides are taking place in a handful of neighborhoods where the unemployment rate for young men in the target demographic for gangs is running upwards of 50%. Income isn’t the only factor. If work did not exist, we would be forced to invent it.

For comedy writing it’s hard to beat Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Hans Binnendijk’s advice to the European members of NATO at the RAND Blog:

Europe can deliver its portion of this bargain in three ways. First, it needs to demonstrate the value of its existing military contribution to the alliance. A Trump visit to the new British aircraft carrier, to be armed with American F-35s, would help to dramatize existing contributions.

Second, Europe needs a bold initiative on burden sharing. This is not an issue for Trump alone; a broad consensus exists among defense thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic that Europe has been a free rider for too long. Trump has just been bold enough to raise the stakes.

Europe should commit to reaching its agreed goal of spending 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense in five years rather than 10. That would give Trump some bragging rights during his term in office.

In addition, Europe might use this additional defense spending to make a few highly visible purchases of U.S. defense equipment. Germany might buy more cargo and reconnaissance aircraft. The Netherlands might buy more F-35s. Poland might invest more in U.S.-made air defense. NATO itself might lease U.S. forward-deployed defense equipment. And so on.

Remember the value that Trump placed on his successful effort to prevent Carrier from moving a small air-conditioning plant to Mexico? Symbolism will be important here.

And third, NATO as an institution could play a larger role in global operations against militants’ attacks. This initiative would address much of the reason Trump called the alliance “obsolete.”

Allow me to react to each of those numbered items in turn.

1. Yes, emphasizing that the Anglosphere should go it alone is an excellent way to highlight the Continent’s intentions.
2. Do they really believe that’s politically possible? European countries have pressures, too, and as I read the tea leaves building up their militaries won’t do anything about the pressures they’re under. Besides, we know with a confidence based on experience that any investment in equipment which France, Germany, or Italy, the major economies among our Continental NATO allies, will be willing to make will be backdoor subsidies to their own economies rather than to ours. Those economies aren’t doing too well right about now.
3. With what? Having credible forces takes time and our European NATO allies have neglected theirs for a decade at least. There are only two European NATO members whose forces are at the highest level of readiness: the United Kingdom and France and they’re just about at the limits of their abilities already. Under the circumstances for NATO to “play a larger role in global operations” means greater American commitments rather than greater European commitments. How will that play in Peoria?

I have an almost uncontrollable urge to provide an interlinear translation to Mohammad El-Erian’s latest contribution to Bloomberg View. For example:

Since the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008, the Fed has adopted a highly “data dependent” approach to policy making. The fact that the crisis took Fed officials by surprise, together with a recovery process that has been far from usual and coupled with repeated growth/inflation forecasting errors, have undermined the Fed’s understanding of the economy’s behavior and the effectiveness of its analytical models, especially the historically-calibrated ones.

Translation: the FOMC members don’t know what the heck they’re doing. Or

The Fed became a hostage not just to high-frequency economic data (and the unavoidable “noise” that accompanies them, including some large subsequent revisions), but also to markets.

Translation: the FOMC has abandoned the Fed’s dual statutory mandate in favor of the single-minded objective of making the DJIA go up. At least they can measure that on a day by day basis.

Must resist the temptation. Must resist the temptation.

I presume Mr. El-Erian would rather speak for himself and waive consecutive translation, as they say at the UN.

The viewership for the annual telecast of the Academy Awards ceremony has decline for the third consecutive year, says the Hollywood Reporter:

A long and eventful 89th Academy Awards continued the ABC telecast’s recent downward ratings trend.

After initial indicators had Sunday’s lengthy show off from 2016, time-zone adjusted tallies give this year’s Oscars an average 32.9 million viewers. That marks a 4 percent drop in viewership from the prior. Early stats had the show averaging an overnight 22.4 rating among metered market households. (Last year’s outing saw its overnight score, a 23.4 rating, ultimately translate to 34.4 million viewers.) In the key demo of adults 18-49, this year’s show averaged a 9.1 rating — off a more dramatic 14 percent from the 2016 telecast, which averaged a 10.5 rating among the advertiser-favored viewers.

Once upon a time the Academy Awards were the only nationally-televised awards show. Now there are dozens of them. Add the various reality shows which are essentially scripted awards shows orchestrated as weekly television programs and it’s just too much.

During the heyday of the studio system the Academy Awards were used to promote movies. Most Americans including the members of the Academy have never seen this year’s Best Picture winner and in all likelihood never will. What the heck were the Academy members voting for?

If the Oscars get a bump next year, following the snafu over announcing the Best Picture winner it will be the equivalent of gaping at a traffic accident. I doubt that will happen and as the people who remember when the Academy Awards presentation was a unique, glamorous event die off its viewership will continue to decline.

Let it depart with dignity.

There are plenty of stories receiving inadequate attention these days. One of those is famine created by war, as reported here in the Washington Post:

The world is in the grip of an astonishing and acute crisis: More than 20 million people in South Sudan, Somalia, northern Nigeria and Yemen face starvation in the next six months, according to the United Nations. Nearly 1.4 million children are at “imminent risk” of death. The scale of the hunger epidemic was described last month by U.S.-based researchers as “unprecedented in recent decades.”

Unmentioned in the story: the U. S. is up to its neck in all of the conflicts mentioned above. Special Forces operations have been reported in all of them over the course of the last year. I can’t vouch for the veracity of the reports, of course, but that there are reports is undeniable.

Famine is always political. It’s either a weapon of war, a consequence of war, or a product of indifference.