Middle America’s standard of living

Inequality

Opportunity

Economic security

Poverty

Happiness

The following plot of life expectancy by income inequality shows a pattern that appears again and again in The Spirit Level.

“The problems in rich countries,” Wilkinson and Pickett conclude, “are not caused by the society not being rich enough (or even by being too rich) but by the scale of material differences between people within each society being too big. What matters is where we stand in relation to others in our own society” (p. 25).

The book has received a good bit of attention. It’s been reviewed in a number of major newspapers and been the focus of events at progressive think tanks in London and Washington, DC. It’s easy to see why. Many progressives worry about inequality. Here is a book, referencing hundreds of social scientific studies and making extensive use of quantitative data, which says, in effect, that many of our social problems can be significantly eased by reducing income inequality.

Is it correct? I was initially skeptical, and after reading the book I remain so.

What’s the causal link?

It wouldn’t be surprising to find that inequality in the income distribution contributes to inequality in health, education, and so on. And there’s plenty of evidence that it does. Wilkinson and Pickett make a different claim: income inequality worsens the average level of health, education, safety, trust, and other good things. How does it do that?

Wilkinson and Pickett say high inequality increases status competition, which in turn increases stress and anxiety, which leads to social dysfunction.

“Greater inequality seems to heighten people’s social evaluation anxieties by increasing the importance of social status…. If inequalities are bigger, so that some people seem to count for almost everything and others for practically nothing, where each one of us is placed becomes more important. Greater inequality is likely to be accompanied by increased status competition and increased status anxiety.” (pp. 43-44)

Here’s how they see stress as the link between income inequality and a key health outcome, lower average life expectancy:

“One of the most important recent developments in our understanding of the factors exerting a major influence on health in rich countries has been the recognition of the importance of psychological stress…. The most powerful sources of stress affecting health seem to fall into three intensely social categories: low social status, lack of friends, and stress in early life…. Much the most plausible interpretation of why these keep cropping up as markers for stress in modern societies is that they all affect — or reflect — the extent to which we do or do not feel at ease and confident with each other. Insecurities which can come from a stressful early life have some similarities with the insecurities which can come from low social status, and each can exacerbate the effects of the other.” (p. 39)

“So how do the stresses of adverse experiences in early life, of low social status, and lack of social support make us unwell? … The psyche affects the neural system and in turn the immune system — when we’re stressed or depressed or feeling hostile, we are far more likely to develop a host of bodily ills, including heart disease, infections and more rapid ageing. Stress disrupts our body’s balance, interferes with what biologists call ‘homeostasis’ — the state we’re in when everything is running smoothly and all our physiological processes are normal.”  (p. 85)

Here’s the hypothesized link with obesity:

“People with a long history of stress seem to respond to food in different ways from people who are not stressed. Their bodies respond by depositing fat particularly round the middle, in the abdomen, rather than lower down on hips and thighs…. The body’s stress reaction causes another problem. Not only does it make us put on weight in the worst places, it can also increase our food intake and change our food choices, a pattern known as stress-eating or eating for comfort.” (p. 95)

And educational achievement:

“New developments in neurology provide biological explanations for how our learning is affected by our feelings. We learn best in stimulating environments when we feel sure we can succeed. When we feel happy or confident our brains benefit from the release of dopamine, the reward chemical, which also helps with memory, attention, and problem solving. We also benefit from serotonin which improves mood, and from adrenaline which helps us to perform at our best. When we feel threatened, helpless and stressed, our bodies are flooded by the hormone cortisol which inhibits our thinking and memory. So inequalities of the kind we have been describing in this chapter, in society and in our schools, have a direct and demonstrable effect on our brains, on our learning and educational achievement.” (p. 115)

Other mechanisms are discussed at various points in the book, including oppositional culture, perceived expectations of inferiority, and humiliation. But stress is the key.

An important question here, which Wilkinson and Pickett don’t address, concerns the tightness of the link between the degree of income inequality in a society and the degree of status competition. The United States has the most unequal income distribution among rich countries, but I’m not certain this results in it having more status competition than other countries. Some European nations with less income inequality have a long history of class divisions. American culture is relatively informal, and Americans tend to optimistic about the possibility of upward mobility. As a result, perceptions of status divisions may be less pronounced in the U.S. than in some other nations. The same is true for the American states. The states with the highest income inequality include Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming. Is status competition greatest in these states? I’m not sure.

How strong is the effect?

Wilkinson and Pickett are convinced that the effect of income inequality on social well-being is real, and perhaps it is. But if so, how strong is the effect? Social scientists frequently discover statistically significant effects that turn out to be trivially small in magnitude.

Look again at the chart above, which shows life expectancy by income inequality across affluent nations. If you follow the regression (“best-fit”) line, you’ll see it suggests that going from very high income inequality to very low income inequality will increase life expectancy by approximately two years (from about 77.5 to 79.5). The same is true across the 50 U.S. states. Is that a large impact?

One way to think about this is to consider how much life expectancy has changed in these countries over time. Let’s compare 1980 to 2006. I got data for these two years from the OECD for 21 of the 23 countries included in Wilkinson and Pickett’s graph. In 1980 the average life expectancy in these countries was 71 years. By 2006 it had jumped to 78 years. This increase is not simply a function of the poorer countries making huge leaps. In the three richest countries — Norway, the United States, and Switzerland — life expectancy rose by five or six years. The smallest rise, in the Netherlands, was four years.

If Wilkinson and Pickett’s estimate of the impact of income inequality is correct, reducing inequality in the United States to Sweden’s level would improve life expectancy by two years. Yet in the past generation life expectancy in the U.S. increased by more than twice that amount. By this gauge, inequality’s effect isn’t an especially large one.

Are the correlations true?

The point-in-time associations in Wilkinson and Pickett’s graphs are their key piece of evidence. Are they accurate? In studies such as this, there almost always is reason to worry about data and measurement choices. I’ll mention just one here. Wilkinson and Pickett measure income inequality for countries using data from the United Nations’ Human Development Report. It’s not a bad choice, but a more reliable source when comparing across nations is the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). The LIS has data for fewer countries, but if an association is genuine it ought to hold for a subset of the countries examined by Wilkinson and Pickett.

The following chart plots life expectancy by income inequality as of 2005, using LIS data for inequality. There is no association.

Actually, this isn’t so much because of the difference in data source; it’s mainly a function of the particular countries that drop out when switching to the LIS data. The association in Wilkinson and Pickett’s chart rests heavily on the position of Japan, Singapore, and Portugal, none of which are in the LIS database. A small number of countries, often the United States and Japan, exert a good bit of influence on the patterns in a number (though not all) of Wilkinson and Pickett’s scatterplots. This is worrisome.

Are cross-sectional point-in-time associations the appropriate empirical test?

Patterns of association across countries or states at a single point in time may be very useful evidence. Or they might not. With this kind of evidence, we worry about other ways in which countries differ from one another that could be the true drivers of the observed association.

To supplement cross-sectional snapshots, we can, where data availability permits, look at what happens over time. Wilkinson and Pickett presumably would think this a good idea. In the book’s final chapter they note that the level of income inequality has changed in a number of these countries over the last few decades. And in the conclusion to an article that summarizes the book, they say “Standards of health and social well-being in rich societies may now depend more on reducing income differences than on economic growth without redistribution.” If income inequality is reduced, they’re suggesting, life expectancy and other social outcomes should improve; if inequality rises, outcomes are likely to worsen.

Yet The Spirit Level includes virtually no analysis or discussion of over-time developments. There is one over-time chart in the chapter on trust, a brief discussion in the chapter on crime, and a few references to other studies in a summary chapter. But as best I can tell, that’s all.

This is an important omission, because researchers who have examined over-time relationships between income inequality and average levels of health have tended to find no support for the hypothesized link (Jennifer Mellor and Jeffrey Milyo; Jason Beckfield; Andrew Leigh, Christopher Jencks, and Tim Smeeding). Here’s one way to see this. The following chart plots life expectancy on the vertical axis and income inequality on the horizontal. Each country is shown at two points in time, around 1980 and around 2005. For each country, a line connects the two data points. In most of the countries income inequality has increased and yet so has life expectancy. That’s not what Wilkinson and Pickett’s argument and findings would lead us to expect. Moreover, in the two countries where inequality was already low and then decreased, the Netherlands and Denmark, life expectancy rose the least.

I haven’t looked carefully at over-time data for the other outcomes Wilkinson and Pickett examine. But a few trends in the United States seem problematic for their argument. Average educational achievement has improved over the past generation even while income inequality soared. Violent crime began increasing in the mid-1960s, well before the rise in inequality, and it has dropped considerably since the early 1990s. Trends such as these don’t necessarily mean inequality has had no effect, but at the very least they call into question its magnitude.

Interestingly, Wilkinson and Pickett report that anxiety, the mechanism through which they believe income inequality causes social dysfunction, has been increasing steadily in the United States and other rich nations over the past half-century. But as they note, that isn’t due to rising income inequality: “That possibility can be discounted because the rises in anxiety and depression seem to start well before the increases in inequality which in many countries took place during the last quarter of the twentieth century. (It is possible, however, that the trends between the 1970s and 1990s may have been aggravated by increased inequality.)” (p. 35). This leaves us with an important unanswered question: Why would income inequality be a key determinant of stress across countries at a point in time, as Wilkinson and Pickett posit, but not within countries over time?

In sum, longitudinal developments offer further grounds for skepticism about the effect of income inequality on average levels of health, education, safety, and other social goods.

What to do

Improving social outcomes is certainly a worthwhile aim. What’s the best way to do it? According to Wilkinson and Pickett,

“Attempts to deal with health and social problems through the provision of specialized services have proved expensive and, at best, only partially effective…. The evidence presented in this book suggests that greater equality can address a wide range of problems across whole societies.”

I wish it were that simple. I share Wilkinson and Pickett’s conviction that it would be good for America and some other affluent nations to reduce income inequality, but this book hasn’t convinced me that doing so would help us to make much headway in improving health, safety, education, and trust. To achieve those gains, my sense is that our best course of action is greater commitment to specialized programs and services, coupled with poverty reduction.

Then again, I’m not certain that Wilkinson and Pickett are wrong. I’ve focused here mostly on the effect of inequality on life expectancy, because that is the social outcome for which the hypothesized causal link (stress) seems most plausible and because it has received the most attention in prior research. I’m skeptical that income inequality has much of an impact on average life expectancy. But perhaps life expectancy will turn out to be the exception to the rule.

One is that the bill will require (most) people to have health insurance. This means some low-income Americans, those who don’t get health insurance from their employer or from the government (Medicaid or Medicare), will have to buy insurance from a private insurer. They’ll receive a subsidy to help offset the cost, but for most the subsidy will be only partial; a new insurance policy may cost a family as much as 8% of its income. Thus, the argument goes, these people will be worse off.

I don’t see the logic in this. Unless you’re a libertarian, I’m not sure why you’d believe forcing people to spend money on something that’s in their self-interest — and calculations show that it clearly is in the interest of those who need health-care services — makes them worse off. Think of the Social Security and Medicare tax. It amounts to forced savings of nearly 8% of earnings — perhaps twice that, since the portion employers contribute arguably comes out of pay. But there is a benefit that outweighs the cost: guaranteed income and health care during retirement years, plus the accompanying peace of mind.

A second argument against the health-care reform bill is that health insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms will benefit. But opposing the bill on the grounds that it will benefit the already-powerful amounts to prioritizing equality over the well-being of America’s poor and lower middle-class (and others too, since the reform will sharply limit insurers’ ability to refuse or restrict insurance to people with preexisting conditions or greater likelihood of illness).

Here I think progressives ought to turn to John Rawls, the most influential moral philosopher of the past century. Rawls’s full view of justice is complex, and I won’t attempt to explicate it here. (There’s a nice summary in chapter 6 of Michael Sandel’s new book Justice.) The key point is that we ought to care more about the absolute well-being of the poorest than about the gap between the rich and the poor or between the powerful and the powerless. Rawls didn’t feel inequality is irrelevant, but he argued that it is secondary. This, he suggested, is what we all would believe if we thought about it carefully enough. I think he’s right.

The third reason for opposing the bill is a belief that it can be replaced by a better one in the not-too-distant future. Unfortunately, as many commentators have pointed out (Hacker, Klein, Krugman, Skocpol, Starr), experience suggests that is very unlikely.

House and Senate bills reduce the deficit, slow health care costs, and include realistic Medicare savings, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Don’t kill the bill, continued, by Jonathan Cohn

What can families actually afford?, by Jonathan Cohn

The health-care bill has no master plan for curbing costs. Is that a bad thing?, by Atul Gawande

Why I still believe in this bill, by Jacob Hacker

Five cost controls in the Senate health-care bill, by Ezra Klein

The death of the public option, by Ezra Klein

The importance of the individual mandate, by Ezra Klein

Health reform: thank the Club for Growth, by Paul Krugman

Pass the bill, by Paul Krugman

Tidings of comfort, by Paul Krugman

If health reform fails, America’s innovation gap will grow, by David Leonhardt

Defend and demand: the progressive way forward, by Theda Skocpol

Why progressives should support a Democratic compromise, by Paul Starr

Fifth wheel, by James Surowiecki

Reasons not to kill the Senate bill, by Igor Volsky

Why I prefer French health care, by Matt Welch (via Jeff Weintraub)

Drop the mandate?, by Matthew Yglesias

Health reform will save people money, by Matthew Yglesias

The success of the public option campaign, by Matthew Yglesias

Environment

Bjorn Lomborg and Pual Krugman debate policies to address climate change

Getting warmer, The Economist

One accord, yet discord, by Fiona Harvey, Ed Crooks, and Andrew Ward

An affordable truth, by Paul Krugman

Unhelpful Hansen, by Paul Krugman

What you need to know following the Copenhagen climate summit, by Andrew Light, Daniel Weiss, and Rebecca Lefton

Evidence of a warming planet, New York Times

In face of skeptics, experts affirm climate peril, by Andrew Revkin and John Broder

Why Copenhagen must be the end of the beginning, by Martin Wolf

U.S. economy

The fairness of financial rescue, by Brad DeLong

Ten ways to move the budget back to a sustainable path, by Jeffrey Frankel

Age of diminished expectations, by Paul Krugman

Bernanke’s unfinished mission, by Paul Krugman

Is criticism of the Bernanke Fed justified?, by Mark Thoma

Will economists ever learn?, by Mark Thoma

Living standards, poverty, inequality, well-being

Inequality: a problem?, by Bruce Bartlett

Bankers had cashed in before the music stopped, by Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen, and Holger Spamann

Workforce Investment Act reauthorization, by Gordon Berlin (via Shawn Fremstad)

Battered by the storm, by Deepak Bhargava et al

Obama sets plan to spur job creation, by Jackie Calmes

Are the naughties the best decade ever?, by Tyler Cowen

American jobs plan, Economic Policy Institute

The next war on poverty, by Peter Edelman

Why welfare reform has failed, by Peter Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich

Men without jobs, by Justin Fox

Economic growth and convergence, by Stephen Gordon

If billionaires don’t feel guilty about walking away from their debts, should homeowners?, by Daniel Gross

Yes, inequality really is getting a lot worse, by Zubin Jelveh

The big zero, by Paul Krugman

Poll reveals depth and trauma of joblessness in U.S., by Michael Luo and Megan Thee-Brenan

Short-time work carries long-term consequences, by Stanley Pignal and Daniel Schafer

“Unbanked” America, by Catherine Rampell

Worrisome thoughts on the way to the jobs summit, by Robert Reich

Making job creation a priority, by Christina Romer (via Mark Thoma)

A way to share in a nation’s growth, by Robert Shiller

The administration’s job creation proposal is inadequate, by Mark Thoma

The fed can help, but fiscal policy is the key to job creation, by Mark Thoma

Labor data show a surge in hiring of temp workers, by Louis Uchitelle

The squeeze before the storm, by Edward Wolff

Taxes

America’s fiscal deficit, The Economist

Governments differ dramatically in how they tax, The Economist

How to run up a deficit, without fear, by Robert H. Frank

Many see the VAT option as a cure for deficits, by Catherine Rampell

U.S. income tax not progressive at high end, by Martin Sullivan (via Catherine Rampell)

Should taxes be progressive?, by Mark Thoma

Education

Schools that beat the odds, by Harry Brighouse

Are our colleges teaching students well?, by Kevin Carney

Teachers score higher than other professionals in well-being, Gallup

Cities

What makes cities great, by Edward Glaeser

Green cities, by Matthew Kahn

The Detroit project, by Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley

U.S. politics

After health care, we need Senate reform, by Ezra Klein

Seven stories Politico fears, by Ezra Klein

A dangerous dysfunction, by Paul Krugman

The Senate without the filibuster, by Brendan Nyhan

Three myths about political independents, by John Sides

What have we learned from the health care debate?, by John Sides

What we don’t know about polarization, by John Sides

Abroad

The economic crisis has revealed the failings of global organisations, by Alan Beattie

The familiar road to failure in Afghanistan, by Rodric Braithwaite

In Chile, many are optimistic that prosperity is coming, by Juan Forero

The ascent, and fall, of Dubai, by Edward Glaeser

Is “growth with equity” getting old?, by Duncan Green

The state of the war in Afghanistan, New York Times

Countries in misery, by Floyd Norris

What works in devleopment?, Dani Rodrik, Lant Pritchett, and others

Obama adds troops, but maps exit plan, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Helene Cooper

Trade policy lessons from Mexico under NAFTA, by Eduardo Zepeda, Timothy A. Wise, and Kevin P. Gallagher

Miscelleneous

Notes on a class, by Harry Brighouse

Distilling famous thinkers, by Tyler Cowen

What are the odds that the best chess player in the world has never played chess?, by Tyler Cowen

Paul Samuelson, 1915-2009, by Avinash Dixit

The death of the boring blog post, by Paddy Donnelly

Ever-increasing choice was supposed to mean the end of the blockbuster, The Economist

Getting rid of academic journals or changing the review system?, by Andrew Gelman

Remembering Paul Samuelson, who forever fused economics with math, by Edward Glaeser

Divorce rate trends — selective framing, by Graphic Sociology

Variable geometry premiership, by Jonathan Hopkin

Night, by Tony Judt

What is living and what is dead in social democracy, by Tony Judt

The decade of the con, by Frank Rich

“Readability” provides a solution. Go to the Readability website at lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability. Choose the font style and size and the margins you prefer. Then drag a Readability link onto your Bookmarks toolbar. Then, whenever you’re at a blog post you’d like to print (to pdf or hard copy), just click once on your new Readability toolbar button and the post is quickly formatted to print. Text and graphs in; ads and other junk out.

I’ve tried it on several blogs, including my own, and it seems to work nicely.

The book’s lead chapter tries to answer the question “Why does England lose?” Why has England’s national team fared so poorly in the (quadrennial) World Cup since its one and only triumph in 1966? This is, the authors note, “perhaps the greatest question in English sports.”

England has a rich soccer history. It is one of only seven countries to have won a World Cup. It ranks fifth all-time in World Cup matches played (55) and wins (25). Its club teams have been highly successful; between 1970 and 2006 an English team won the world’s top club competition, Europe’s Champions League, nine times, which compares favorably to Germany (6), Italy (6), the Netherlands (6), and Spain (5). Yet England won none of the ten World Cups played during that span. Indeed, it never reached the finals, and made it to the semifinals only once. Why?

Kuper and Szymanski begin by dismissing the popular notion that the problem lies in English clubs’ overreliance on foreign players, which supposedly hinders the development of native talent. I agree with their skepticism here. Then they show that a large share of England’s national team players are from working-class households, and they suggest it would be good if more were recruited from the middle class. But they don’t look to see if other more successful countries have done that. They then say England has suffered from being outside the continental European soccer knowledge network. As a result, while other leading European national teams shifted to a rapid short passing game, English soccer remained wedded to a “kick-and-rush” style. But they don’t address the obvious question of why, if the kick-and-rush style contributed to failure in the World Cup, it yielded such success at the club level during the same period.

Ultimately, Kuper and Szymanski assert that the question “Why does England lose?” is wrongheaded, for England’s national team actually hasn’t performed too badly. Here they turn away from World Cup results and look at goal difference in all games played by the national team. They examine all countries’ national teams over the period 1980 to 2001 and discover that GDP per capita, population, and number of matches played since 1872 are helpful predictors. They find that England’s team has done, relative to what this formula predicts, about as well as those of Germany, Italy, Argentina, and France.

Yet here the authors are, I think, trying to be a bit too clever. England truly has underperformed in the past ten World Cups. Kuper and Szymanski note that “Any mathematician would say it’s absurd to expect England to win the World Cup … random factors play an outsize role in determining the winner.” Okay, fair enough. So let’s use getting to the semifinals as the benchmark. Over the past four decades eight nations have dominated world soccer: Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. The following chart shows how these countries have fared in reaching the World Cup semis since 1970. England’s record is second-worst.

How well should England have done? We can predict these countries’ recent World Cup success pretty well by looking at their historical performance. The following chart plots the number of semifinals reached in the ten World Cups since 1970 by each country’s World Cup match wins over the entire history of the tournament, from 1930 to 2006. Given its overall number of match victories, England ought to have reached the semifinals three times since 1970, rather than just once.

What accounts for England’s poor results? I think it’s a fairly simple story. First, it helps to host the World Cup tournament. These countries have hosted six of the past ten, and in five of those six instances the host made it to the semifinals or beyond: Germany in 1974 and 2006, Argentina in 1978, Italy in 1990, and France in 1998. (Only Spain in 1982 failed.) England didn’t host any. Second, you need to do okay — not great, but okay — in matches decided on penalty kicks. Penalty kick shootouts have been used in the World Cup since 1982. In the seven tournaments from 1982 to 2006, England was eliminated on penalty kicks three times, with not a single penalty-kick win. In contrast, Germany is 4-0 in penalty-kick shootouts, Argentina is 3-1, Brazil is 2-1, and France is 2-2. Only Italy, at 1-3, rivals England’s record of futility in World Cup penalty-kick matches.

Had it hosted one of the past ten World Cups and won a penalty-kick shootout in either 1998 or 2006, England’s semifinals appearances might well have jumped from one to three, putting it right at the expected number.

Ten ways to cut health-care costs right now, by Catherine Arnst

A milestone in the health care journey, by Ronald Brownstein

Mass appeal, by Jonathan Cohn

The House bill is “worse than nothing”? Really?, by Jonathan Cohn

We know how this debate ends. Or do we?, by Jonathan Cohn

What should we do instead of the Obama health reform bill?, by Tyler Cowen

Maybe a new day for doctors’ pay, by Robert H. Frank

The House public plan: yes, it’s worth it, by Jacob Hacker and Diane Archer

George Halvorson, Kaiser Permanente CEO, interviewed by Ezra Klein, parts one and two

Dutch view of choice in U.S. health care: it’s limited, by Gardiner Harris

Why is the Senate going to take so long?, by Suzy Khimm

An excise tax would raise workers’ wages by $313 billion, according to the Joint Tax Committee, by Ezra Klein

An insurance industry CEO explains why American health care costs so much, by Ezra Klein

Does health-care reform do enough on cost control? Interview with Jon Gruber, by Ezra Klein

Has the public-option fight been good for health-care reform?, by Ezra Klein

Health-care reform’s grand bargain, by Ezra Klein

Is a flawed health-care bill better than no bill at all?, by Ezra Klein

Is the weak public option bad politics?, by Ezra Klein

Why the Senate bill is better than the House bill on cost control, by Ezra Klein

Harry, Louise, and Barack, by Robert Kuttner

Falling far short of reform, by David Leonhardt

Making health care better, by David Leonhardt

The half-full health reform glass, by Maggie Mahar

A modest public plan, New York Times

Reform and medical costs, New York Times

A prescription for the healers, by Harold Pollack

Fighting the wrong health care battle, by Paul Starr

Skepticism on how well health bills cut costs, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Why we need an individual mandate, by Mark Thoma

Next battle for health care, by Matthew Yglesias

U.S. economy

Stimulus and jobs: we can do better, by Dean Baker

Threatening the Fed’s independence, by Alan Blinder

Counting the jobs produced by the stimulus, by Gary Burtless

New consensus sees stimulus package as worthy step, by Jackie Calmes and Michael Cooper

A macro policy catechism, by Brad DeLong

Basic background deficit math, by Brad DeLong

Slouching toward sanity, by Brad DeLong

Why are good policies bad politics?, by Brad DeLong

Are bankers worth their big paychecks?, by Justin Fox

Counting “jobs saved” by Obama fiscal stimulus, by Jeff Frankel

The roller coaster of economic indicators, by Jeff Frankel

Unending stimulus, or temporary stimulus followed by restraint?, by William Galston

The lost generation, by Paul Krugman

The phantom menace, by Paul Krugman

Too little of a good thing, by Paul Krugman

Recovery and debt: squaring the circle, by Robert Kuttner

Through a glass less darkly, by David Leonhardt

The GDP mirage, by Michael Mandel

A shaky start, by Mark Thoma

How to prevent the next financial crisis, by Mark Thoma

Will there be a new “normal” for unemployment?, by Mark Thoma

Worries about budget deficits and inflation: let’s avoid repeating our mistakes, by Mark Thoma

GDP data overstate the nation’s economic vigor, by Louis Uchitelle

Give us austerity and fiscal rectitude, but not quite yet, by Martin Wolf

Help small businesses hire again, by Mark Zandi

Living standards, poverty, inequality, well-being

Sociability predicts happiness, by Stefano Bartolini and colleagues (via Chris Dillow)

Taming the stock option game, by Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried

Pay controls once again, by Gary Becker

The case for a job-creation tax credit, by John Bishop

Can our shameful prisons be reformed?, by David Cole

49 million Americans report a lack of food, by Jason DeParle

Food Stamp use soars, and stigma fades, by Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff

Recession to leave permanent scars, by Chris Giles

The innovation administration, by Dana Goldstein

Job injuries are habitually underreported, by Steven Greenhouse

White House endorses paid sick leave bill, by Steven Greenhouse

Social isolation and new technology, by Keith Hampton, Lauren Sessions, Eun Ja Her, and Lee Rainie

4 in 10 families lack money for essential household expenses when unemployed, Institute on Assets and Social Policy (via Mark Thoma)

Is California finished?, by John Judis

The jobs imperative, by Paul Krugman

What’s wrong with America’s jobs policy, by Paul Krugman

A wake-up call on jobs, by Robert Kuttner

Job woes exacting a heavy toll on family life, by Michael Luo

The poverty trap, by Greg Mankiw

Concerns grow for new lost generation, by Sarah O’Connor

Pay caps for financial executives, by Richard Posner

Women earn less than men, especially at the top, by Catherine Rampell

Economy is forcing young adults back home in record numbers, by Sam Roberts

Obama has lost his way on jobs, by Jeffrey Sachs

Five myths about our land of opportunity, by Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins

Teenage jobs and the minimum wage, by Heidi Shierholz

Perceptions of crime and the economy, by John Sides

The internet and civic engagement, by Aaron Smith, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry Brady

Bankers are likely to reap millions from efforts to curb pay, by Louise Story

Mortgage delinquencies reach a record high, by David Streitfeld

Jobs now, deficit reduction later, by Laura D’Andrea Tyson

Open access needed, by Matthew Yglesias

Taxes

Financial transactions tax comes before value-added tax, by Dean Baker

The Europeanization of America, by Bruce Bartlett

The impact of state income taxes on low-income families, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Entitlement spending and the long-term budget outlook, by Douglas Elmendorf

Taxing the speculators, by Paul Krugman

How the tax code encourages debt, by James Surowiecki

Tax subsidies are subsidies, by Matthew Yglesias

Education

Why California’s tuition hike might be a good thing, by Ian Ayres

Dreams of better schools, by Andrew Delbanco

What the 2009 NAEP math scores tell us, by Lisa Guernsey

Inequality goes to college, set of articles in The American Prospect

Immigration

White House plan on immigration includes legal status, by Julia Preston

Environment

Obama offers targets to cut greenhouse gas, by John Broder

Is there a quick fix for the environment?, by Elizabeth Kolbert

Globalization

World out of balance, by Paul Krugman

Unions

Obama and the unions, The Economist

Trade unions’ decline around the world, by Catherine Rampell

The changing face of unions, by John Schmitt and Kris Warner

U.S. politics

Politicians have a lot of leeway in how they vote, by Andrew Gelman

The Senate’s health care calculations, by Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, and Daniel Lee

Good governance, by Thomas Friedman

Why Americans hate to love government, by John Judis

Four ways to end the filibuster, by Ezra Klein

Paranoia strikes deep, by Paul Krugman

Does unemployment affect midterm elections?, by Seth Masket

Progressive values are dominant, but Americans lack trust in government effectiveness, by Nathan Newman

The staggering rise of the filibuster, by Robert Schlesinger (via Ezra Klein)

When did the Senate get so bad?, by Mark Schmitt

How the government can make us better at self-government, by David Villano

White men are not very progressive, by Matthew Yglesias

Abroad

What makes a nation rich?, by Daron Acemoglu

Free-market ideals survive the crunch, by Alan Beattie and Geoff Dyer

Economic parity remains a German dream, by Bertrand Benoit

The problem with half-measures in Afghanistan, by Stephen Biddle

Global hunger, by Javier Blas

Europe’s new president, by Stephen Castle and Steven Erlanger

Bringing war criminals to justice is a slow business, but the net is widening, The Economist

Lower fertility is changing the world for the better, The Economist

Sarkozy’s reforms, by Ban Hall and Peggy Hollinger

How can we help the world’s poor?, by Nicholas Kristof

China’s rise?, by John Plender

Whether or not it is good for Europe, it is very bad for Belgium, by Ingrid Robeyns

Public opinion two decades after the fall of the wall, by Joshua Tucker

Brazil’s Bolsa Familia scheme, by David White

Letter from Gaza, by Lawrence Wright

A third surge?, by Fareed Zakaria

Miscellaneous

The behavioral economics of Thanksgiving eating, by Ezra Klein

I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop; then it destroyed my life, by Michael Idov (via Ezra Klein)

What’s next for macroeconomics?, by John Quiggin

Twilight of the op-ed columnist, by Paul Waldman

Suppose we think it would be good for countries to try to maintain or move toward relatively low levels of inequality, something akin to the levels in contemporary Denmark or Sweden. What is the best way to do that?

My attempt at an answer is in the September-October issue of Challenge.

That’s health economist Jon Gruber’s bottom line on health care reform. It’s my view too, and it’s the premise underlying the House and Senate bills. I hope it turns out to be right.

Bartlett argues that successful economic policies tend to be effective only in a specific set of circumstances. Their success, however, encourages supporters to believe their applicability is universal. Eventually they get overused, prove counterproductive, fall out of favor, and get replaced by new ideas.

This, according to Bartlett, is the story of both Keynesianism and supply-side economics. Keynes was a pragmatist. His recommendation to use fiscal policy to stimulate the economy was formulated in response to the conditions of the Great Depression. It worked. But then, in Bartlett’s telling, it came to be viewed as an appropriate remedy for all economic downturns. By the 1970s overuse of fiscal stimulus contributed to inflation without reducing unemployment. This led to its abandonment by many economists and policy makers.

Bartlett tells a parallel tale about supply-side economics. Its core thesis is that if marginal tax rates are too high, they discourage innovation, investment, and work effort. Bartlett says this was the situation in the 1970s. The Reagan administration’s sharp reduction of marginal rates in its 1981 and 1986 tax reforms was therefore effective medicine for the American economy. It “laid the foundation for higher real growth well into the 1990s.” But like the use of budget deficits to fight recession, the supply-side strategy of reducing tax rates came to be seen by its backers as an all-purpose cure — the appropriate tonic irrespective of the economy’s ailment.

The chief economic problem we now face, in Bartlett’s view, is not high marginal tax rates. It is the aging of baby boomers to whom we have made Medicare and Social Security commitments. Absent “massive and politically impossible cuts,” this will cause federal government expenditures to rise from 20% of GDP to around 30% over the coming generation. Supply-side dogma leaves Republicans ill-prepared for this challenge. “When the crunch comes and the need for a major increase in revenue becomes overwhelming,” says Bartlett, “I expect that Republicans will refuse to participate in the process. If Democrats have to raise taxes with no bipartisan support, then they will have no choice but to cater to the demands of their party’s most liberal wing. This will mean higher rates on businesses and entrepreneurs, and soak-the-rich policies that would make Franklin D. Roosevelt blush.”

A better result, according to Bartlett, would be to bring government revenues into line with projected expenditures via a value-added tax (VAT), a type of consumption tax. Heavy use of VATs is a key reason, he says, why “many European countries have tax/GDP ratios far higher than here without suffering particularly ill effects. They may not be growing as fast as they would if taxes and spending were lower, but neither are their standards of living significantly below those of the United States. Even strenuous efforts to show that Europeans are poorer than Americans show that the differences are merely trivial.”

I agree with a good bit of what Bartlett says in the book, and I’m particularly sympathetic to this diagnosis and prescription (see here and here). It’s a long way from Barry Goldwater, Milton Friedman, and Ronald Reagan.

I wish Bartlett had gone further. If modern conservatism is by necessity “big-government” conservatism, what principles should guide it? If conservatives must give up the goal of rolling back the welfare state, if they must acquiesce to government provision of generous cushions and supports, what should they aim for in economic and social policy? David Brooks, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, Will Wilkinson, Ron Haskins and Isabell Sawhill, and others have weighed in on this question. I’d be interested to know Bartlett’s take.

Some likely candidates:

A tax system conducive to entrepreneurship, investment, and work (Bartlett’s emphasis)

Employment incentives for able working-age adults

Enhancement of individual opportunity: early intervention, improvements to K-12 schools

Limited regulation of product and labor markets

Competition and choice in public services: charter schools, vouchers for schools and child care, maybe even a public option in health insurance

Decentralized administration of public services to ensure attentiveness to local conditions

Privatization of services where possible

Benefits and services targeted at the most needy rather than the middle class

Data. Many conservatives believe the poor are better off — more affluent and upwardly mobile — than government statistics and social scientists’ analyses tend to suggest. Why not allocate money for a large high-quality panel survey (something like a PSID on steroids) that will allow us to better assess this claim?

As it happens, we have a real-world illustration, albeit on a small scale, of what much of this — all of it except heavy privatization and targeting — looks like. It looks like this.

At the center of this is the internet, which gives us access to much more information, and more quickly and cheaply. What about information overload? Doesn’t the resulting sense of bewilderment and paralysis offset, and for some even outweigh, the benefit?

Cowen says no, because we have new ways to control the flow of information. Internet search engines let us target the particular information we want. RSS feeds allow us to focus on the websites that most interest us.

The same holds for music, books, movies, television shows, sporting events, and other types of entertainment. From iTunes you can purchase individual songs rather than entire albums. With an iPod you can then listen to those songs in a sequence of your choosing at whatever time and place you like. Kindle-type devices allow virtually instant purchasing of books and the ease of reading them whenever and wherever you please. DVRs, online rental services, and on-demand television make it possible to borrow or record movies and TV shows and watch them when it’s convenient.

Technological advances also enhance our control over communication. A telephone conversation occurs at the convenience of the caller, whereas email and texting allow you to receive inputs when it suits you. They also permit you to reflect a bit before you respond. With Facebook, chat rooms, blogs, and Twitter you can move in and out of ongoing conversations at will.

Imposing order on information is psychologically satisfying. The increase in our ability to control the amount, the content, and the timing of information and entertainment we consume may be just as valuable, in terms of our well-being, as the increase in the amount of information to which we have access.

The benefit varies across individuals. Enhanced ability to organize information is particularly valuable to people with a cognitive style that prizes order. For some of us more than for others, exerting control over the flow of information is pleasing. Greater access to information and culture is especially valuable to those with narrow and atypical interests. If you want to know a little about current political debates and what celebrities are up to, you may be able to get your fill by reading a daily newspaper or Time magazine or by watching a half-hour network news program. But if your interests are less mainstream — say, soccer in Argentina or west African music or Asian architecture — the internet makes a huge difference.

Autistics tend to be on the extreme end of both of these continuums; they often find the organization of information highly satisfying, and they tend to have narrow and unusual interests. Advances in information and communication technology are therefore likely to enhance the enjoyment of autistics to an even greater degree than of others. This, according to Cowen, suggests heightened potential for autistics, and people with similar if less extreme cognitive traits, to have a rich life experience.

Create Your Own Economy is well worth reading. Cowen’s case for optimism about the contribution of new technologies to individual well-being is stimulating and fairly compelling. The writing is engaging, and the book is more coherent than a few of the reviews I’ve seen led me to expect (and which I half-expected anyway based on the style of Cowen’s blog).

I wish Cowen had pushed further on two issues.

First, his assessment of the prospects for autistics focuses on consumption. But there’s also the matter of how to make a living.

Cowen rightly notes that autistics tend to have cognitive strengths in matters that interest them: keen perception of details and patterns, an ability to focus clearly, and a capacity to effectively store and organize information. For autistic individuals this cognitive profile may serve as a comparative advantage in a world in which production and analysis of information dominates the production of things. Cowen spends some time discussing the successes and contributions of famous innovators and thinkers and writers who may have been autistic, from Thomas Jefferson to Immanuel Kant to Arthur Conan Doyle.

But what about the earning prospects of less extraordinary autistics? Autistics tend to have a range of impediments to effective social functioning: they may read social cues poorly, lack interest in non-instrumental conversation, get easily distracted, react to imperfection or irregularity with extreme frustration, have strong sensory aversions, engage in odd repetitive motions, and some don’t develop the ability to speak. Cowen is certainly aware of the barriers these impose, and at one points he says “if you take [autistic] abilities and disabilities and stick them into a rapidly evolving market economy, you will get some people who achieve relatively high social status and other people — many others — who end up with much lower status” (p. 21). But he says little more about this.

In the book’s final chapter Cowen writes:

You may know that the division of labor is a key idea in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Smith’s notion of the division of labor referred to increasing specialization in economic production. He gives the example, from a pin factory, of how each worker performs a very specific and repetitive task in the interests of greater productivity for the factory as a whole.

It’s not what Smith intended, but I read this discussion of the pin factory as a parable of autism and the rising returns to autistic cognitive strengths. If you can perform a repetitive task with the proper skills, you can earn a decent income because you are no longer expected to be a jack-of-all-trades or to master a wide variety of skills. It increases the chance that you can have a “dysfunction” and still do well in life and in your career…. Today it’s often enough to be very good at one specific professional task. In other words, the division of labor provides disproportionate benefits to people with specialized cognitive talents and that includes many people along the autism spectrum. (pp. 215-16)

I think there may be something to this, but it strikes me as a pretty thin reed on which to hang an optimistic conclusion. I want to hear more.

Throughout the book Cowen argues for greater appreciation of neurodiversity. Partly this involves recognition that autistic traits are part of a continuum; they differ in degree rather than in kind. It also means we should pay better attention to the cognitive strengths of autistics.

That would be a good thing, but surely more is needed. Early diagnosis and intervention are now widely agreed to be critical. So too are teachers and aides in K-12 schools who foster social development in autistic children without stifling their interests and skills. Less discussed but potentially very helpful is an ongoing shift toward individualization in the administration of government benefit and service provision. Citizens and policy makers in the United States and many western European nations have increasingly wished to encourage employment by able working-age adults. A key lesson from their efforts to do so is that incentives are useful but often insufficient. If you want people to work, it helps to facilitate that with individualized assistance and monitoring. Individualization gives caseworkers better information about what types of help — at-home support, financial assistance, training, job placement, transportation, and so on — are likely to be of greatest benefit. To maximize opportunities for autistics, and to ensure the best possible utilization of their skills and strengths, we need not only the wider appreciation of neurodiversity that Cowen commendably encourages but also a helping hand from the state.

Second, I wish Cowen had addressed the worry that creating your own prosperity will come at the expense of the greater good. Specifically, the internet and other individualized forms of information sharing and communication might hasten the erosion of social capital. Researchers have found links between social capital and economic and political health (though these associations and their magnitudes are by no means a settled issue). If we spend more and more of our time glued to our RSS feeds, iPods, Kindles, and on-demand movies, will we engage less in human interaction, communication, and participation in social groups and activities? Are we heading toward a future of browsing, listening, reading, and viewing alone, bereft of face-to-face connections and civic engagement?

Maybe. But the new technologies might help to offset any such loss. For one thing, they enable us to identify and interact with a better-targeted set of compatriots. We now have fewer widely shared if shallow experiences, such as attending PTA or Elks Club meetings. They may be replaced by more fulfilling ones shared with smaller groups: interacting in a Facebook friend network or an online chat group, emailing or instant messaging with people who you’ll never meet in person but who share your particular passion.

By allowing us to locate other people with similar interests, new information and communication devices also help us to feel connected in a way that, for some, may not have been possible before. Attending church or a committee meeting can be highly interactive for some people. But others may experience them as boring or even alienating. For the latter, reading Facebook or blog or Twitter posts may create a greater sense of connection, of belonging, of membership, of community.

The internet and new communication technologies also make it easier for some people to actively contribute. A person who sits silently in the back of a PTA meeting might experience more engagement and efficacy by writing a blog post, commenting on someone else’s post, editing a Wikipedia entry, reviewing a book, posting photos, or participating in a chat room dialogue.

Perhaps, then, we’re moving toward not less social capital but simply a different form — more fulfilling to some of us and no less useful for sustaining a healthy society.

Health insurance exchanges: will they work?, by Reed Abelson

Going Dutch: life after the public option, by Jonathan Cohn

How health care reform won, by Jonathan Cohn

No choice?, by Jonathan Cohn

The public option lives, by Jonathan Cohn

The top ten things worth fighting for, by Jonathan Cohn

How an insurance mandate could leave many worse off, by Tyler Cowen

The best of the health reform proposals, by Elise Gould and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez

Trigger unhappy, by Jacob Hacker

The penalty box, by Peter Harbage

Hawaii’s health system offers wide coverage and low costs, by Gardiner Harris

Reid’s big gamble (or is it?), by David Herszenhorn

A guide to the public option compromises in the Senate, by Ezra Klein

Expansion team, by Ezra Klein

Explaining the excise tax, by Ezra Klein

How the House and Senate bills will differ, by Ezra Klein

Should America copy the Dutch?, by Ezra Klein

The next step for health-care reform, by Ezra Klein

What do the insurers want?, by Ezra Klein

After reform passes, by Paul Krugman

If you build a coverage mandate, will they come?, by Alec MacGillis

The strength of European systems is portable coverage, by Michael Scott Moore

Mandates and affordability, New York Times

The public plan, continued, New York Times

Where do those without health insurance live?, by Floyd Norris

Missing the boat on cost containment, by Peter Orzsag

Why does the U.S. spend so much more on health than other countries?, by Mark Pearson

Hold the Mayo, by Harold Pollack

The case for mandating health insurance, by Uwe Reinhardt

Medicaid enrollment soars, by Kevin Sack

Swiss health care thrives without public option, by Nelson Schwartz

Health care in Denmark, by Matthew Yglesias

Health care in Sweden, by Matthew Yglesias

U.S. economy

Why do economists disagree so much on whether fiscal stimulus works?, The Economist

Shoppers’ shifting priorities, by Hannah Fairfield

Bruce Bartlett and supply-side economics, by James Galbraith

The wisdom of not nationalizing, by Ezra Klein

Misguided monetary mentalities, by Paul Krugman

Mission not accomplished, by Paul Krugman

The banks are not all right, by Paul Krugman

It’s the unemployment, stupid, by Robert Kuttner

Partisan economics in action, by David Leonhardt

Inside the crisis: Larry Summers and the White House economic team, by Ryan Lizza

Should we save or spend?, by Roger Lowenstein

They didn’t regulate enough and still don’t, by Jeff Madrick

Wall Street follies: the next act, by Gretchen Morgenson

A second Great Depression is still possible, by Thomas Palley

Pay restrictions may not fix underlying risk-taking, by Steven Pearlstein

Do not ignore the need for financial reform, by George Soros

Inconspicuous consumption, by James Surowiecki

People don’t know how they’re being helped, by Matthew Yglesias

Living standards, poverty, inequality, well-being

Happiness isn’t everything, by Julia Baird

Sick over sick days, by Dean Baker

How to create more jobs, by Timothy Bartik, James Galbraith, and Randall Wray

The high price of being a gay couple, by Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber

As job losses rise, Obama aides look to fix safety net, by Jackie Calmes

The Shriver report: a woman’s nation changes everything, Center for American Progress

Democrats and inequality, by Jonathan Chait

Life expectancy by incom, 1800 to 2007, by Arthur Charpentier

Study finds high imprisonment rate among dropouts, by Sam Dillon

Disenchantment with work is growing, The Economist

A plan to end the jobs crisis, by Ross Eisenbrey

Are federal workers overpaid?, by Nancy Folbre

Global income inequality, by Zubin Jelveh

Inequality of obesity, by Ezra Klein

Growth and jobs, by Paul Krugman

U.S. to order pay cuts at firms that got most aid, by Stephen Labaton

Are those $250 checks just pandering to seniors?, David Leonhardt vs. Dean Baker (via Mark Thoma)

How did “scientific management” become a way of life?, by Jill Lepore

Complete life satisfaction, by Daniel Little (via Mark Thoma)

Americans in their 50s and 80s are least happy, by Catherine Rampell

The job market, in charts, by Catherine Rampell

What should be done for jobs?, by Robert Reich

Did the pay czar whiff?, by Noam Scheiber

How the recession is killing private social insurance, by Noam Scheiber

Inequality as policy: the United States since 1979, by John Schmitt

Hunger, crowding, and other hardships are widespread among families in poverty, by Arloc Sherman

Crime: the striking gap between perceptions and reality, by John Sides

Crime: perceptions and reality, redux, by John Sides

Time to tackle America’s widening inequality, by Matthew Slaughter

Bonuses at Goldman Sachs, by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Still on the job, but at half the pay, by Louis Uchitelle

A public option for broadband, by Matthew Yglesias

Inequality: facts and values, Will Wilkinson, John Nye, Elizabeth Anderson, and Lane Kenworthy

Taxes

Bend the revenue curve, by Henry Aaron and Isabel Sawhill

Will the real marginal tax rate please stand up?, by Rosanne Altshuler and Jacob Goldin

Don’t cut the payroll tax, by Bruce Bartlett

Rising taxes squeeze local operations, by Jane Birnbaum

Tax evaders face choice: pay or pray, by Lynnley Browning

Inside the business war against tax reform, BusinessWeek

Pelosi, the VAT, and Club Wagner, by David Leonhardt

The value added tax, by Greg Mankiw

Where the Bush tax breaks went, New York Times

State tax revenues falling off a cliff, by Catherine Rampell

The estate tax, by Catherine Rampell

The incredible shrinking estate tax, by Bob Williams

Whither revenues?, by Bob Williams

Taxes, taxes everywhere, by Matthew Yglesias

Education

The future of the university, by Brad DeLong

Kristof’s misplaced war on teacher unions, by Richard Kahlenberg

Democrats and schools, by Nicholas Kristof

The uneducated American, by Paul Krugman

College costs keep rising, by Tamar Lewin

Housing

Treasury hails milestone in home loan modifications, by Peter Goodman

Globalization

Offshorability, by Alan Blinder

Myth of rising protectionism, by Dani Rodrik

Unions

Trade unions in Canada, The Economist

U.S. politics

There is no common ground anymore, by Emily Badger

The wizard of Beck, by David Brooks

Why can’t liberals accept victory?, by Jonathan Chait

Nine months into the Obama administration: a look, by Brad DeLong

It’s not all about the benjamins, by Lee Drutman

Lobbying and influence reform, by Lee Drutman

Relationships, expertise, and the revolving door, by Lee Drutman

The imbalanced lobbying system, by Lee Drutman

Rich Dem, poor Dem, by Thomas Edsall

Rich voter, poor voter, red voter, blue voter: usually but not always, by Andrew Gelman

Congressmen matter, by Ezra Klein

Filibustering and deliberation, by Greg Koger

If a deficit falls in the forest …, by Paul Krugman

The politics of spite, by Paul Krugman

Assessing the GOP brand, by Brendan Nyhan

How Irving Kristol, RIP, can save the GOP, by Jacob Weisberg

Republicans run their political party the right way, by Matthew Yglesias

Abroad

Several Afghan strategies, none a clear choice, by Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt

Chilean president rides high as term ends, by Alexei Barrionuevo

The rise of obesity in Europe, by Giorgio Brunello, Pierre-Carol Michaud, and Anna Sanz-de-Galdeano

Comparing public spending and priorities across OECD countries, by Sabina Dewan and Michael Ettlinger

Education in the Arab world, The Economist

Financial innovation and the poor, The Economist

Italy’s manufacturing hubs have not withstood the recession as hoped, The Economist

The future of the EU, The Economist

French ideal of bicycle-sharing meets reality, by Steven Erlanger and Maia de la Baume

Don’t build up, by Thomas Friedman

Education and economic growth, by Edward Glaeser

What happened to Argentina?, by Edward Glaeser

Job losses around the world, by Brian Groom

Iceland after a year of financial crisis, by Robert Jackson

More schools, not troops, by Nicholas Kristof

The myth of Eurabia, by Simon Kuper

Finland tops global prosperity index, by Julie MacIntosh

Our endless desire to decode the French, by Donald Morrison

Maradona as metaphor for Argentines, by Charles Newbery and Alexei Barrionuevo

By some reliable measures, the recession is over, by Floyd Norris

The lands between Russia and China, by David Pilling

Finland makes broadband access a legal right, by Don Reisinger (via Tyler Cowen)

India’s malnutrition dilemma, by David Rieff

Can new farming methods, fairer trade, and birth control provide for a future global population of 9 billion?, by Tristram Stuart

The gender gap around the world, World Economic Forum (via Catherine Rampell)

The idea of a bargain, by Matthew Yglesias

More troops won’t solve Afghanistan, by Fareed Zakaria

Miscellaneous

Robin Hood, by Peter Applebome

Economics as a moral science, by Tony Atkinson (via Mark Thoma)

On Irving Kristol, politics, and The Public Interest, by Daniel Bell

Polanski and the maiden, by Christopher Caldwell

Just how relevant is political science?, by Patricia Cohen

Evidence vs. effectiveness?, by Chris Dillow

Polanski: some cognitive biases, by Chris Dillow

Review of Tyler Cowen’s Create Your Own Economy, by Henry Farrell

Against meat, or at least 99 percent of it, by Jonathan Safran Foer

Contrarianism’s end?, Free Exchange

The calorie-restriction experiment, by Jon Gertner

How different are dogfighting and football?, by Malcolm Gladwell

Austan Goolsbee, D.C.’s funniest celebrity

Abortion worldwide: a decade of uneven progress, Guttmacher Institute

Pissing off the other crowd, by Kieran Healy

The state of families, class, and culture, by Arlie Hochschild

In the meantime, Saturday’s Financial Times had two nice pieces on France:

The myth of Eurabia, by Simon Kuper

Vive la différence, by Donald Morrison