Robots Made By Kids

Children Of The World Develop Robots

It appears that children and teenagers are more and more fascinated with the possibilities afforded by robots of all kinds. This could be a major reawakening of young people to explore technology and engineering.

The Evolution Of Robots Will Accelerate

It would be conceivable that the coming generations of young people will produce armies of robots to help humans with everyday chores etc.

One Man’s Trash, Is Another Man’s Treasure

To Trash Is Human

With the industrial age came large scale landfills. Total avoidance of human waste is nearly impossible given current technologies and for the foreseeable future. Environmentalists hate them. People do not want them in their neighborhood. And so on …

Mining For Trash

Not only future archeologists will be delighted about landfills, but landfills have the potential to become a major resource for future resource mining operations.

A Feast For Microbes Or Robots

It is quite conceivable that in the not so distant future, bioengineered microbes and/or robots will convert anthropogenic trash into something useful.

My Next Pet Could Be A Humanoid Robot

Part Of Our Daily Lifes

With the advances in humanoid robotics accelerating it may be only a few years hence before we can expect to see such robots being part of our daily lifes.

Connected To The Cloud

This robot could be connected to the computing cloud and download any instructions etc. necessary for the task at hand.

How Many Personal Robots?

How many robots would one need or are necessary? How many robots would rich people acquire, an army?

Any Specialization Or Allround?

Home schooling would become possible for everyone. Will my robot be a four star chef serving me the most delicious meals from any cuisine of the world I can imagine? Would my robot be my personal doctor? I could go on and on …

The Ten Commandments And Economics

Fundamental To Economics

The Ten Commandments, which are perhaps as old as 16^th century BC, are fundamental to economics. First of all they are the supreme law reportedly written by the fingers of god. No less important, they allow for the greatest possible individual freedom except for violating the Ten Commandments.

Absence Of Government

Most amazingly, nowhere in the Ten Commandments is government mentioned. Not only that, one can infer that government may not even be necessary. Does God understand that government is evil, but necessary or what is god’s position on government anyway? Or why would god need a government?

The Basics Of Free Markets & Free Enterprise

The basics of free market economics are promulgated: Do not kill, steal, or bear false witness, nor covet thy neighbors’ property. Even toxic/corrosive envy and greed are covered by the Ten Commandments. Thus, e.g. honesty in your daily affairs and freedom of contract is naturally implied.

Taxation Is A Violation Of The Ten Commandments

Was the tithe not originally a voluntary religious duty for the benefit of the poor, pilgrims, and churches before it was made compulsory? Is not taxation a legalized confiscation or dare we say theft of private property? No taxation without representation is tyranny. Taxation with representation is not much better.

No Rest

They also stipulate to be productive six days of the week and to get rest on the seventh day. Even servants and animals are allowed to rest on the seventh day. Thus, the Ten Commandments imply to treat fairly all of god’s creatures even slaves and animals.

Abandoning the US Embassy In Damascus Is A Sign of A Spineless In the White House

Not only is he spineless he also likes to bow to monarchs.

How in the world could a US President decide to completely vacate the US embassy in a country where another, very bloody Arab struggle for more freedom is going on is beyond belief. Obama is another US President who thinks wars can be fought on an expedited withdrawal schedule.

Obama opened the US embassy in Damascus again for his diplomatic approach to the Middle East peace process and he closed it when it is need most as a beacon of hope or as a shelter.

Some things in this world cannot be done by drones, cruise missiles, or special forces alone.

With the current US President the Cuban Missile Crisis would have turned into a hot war, the Berlin Airlift would have never taken off.

Three Globe Sailing Teenage Girls Rewrite Maritime History

Sweet 16

In January of 2012, recently the 16 year old Dutch teenager Laura Dekker finished successfully her 500 plus days sailing trip of 27,000 nautical miles circumnavigating the world. Not long before Laura there, were two other teenage girls who attempted similar feats.

Some Ramifications Of Daring Teenagers

This feat also reminds all humans that teenagers are not children anymore. For too long, in western Societies there was a popular belief that children should enjoy the blessings of childhood for as long as possible, because life as an adult is not desirable or just tough or so the argument went.

Does this not also fly in the face of juvenile crime adjudication in the western world? Adolescent teenagers are believed to be less culpable than adults.

In western societies, the pendulum with respect to teenagers has swung from forced child labor in the opposite direction. Will the pendulum swing back towards the center?

Remember Thor Heyerdahl And The Kon-Tiki Expedition

Heyerdahl is not only remembered for the Kon-Tiki but also for the Ra and Ra II expeditions. With the former one he tried to prove that people from Polynesia long ago could have reached the shores of South America with a raft made from balsa wood and other native materials. With the Ra and Ra II expeditions, Heyerdahl demonstrated that the ancient Egyptians could have used a typical boat made of papyrus to reach North America.

To The Many Unknown Maritime Explorers And Merchants In History

What Laura Dekker and the other girls as well as researchers like Thor Heyerdahl have shown is that there probably were many more explorers and cross ocean contacts between humans on all continents than we know about.

Perhaps one day genetic analysis will tell us more about long distance contacts between people in ancient times.

1907 Tiflis Bank Robbery Leading To A Soviet Union Run By Thugs

The Godfathers Of This Crime

This is my third blog about pre-revolution Russia. In the Summer of 1907 a several high level Bolsheviks (i.e. Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Maxim Litvinov, Leonid Krasin, and Alexander Bogdanov) planned and committed a major, very bloody robbery of a money transport on a central square in the city of Tiflis, Georgia.

Revolutionaries’ Greed For Money

This heinous crime involved bombs and grenades. It left 40 people dead and 50 injured. The perpetrators of this crime got away with the then incredible amount of 341,000 rubles (worth several million US dollars today).

Loot The Looters

These kinds of crimes were justified by Lenin and Stalin as Expropriations of the Expropriators or Loot the Looters. Lenin and Stalin acted secretly and contravening an explicit prohibition of such acts by the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party of which these gentlemen were also members of.

The only convicted criminal (Kamo) of this crime successfully feigned twice insanity in captivity to avoid conviction in Berlin, Germany and back in Russia. He is rumored to have been killed later by Stalin.

There Is More To The Story

There are more details about this particular crime that are interesting, but for sake of brevity, I will stop here.

However, I would be remiss not to mention that it was asserted that Stalin at the time was acting as an informant of the Russian secret police and that he informed his contact about the pending robbery, but without giving away details.

Climate Change/Global Warming – An Outdated Scientific Theory

Deadends Of Science

The list of outdated/superseded scientific theories in the history of science is long (see Wikipedia). In the not so distant future Climate Change/Global Warming will be added to it. This is a very probable outcome. How much did Climate Change/Global Warming contribute to scientific progress? In my opinion it is more an impediment than a promoter.

Superstition Dressed As Science

More probable, Climate Change/Global Warming does not make it into the list of outdated/superseded scientific theories, but in the future will be properly classified as a pseudo science.

Why I Do Not Like HOV Lanes!

A Waste Of Time, Money, And Resources

HOV (high occupancy vehicles) lanes are such a waste of resources and a source of revenues for local governments.

Which Lobby Promoted This Humbug?

HOV lanes are pet projects of paternalistic elected representatives who want adults to change their behavior. Given the fact that it is so unrealistic that commuters would find a fellow commuter who happens to be on a similar schedule as well as working and residing roughly in the proximity of yourself so that you can share a car one wonders which nut ever came up with the idea of HOV lanes. Or which lobby promoted this humbug?

Nothing But Worsening The Commute For Most

I would bet that HOV lanes in conjunction with unconstitutional speed limits (I wrote a separate blog on this subject) contribute in a major way to the daily grind/congestion on our highways during rush hour. Without HOV lanes there would likely be much fewer of those insane slowdowns and stop and go traffic.

Do Not Despair

Why do we not have more telecommuting in the Internet Age? When will finally computers drive us to work?

Economics – Que Vadis?

This a follow-up blog on the sorrow state of current economic research as reflected in journals of the esteemed American Economic Association.

In the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics Vol. 4, Issue 1 -- January 2012 we find more peculiar selection of articles:

·         “Partisan Grading” by Talia Bar and Asaf Zussman
“We study grading outcomes associated with professors in an elite university in the United States … Relative to their Democratic colleagues, Republican professors are associated with a less egalitarian distribution of grades and with lower grades awarded to black students relative to whites.” (Excerpt from abstract)
Comment: What is the relevance? Is there an racist undertone against Republican leaning professors who are in a minority? Is it not wonderful that the majority Democratic professors are more egalitarian in their grading?

·         “When the Saints Go Marching Out: Long-Term Outcomes for Student Evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita” by Bruce Sacerdote
“I examine long-term academic performance and college going for students affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Students who are forced to switch schools due to the hurricanes experience sharp declines in test scores in the first year following the hurricanes. …” (Excerpt from abstract)
Comment: Is there nothing safe under the sun to be examined by economists? What does he compare the outcomes of such fairly rare events to? Yes, the saints are marching out of economics.

·         “Do Expert Reviews Affect the Demand for Wine?” by Richard Friberg and Erik Grönqvist
“We examine the demand for wines in Sweden using five years of weekly data on sales, advertising, and expert reviews. The effect of a favorable review peaks in the week after publication with an increase in demand of 6 percent, and the effect remains significant for more than 20 weeks. … Restrictions on the state-owned monopoly retailer and the exogenous timing of a subset of the reviews support a causal interpretation of the effects of reviews on demand.” (Excerpt from abstract)
Comment: Is this a marketing study? Sweden is a country where alcohol consumption is almost prohibited and alcoholic beverages are expensive. Thus, it is curious to see such a study. Are not beer and vodka/akvavit the main beverages preferred in Sweden? Swedes buy their booze on ferries crossing the Baltic See or as tourists abroad. Moonshining is common. Whatever this study is worth!

·         “Are Female Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India” by Irma Clots-Figueras
“This paper shows that the gender of politicians affects the educational levels of individuals who grow up in the districts where these politicians are elected. … to estimate the causal effect of the gender of politicians. Increasing female political representation increases the probability that an individual will attain primary education in urban areas, but not in rural areas, and not in the sample as a whole.” (Excerpt from abstract)
Comment: Obscure gender studies published by the AEA? Does gender really have causal effects on education? What does the author know about the role of women in a heterogeneous, ancient civilized society such as in India?

·         “Enhancing Cognitive Functioning: Medium-Term Effects of a Health and Family Planning Program in Matlab” by Tania Barham
“It is believed that early life circumstances are crucial to success later in life. Yet causal evidence that the impacts of early childhood health interventions continue into late childhood and adolescence is sparse. … in Bangladesh to determine whether children eligible for child health interventions in early childhood had better cognitive functioning at ages 8-14.” (Excerpt from abstract)
Comment: What is the relevance? Is this a specialized health care study in a developing country?

Once more a large portion (this time 50%) of all articles published by AEA as applied economics are obscure or quirky. May the next great global recession begin, while economists still have no clue.

The Agitprop Of “Millionaires And Billionaires”

Absurd Minimum Taxes

In his latest State of the Union address the President asked for new minimum taxes on the rich and businesses. Does he not know that this never worked. The current Alternative Minimum Tax is a disaster.

A President Of Demagoguery

President Obama is a cheap agitator and propagandist befitting a community organizer. In these hard times, he appeals to envy and to the age-old accusation that rich people acquired their wealth immorally or perhaps even illegally.

In this respect, President Obama is a demagogue.

He is merely trying to cover up his ineptitude to come up with a free market oriented economic policy that promotes broadly based economic growth and better living conditions for all.

A Squanderer Of A Lifetime Opportunity

It is amazing to witness that a smart and talented guy like Barack Obama so squanders such a lifetime opportunity to be the POTUS. His enormous ideological straightjacket prevents him from being or becoming a great President of the people of America and the world. History will only mention him as the first black president.

Judged By The Content Of His Character

Martin L. King said a man should be judged by the content of his character. He will be judged come November.

What a disappointment to MLK were he still alive.

The US Fed Continues To Be Reckless Promising Extremely Low Interest Rates Until 2014

Chairman Bernanke Please Resign

Bernanke should be impeached or resign. Bernanke is a poster child for what is wrong with economics today: Lack of understanding fundamentals of economics. The short-term interest rate is too important an economic price to be so brazenly manipulated by a central bank. It is high time for substantial reforms of central bank policies to prevent this in the future.

The Fed Caused The Great Depression With Super Low Interest Rates

Not only is the Fed one of the major culprits of the Great Recession because they did not stop the deteriorating lending standards and they kept the short-term interest rate too low for too long thereby fueling the speculation.

Money Should Never Be Cheap

And the Fed continues to fuel speculation with cheap money; to aid and abet politicians in their reckless accumulation of government debt; and to deprive investors of government bonds or savers or banks of reasonable returns.

As a minimum, any reform of interest rate policy should contain a formula such as that the short-term interest rate has to be above the inflation rate, always. Sounds too simple? Sure, you do not need a professor from Harvard to implement it. J

Speed Limits In The USA Are Unconstitutional

Founders In Their Own Words

James Madison in “Property” published in the National Gazette (3/29/1792):

“That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, …” (emphasis added)

What would James Madison say today about speed limits? He would probably agree it is an abomination!

Why Unconstitutional?

It is a prime example of how government constantly kills individual responsibility and imposes on its citizens a one size fits all solution.

Founders who gave us a 2nd Amendment and similar provisions in various state constitutions would be more than amused to see that 200 years later citizens and their elected representatives have chosen such limits on the freedom of movement.

Freedom is indeed never more than only one generation away from extinction to borrow these famous words by Ronald Reagan.

Speed Limits Are Highly Arbitrary

Speed limits in their current form are a manifestation of paternalism. We are all treated equal, right? Like any paternalistic/authoritarian measures it severely undermines individual responsibility and liberty.

There is no doubt in my mind that speed limits as defined on many US roadways are highly arbitrary and defy common sense. Given the advanced technological state of today’s motor vehicles a speed limit of 55 or 65 on many US highways is ludicrous.

Speed limits are a typical example of the pervasive government regulatory approach of one size fits all. It’s liberty killing presumed fairness by subjecting everyone to the same cruelty. It’s government meddling in our lives exploiting that law abiding citizens abide by these rules.

Justifications For Speed Limits Are Bogus

1) Justification: Safety

I do not believe that there is any convincing, critically reviewed evidence out there that higher speed causes more injuries and death than under those restrictive speed limits like in the US. statistics that purport to show a reduction in fatalities after introduction of speed limits are a fallacy. I might be wrong, but I think most of the statistics out there were produced by people interested in maintaining speed limits. Most likely these static statistics do not reflect humans enormous capability to adapt very well to different environments.

Really bogus are any arguments along the line that introducing higher speeds would have adverse effects on safety. Only during a transition period, I would tend to agree.

2) Justification: Energy Conservation

To counter fuel consumption or high prices of crude oil. I would argue that fuel consumption in idling traffic going stop and go etc. wastes a lot of fuel on major highways every rush hour. Speed limits impede the flow of traffic on highways and exacerbate the phenomenon of frequent, sudden, dramatic slowdowns for no good reason etc.

The National Maximum Speed Law (NMSL) Act of 1974 was a disgrace. That it took the US Congress until 1995 to repeal it and to return the authority to set or not to set speed limits to the states is a prime example of federal overreach.

3) Justification: Environmental

Vehicle noise is much less a concern today than it was perhaps in the past. If someone really cares of about vehicle noise emission why are loud motorcycles and cars not immediately impounded?

As mentioned before unreasonable speed limits cause all kinds of perverse traffic patterns that likely worsen the air quality.

A False Sense Of Safety

How many drivers on US highways do not properly look in their rear mirrors before they make a lane change? Too many.

Why were US soldiers warned every day on American armed services radio to be aware of defensive driving on German highways? You could be road kill if you forgot to look in the rear mirror.

Thus, I would argue unreasonable speed limits have a deleterious effect on individual responsibility.

Speed Limits As A Source Of Government Revenues

Speed limits are often just that a fairly predictable source of significant government revenue. Thus, there is obviously a conflict of interest in setting speed limits on our roadways.

Congestions Caused By Highway Patrol Officers

Highway patrol police cars standing visibly on the side of the highway during rush hour are causing unnecessary congestions. Instead of chasing criminals or reckless car drivers these police officers earn money sitting in their cars doing what? Watching out for citizens so they obey speed limits?

Highly Demeaning To Responsible Drivers

I strongly believe that most individuals are most of the time acting responsible especially if basic rules are clearly defined and punishment for irresponsible, harmful actions is swift and commensurate.

I personally find it aggravating that I have to constantly watch my back and every entrance ramp, HOV lane or other potential hiding areas along the roads where these dumb and highly overpaid highway patrol police officers might be preying by car or motorcycle on you. What a waste of taxpayers money for no good reason! Cops ought to catch criminals not law abiding citizens (a speed limit is not a law)!

Thus, I have to divert my precious attention from watching the traffic and surroundings to avoid accidents to spotting police officers.

Alternatives

Why is telecommuting/teleworking still so rare?

Severe sentencing of irresponsible drivers who caused traffic accidents. In case of personal injury, stiff jail time should be mandatory. No excuses. Irresponsible is, e.g., someone who drives an old, worn out car too fast. Driving and drinking will get you in jail, if an accident occurs.

Speed limit signs should be replaced with realistic recommended speed plus higher save speed postings.

Difficult roadways need more warnings.

Today’s technology would also allow to install drive recorders (like black box flight recorders) or to have more traffic surveillance cameras. Thus, when an accident occurs, there will be more evidence.

Other, Related Blog Posts

Here, here, and here.

Take From The Government The Power Of Borrowing

Thomas Jefferson’s Wisdom

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) in a letter to John Taylor dated November 26, 1798

History Is A Guide

Adam Smith wrote in his chapter “On Public Debt” that “The practice of funding [by government debt] has gradually enfeebled every state which has adopted it.”.

Few people can resist taking and spending other people’s money, if they have the power or opportunity to do so. Democratically elected representatives are no different or even worse.

There is a long history of government debt of most countries predominantly ratcheting up over time, seldom being paid down in any significant way only to rise again. During the last two hundred years alone there were more than two hundred defaults on government debt according to Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.

A Balanced Budget Amendment Will Not Suffice And Will Not Work

Balanced budget amendments seem to be very popular. However, elected representatives have proven to be clever enough to circumvent such measures by accounting tricks or taking spending items off budget etc.

Further, even under a periodic balanced budget requirement nothing would stop lawmakers from raising taxes to meet their profligate spending habits accordingly.

To cite the famous quote of Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683):

“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing”

Our elected representatives are experts in plucking our money.

Solution

We have now enough experience to tell whether the federal debt ceiling approach in the US did not work and is insufficient.

Grant Thomas Jefferson’s wish: Add a new amendment to the US constitution requiring a supermajority (e.g. 75%) every time Congress wants to borrow money to spend, in particular, if it increases government debt.

National catastrophe or national security is no excuse not to have such an amendment. It is hardly conceivable that responsible elected representatives would not expediently vote for borrowing if absolutely necessary.

Anyway, who needs Congress in an emergency situation when private citizens are willing to borrow money to government in times of war or a major catastrophe as happened before, e.g., in the early days of the USA.

What Else?

Term limits for members of Congress are overdue. How can it be that only the President of the USA (POTUS) is term limited for a reason.

Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam: Strictly voluntary taxation is the way to go! Nobody should be compelled to pay taxes.

What If Iran Detonated An Atomic Bomb In The Strait Of Hormuz?

Only A Scenario?

Or will more than one nuclear bomb go off?

A Mushroom Cloud In The Name Of Allah

That would perhaps finally be a wakeup call to all the wimps in the Western developed world who thought diplomacy can solve everything and who dream of a nuclear weapons free world while belligerent dictators and fanatics still roam the world.

Dispense With Costly Military Forces

Is it not amazing how countries like the US, Germany, or the UK for decades still continue to reduce their military power to the point of toothlessness. Western militaries are mostly providers of humanitarian aid instead of being globally combat ready.

Drones alone will not do the job.

To Ban Short Selling Of Financial Assets Is To Be Short Sighted

Clueless About Economics

Politicians, economists, or regulators who favor banning short sales of financial assets have no clue about economics. They certainly have never understood how financial markets operate. Such a ban is like a barometer or measure of fitness for office of any politician or regulator.

Convenient Scapegoats

In the medieval ages we had witches and sorcerers. In the modern age, we have speculators and short sellers. When will the so sophisticated intellectuals, economists, and politicians finally use their brains instead of cheap scapegoating to deflect from own failure.

Free Markets Depend On Speculators & Short Sellers

Speculators and short sellers are essential to price discovery in a free market economy. They are the risk takers and canaries in the financial markets. Many loose their money, only a few are successful. When the few are successful somebody gets hurt, but for a reason.

Basel Accords (I, II, III) – Classic Examples Of Government Failure

Safety Of Mortgages & Sovereign Debt Conveniently Presumed

If it is true that that the early Basel Accords strongly presumed that mortgages or sovereign debt were safe, then these are dramatic examples of colossal government failure. Worse, these were self-serving presumptions to support certain notions of public policy like the promotion of widespread home ownership and politicians’ unrestricted access to finance their prerogatives (pet projects).

Government Debt Has A Credit Risk Weight Of Zero

Basel I of 1988 primarily focused on credit risk. Assets of banks were classified and grouped in five categories according to credit risk. , carrying risk weights of zero (for example home country sovereign debt)

I am sure that elected politicians think of themselves as responsible acting people who know how to handle other people’s money. If history is any guide, this is pure baloney. Elected politicians cannot be trusted with our money.

Causing The Great Recession

The latest financial crisis (2007-2008) was not least caused by such stupid, politically motivated presumptions that were enshrined in the Basel Accords.

Primacy Of Politics Over The Markets

The Great Recession Is A Product Of This Midunderstanding

Such a claim to primacy is utter foolishness! Were it not for simple-minded politicians who constantly try to assert such a primacy we would not have to suffer through the Great Recession of our time.

The German Chancellor Is An Advocat

German Chancellor Angela Merkel in May 2010 is quoted as saying “in a way, it is a struggle between politics and the markets. We must re-establish the primacy of politics over the markets.” Unfortunately, I could not immediately find a German language source for this quote.

Where Does This Misunderstanding Lead To

With elected leaders like this in the Euro zone or in the USA, no wonder!

The willingnes of domestic and international investors to buy government bonds for so many years at artificially low interest rates has finally come to a reckoning. Whoever invented this convenient nonsense of secure sovereign debt?

Biased Esoterics Or Economics

If you ever wondered why the Great Recession could have happened and why our elected representatives are so inept to deal with it look no further than the (pseudo)science of economics. Adam Smith/Hayek/Mises are spinning in their graves.

I just received the latest e-mail from the American Economic Association (where the brilliant minds of many Nobel laureates meet) containing the table of content and abstracts of American Economic Review (AER) Vol. 101, Issue 7 -- December 2011 (the flagship publication of AEA).

Now looking at individual articles featured in this latest AER:

1.       Title “The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa”
The authors state “… we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today.”
Comment: Wow! How did they even establish that the ancestors before slave trade were more trusting? Economists, a new breed of archeologists?

2.       Title “Buffalo Hunt: International Trade and the Virtual Extinction of the North American Bison”
In the very short abstract, the author mentions the emotional loaded word “slaughter” three times as in “… slaughter lasting little more than ten years …”, “… the slaughter was initiated …” and “European demand and American policy failure are jointly responsible for the "Slaughter on the Plains." …” (emphasis added).
Comment: Does this author, perhaps driven by excessive love for animals, propose a monocausal explanation? Since when do economists assign responsibilities in economic papers?

3.       Title “The Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: New Evidence from South Africa”
We read in the abstract “… I find that electrification significantly raises female employment within five years. This new infrastructure appears to increase hours of work for men and women, while reducing female wages and increasing male earnings. …”.
Comment: Is this an example of gender studies and the notion of manifest gender inequality intruding into economics?

4.       Title “School Desegregation, School Choice, and Changes in Residential Location Patterns by Race”
The authors state “We decompose the well documented decline in white public enrollment following desegregation into migration to suburban districts and increased private school enrollment and find that migration was the more prevalent response. Desegregation caused black public enrollment to increase significantly outside of the South, mostly by slowing decentralization of black households to the suburbs …” (emphasis added).
Comment: I thought their finding in 2011 was already well established for a long time that white population moved into to the suburbs. What is “slowing decentralization” in this context? Economists and linguistics.

5.       Title “The Effect of Newspaper Entry and Exit on Electoral Politics”
The authors conclude “The effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduction of radio and television, while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years. We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects. We find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents.” (emphasis added)
Comment: What does this have to do with economics? This is a political science study. I don’t think economists in general are sufficiently equipped to make such bold statements. Or this a scientific cover for obviously leftist and influential major newspapers like Washington Post and New York Times?

6.       Title “Endogenous Information Flows and the Clustering of Announcements”
The authors “show that bad market news can trigger the immediate release of information by firms. Conversely, good market news slows the release of information by firms. Thus, our model generates clustering of negative announcements. Surprisingly, this result holds only when firms can preemptively disclose their own information prior to the arrival of external information.” (emphasis added).
Comment: I am impressed that economists of our times again and again confirm common sense. What is the surprise here? When the management of a company senses that the arrival of external information is imminent then it makes sense to release your own information as soon as possible. Is this perhaps an example for economists never having worked in the real economy for a for profit private enterprise?

7.       Title “Who Thinks about the Competition? Managerial Ability and Strategic Entry in US Local Telephone Markets”
The authors say “This motivates a structural econometric model based on behavioral game theory that allows heterogeneity in managers' ability to conjecture competitor behavior. We find that manager characteristics are key determinants in managerial ability. This estimate of ability predicts out-of-sample success.” (emphasis added)
Comment: This result smacks of banality and triviality.

8.       Title “Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia”
The authors state following purpose of their study “This paper compares electoral outcomes of 1999 parliamentary elections in Russia among geographical areas with differential access to the only national TV channel independent from the government.” (emphasis added)
Comment: This is another political science or media influence study in a premier economics journal. See also no. 5 above.

9.       Title “The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution”
In the opinion of the authors “The French Revolution had a momentous impact on neighboring countries. It removed the legal and economic barriers protecting oligarchies, established the principle of equality before the law, and prepared economies for the new industrial opportunities of the second half of the 19th century.” (emphasis added).
Comment: Again economists endeavor to be historians and political scientists as well (See also no. 1 above). That is a huge calling for any economist. From the title and abstract one gets the impression that the authors glorify the French Revolution by ignoring all its dark sides. Were there not, e.g., expanding price controls and executions of offenders in France during this time?

I think I will stop here after the first 16 articles out of a total of 25 articles listed and abstracted in the above e-mail sent by AEA. One gets the idea where I am coming from.

To be fair, there was at least one positive article worth mentioning among the first 16 of 25. Title “Dynamic Inefficiencies in an Employment-Based Health Insurance System: Theory and Evidence”. A subject, which is very relevant in our times to millions of employees and our elected representatives. The authors conclude correctly “Health is a form of general human capital; labor turnover and labor-market frictions prevent an employer-employee pair from capturing the entire surplus from investment in an employee's health. Thus, the pair underinvests in health during working years, thereby increasing medical expenditures during retirement.”. It is indeed high time the US abandons this socialist employment-based health care system. Private individual health care insurance in a free market economy is only way consistent with the US Constitution and with the magnificent ideals/convictions of the founding fathers and mothers. If the US wants to continue to be a beacon of hope and a shining city on a hill it is way overdue to reform health care insurance along these lines.