I'm just back from an evening in Atlanta. I had the good fortune of being invited to join Andrew Cohen and his GA State U. students and colleagues for a showing and discussion of Other People's Money. It's a good flick for discussing corporate control issues (fiduciary duties of corporate boards and managers, hostile takeovers, etc.), but it has an ill-fitting sexual subplot. Thanks Andrew for your hospitality.

Today has been a wacky day in the Atlanta gas market. Apparently rumors that Katrina would make gas unavailable proked some panic buying and hiking gas prices above $5 at some stations. The AJC has details here (including the Governor's declaration of a state of emergency and imposition of temporary price caps), and a former student of mine reports that many stations in the suburb of Kennesaw were drained. Other than a 30 cent jump from the weekend (when, like co-blogger Craig, we filled both our cars' tanks) and a couple of closed stations, I saw little evidence of the supply disruption.

Pres. Bush says he will dip into the strategic petroleum reserve, but to what end? There is no shortage of crude oil on the market, and we do not lack the ability to get oil out of the ground or off of a ship. Rather, our limitations lie in our ability to refine the various formulations of gasoline that, in their infinite wisdom, the EPA and the environmentalists have deemed necessary.

There are a lot of people comparing the current pending shortage to the OPEC-induced oil crisis of the 1970s, but this is patently wrong. The current shortage is a refinery problem, not an oil-in-the-tanker problem. Others are suggesting that Bush impose price caps - after all so did another Republican, Richard Nixon - but this isn't the easy answer it appears to be (although it might be politically expedient).

I have people on the ground in Powder Springs where the next few days of gasoline supply for Atlanta will be coming from. I am trying to get in touch with them and find out what is going on. After the supply in the tanker field runs out, what then for 4 million plus people in Atlanta?

Over at Heavy Lifting I posted this picture a few days ago:

What do we see in this picture? Artificial constraints on the gasoline market which, when the nation faces severe shortages of refinery capacty, make very little sense. Reformulated gasoline, as a policy, is a luxury good that is easier ot pay for when the price of gasoline/oil is relatively low and the refinery capacity constraints do not bind. Now that we have binding refinery capacity constraints, the reformulation rules make no sense and should be suspended indefinitely.

While releasing the SPR might be a good political move, it will likely do little to the price of gasoline. Why? Released SPR doesn't help us with our refinery capacity. Lowering or suspending state fuel taxes will do nothing for the supply side of the market and will only slide us down the demand curve - greater quantity demanded with no increase in the quantity supplied will lead to greater pressures on price. Again, lowering state and federal fuel taxes doesn't help us with the refinery capacity.

A policy with a reasonably good chance of success would be for the president to pass an executive order suspending, indefinitely, the restrictions (in as much as possible) on transporting fuel across the reformulation boundries. I bet the folks in Atlanta would rather be able to drive with the gasoline approved for Dallas or Louisville instead of not being able to drive at all because of reformulated gasoline requirements. How about the folks in Denver, Seattle, Nashville, and so forth?

Allowing supply to adjust across state and city boundaries within the confines of the refinery capacity constraints is an easy to implement policy and would likely ease price increases. Reducing the number of different reformulations that must be created by the refineries seems a natural policy option - one much more likely to allow the market to adjust to Katrina than dipping into the SPR. Why is this policy option not even mentioned?

BTW, I seem to have been the only economist I know that took the time to fill up both of my vehicles on Sunday afternoon/evening. The Golf got 87 octane at $2.55 and the Benz got high-test at $2.75. Today, the Golf was refilled (4.3 gallons) for $2.89 per gallon and high-test running at $3.09 (Benz won't be due a refill for a month or so). I reckon I saved about $7.00 between the two vehicles - perhaps I value my time too high.

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Remember the bankruptcy reform bill that Congress recently passed? I drove by a bankruptcy-and-divorce lawyer's office this morning that had a prominent sign out front: "Hurry! Bankruptcy law changing soon!"

The Observer reveals that British politician David Davis, considered a front-runner to take over leadership of the Conservative Party, has been favorably impressed by Volokh Conspirator Randy Barnett’s arguments for liberty and the rule of law. Although not the part about liberty to use cannabis.

Pet peeve: I wish newspapers would stop describing libertarian and classical-liberal views, like Barnett’s and the IEA’s, as “right wing” and “conservative”.

Hat Tip: Stephan Kirchner at Institutional Economics.

In 2004, the Academy of Economics and Finance held its annual meetings at the Grand Casino Biloxi. In 1996, the missus and I spent our honeymoon at the Fairmont in New Orleans (where last year's SEA meetings were held) and some time at the Grand Casino Biloxi.

Here is the Grand Casino sitting on the WRONG side of U.S. 90. The circular building to the right of the casino barge is, I believe, a Catholic church - which always struck me as somewhat humorous. There's nothing funny about this now.

Here's the interior of the hotel lobby:

Here's Treasure Bay which was right next door - I won about $350 playing Let it Ride here during the conference - pulled a straight flush.

Some slot machines - anyone guarding these from looters?

More here (constantly updated) and pics and footage that the MSM don't seem to have their hands on (or aren't willing to pay for?)

Anyone have pics or information about Jefferson Davis's house Beauvoir (pic here)? It is only two miles or so from the Biloxi Grand, so I assume that it is gone. Some might celebrate this fact, but the house and grounds were beautiful, which are characteristics exclusive of their previous owner.

Others will no doubt question whether cleaning up New Orleans is worth it. Given the current and near term damage, every house with more than a foot of water (and maybe less) will likely be a total loss, the Quarter will be unvistable for quite some time (at least for me, and I love the city), and cleanup won't change the underlying problems that the city is a) below sea level and b) in the path of potentially powerful hurricanes.

Today the allusions to the Lost City of Atlantis made on Sunday (which I panned to a certain extent) don't seem so far-fetched. However, I hope the city can recover - economists have a prediliction of going to New Orleans for conference - and it would be great if the city can figure out how to protect itself from this problem in the future (perhaps corruption has come home to roost?)

The military transport plane carrying Senators Lugar and Obama is delayed three hours by Russian border police. International incident ensues. Russia apologizes. [Story.]

I meanwhile miss the last flight to Columbus from Boston last week in no small part because of the American border police. This causes me a 13 hour delay in getting home. Where's my freakin' apology?

In a speech to the annual meeting of the Indian Banks’ Association, the government’s Finance Minister has criticized India’s public sector banks for being “consistently outperformed” by private sector banks.

If scolding doesn’t work, why not try creating the right incentives for better performance by privatizing the banks?

Just as every storm brings up the price gouging business, so too it gets ignorant people to reveal themselves via the broken window fallacy. From the WaPo (with a hat tip to Russ Roberts):

"There will be a lot of rebuilding that is going to need to occur. These things do spur GDP growth," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics in Pepper Pike, Ohio.

Repeat after Russ: Destruction is bad.

It has been pointed out in previous posts that a tip belongs to the employee and a service charge belongs to the employer. If we view tips as a subsidy in a competitive market, then the entity receiving the payment is irrelevant. The distribution of benefits will depend upon the relative elasticity of the supply of labor and the demand for labor. However, the imposition of an income tax might favor one over the other. If it is more likely that service charges will be reported as income to the IRS than tips, then the after-tax income from tips is greater than the after-tax income from service charges. This may partly explain the waiter’s preference for tips. It is more likely that there will be an underreporting of tips than an underreporting of service charges.

Publication 531 (2004), Reporting Tip Income

On the other side of the market, underreporting can create problems for employers. See this discussion of United States v. Fior d’Italia, Inc.

Under federal tax laws, tips received by an employee are considered to have been paid by the employer for purposes of determining the amount of FICA tax owed for each employee...the IRS had assessed a restaurant owner for underpayment of FICA taxes. In order to calculate the amount of tip income, the IRS had reviewed tips reported on credit card receipts and calculated the average tip amount for all credit card sales at the restaurant. Based on that percentage, the IRS estimated the tip income for all non-credit card sales. From this "aggregate estimate,” the IRS determined the amount of the tax owed and assessed the restaurant owner for the deficiency.

Politicians are again warning us not to engage in price gouging. There will probably be some followup heartbreak stories by the MSM. The best argument against such laws appears in an article by David N. Laband that appeared in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. It is currently available on an AIDS BBS. Why it is listed on this web site has always been a mystery to me. It could be used as an argument against setting price ceilings on drugs.

To many, price gouging is unconscionable, especially when someone else profits at your expense. Indeed, on Saturday (two days after Hugo it), emergency legislation was passed making the charging of higher prices post-Hugo than pre-Hugo a crime, punishable by a fine of up to $200 and/or a 30-day jail term. Give the politicians credit for being politically astute. Give them all an F in economics. Government-mandated restrictions on price levels will slow the cleanup effort as much as another Hugo. High prices are the free market's mechanism for ensuring that economic resources flow to their most highly valued uses. On the demand side, high prices guarantee that scarce goods are allocated to those buyers who place the highest value on them.

Update: The comments are open for any personal stories of price gouging. We always need new material for class.

Update 2: Craig wants a definition of price gouging. In Florida price gouging may be defined as charging an unconscionable price. The Florida statutes define an unconscionable price as follows:

Sec. 501.160 (1)(b) It is prima facie evidence that a price is unconscionable if:
2. The amount charged grossly exceeds the average price at which the same or similar commodity was readily obtainable in the trade area during the 30 days immediately prior to a declaration of a state of emergency, and the increase in the amount charged is not attributable to additional costs incurred in connection with the rental or sale of the commodity or rental or lease of any dwelling unit or self-storage facility, or national or international market trends

In other words, if the higher price generates economic profits it is price gouging.

Two news items suggest that the Brits have an unusual affection for the f-word (the word, not the act):

1. A [British] secondary school is to allow pupils to swear at teachers - as long as they don't do so more than five times in a lesson. A running tally of how many times the f-word has been used will be kept on the board. If a class goes over the limit, they will be 'spoken' to at the end of the lesson. [link here]

2. An Austrian village called F***ing will not change its name despite sniggering Brits making off with its roadsigns. [link here]

This item reads like a hoax--and may well be--but F***ing is on this map of Austria and this listing of unfortunate city names. More at snopes.com.

ADDENDUM: Over the weekend, I finally started reading I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe (also a Washington and Lee grad). His riff on college students' f*** patois is must reading for Brits with an f-word fixation.

I should have mentioned this sooner (distracted by end-of-summer travel), but earlier this month Dave Altig at Macroblog offered a thoughtful comment on my article on the Fed’s research influence in the current issue of Econ Journal Watch.

One way the Fed influences research is hosting academic visitors at the Reserve Banks. Based on personal knowledge from his time as an economist at the Cleveland Fed, Altig names names of Fed visitors I missed by relying on incomplete publicly available lists. There may in fact be no editors at the JME or JMCB who have not been Fed visitors.

I argue in the article (following Milton Friedman and a few others) that researchers whom the Fed supports have a disincentive to question the institutional status quo. Altig worries that this argument may “overstate the homogeneity of views within the system”. I certainly grant (and noted in the article) that researchers at some of the Reserve Banks have expressed views on the conduct of monetary policy contrary to the dominant view of the Board of Governors. But heterogeneity within the system on how to conduct monetary policy is one thing. Heterogeneity on questioning the status quo structure of the system is another. That's the dog we don't hear barking.

In April 1933, using emergency powers granted by the Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order (you can see it here) commanding US citizens to surrender their gold coins and bullion to the Federal Reserve system. The Fed paid the then-official price of $20.67 in Federal Reserve notes per gold ounce. After collecting the gold, the US government devalued the dollar, declaring the gold worth $35 per ounce of gold, earning itself a tidy profit.

When I talk about this episode in class, and use the word “confiscation”, some students think I must be exaggerating the imperiousness of the US government. But read on.

The coins were to be melted and the gold sent to Fort Knox. Roosevelt's advisors apparently thought that the confiscation was necessary to allow the Fed to devalue the dollar against gold and thereby to allow it to re-inflate the economy – although other countries managed to devalue and inflate without confiscating gold.

Did all US citizens comply with the order? Nearly. According to CNN,

Only about 25 out of 445,500 [double eagles minted in 1933] are known to have survived destruction after the United States abandoned the gold standard in 1933 and ordered them melted down.

The news angle here involves a few coins that escaped melting:

Ten "Double Eagle" $20 coins minted in 1933 were discovered in September in a Philadelphia antiques and jewelry store and voluntarily handed by its owners, the Langbord family, to the Mint for authentication.

In June, the Mint confirmed they were the coveted Double Eagles but informed the Langbords that the coins were being sent for safe-keeping to the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, because the family had no right to them.

The Langbords now say they plan to sue to get the coins back. The coins have an estimated street value, based on numismatic rarity, of $1 million each. The Mint wants to put them in its museum.

CLARIFICATION: Since 1975, US citizens are again allowed to own gold coins, including pre-1933 US mintages. The 1933 mint-date double-eagles are a special case in that they were never officially issued. The Mint contends that any 1933 gold coins in private hands must have been filched.

Students! The Association of Private Enterprise Education announces:

An Essay Contest on the Benefits of a Free Market Economy

From the county that prosecutes dead people and uses diminutive grandmothers to guard former football players accused of rape, we now have investigators looking into allegations against the Board of Tax Assessors:

• Collusion between appraisers and land agents to give certain commercial properties lower values.

• Scores of properties that should be taxed given tax-exempt status instead.

• Retaliation by appraisers against residents who appealed their assessments.

• Assessors overstepping their authority and meddling in the daily activities of the department.

The potential for this type of hanky panky is probably one reason that two dozen Georgia counties, including Fulton and Floyd (where I live), have adopted assessment freezes that tax houses at their purchase price.

Josh Hall and I are proud alumni of Ohio University, which was just named the #2 party school by the Princeton Review.

Josh's current grad school (WVU) came in 14th, while my grad school (FSU) has (inexplicably) been dropped from the top 20. Craig's UGA is on the list at 12th. Sorry Frank, Washington and Lee and NC St are nowhere to be seen this year.

You macro types should check out today's Frank and Ernest comic strip.

I turn on Fox News to see what's happening and the only news in the world is that a hurricane is heading for New Orleans. Now, NO is one of my favorite cities - what with the Hotel Moteleone (killer hotel bar), Clover Grill, the Napolean House, Cafe du Monde, (for tourist watching), and more kick-butt restaurants and bars than you can visit, how can you go wrong?

However, Fox News (and I can only assume the other channels, although I don't watch them) reports that NO is "under seige" and runs banner headlines such as "walls and roofs of well-built houses may collapse" and "people and pets exposed to winds may die" and the such. This is not news!! This is hypothetical sky-is-falling rambling which is neither news worthy nor entertaining (at least to me).

The marginal cost to Fox for being "wrong" about their dire predictions is essentially zero. The marginal benefit for having hyped the hurricane for the entire weekend if the hurricane event is catastrophic must be pretty high - I suppose Fox could then claim in the future that they "were there."

The anchors have interviewed the requisite weatherman who will ride out the storm, but have also interviewed "experts" on electric power line repairs, cholera and West Nile virus (evidently there is potential for an epidemic), they have discussed the long lines to get into the Superdome (which haven't been clearly explained), the possibility that the entire city will be under twenty feet of water (allusions to the "Lost City of Atlantis" have been made more than once), and that too many people think the storm might miss NO and that is a shame.

Fox News now anticipates what will happen in the future, and reports such anticipations as news, even while it reports in real time what is happening and then reports on what happened in the past. News used to be past and present tense - primarily past tense. Now, news seems to be past, present, and future tense. The trend of pulling news from the future to the present is wearing on me, which is why I don't often watch cable news.

The leader of Norway’s Business Security Council, Rasmus Woxholt, has recommended abolishing Norway’s largest-denomination banknote, the thousand-kroner note, worth about USD 155, as a way of “hitting” organized crime.

Cash is the goal and medium for everything from drug trafficking, to gambling to blackmail, Woxholt said, and raises the idea of limiting notes to small amounts, and even toys with the idea of replacing these with large, heavy coins.

"Let us make it as impractical and elaborate as possible to pay by cash," Woxholt said.

And while we’re at it, let’s outlaw the fastest automobiles and powerboats. After all, criminals use them for getaways and smuggling.

P.S. Woxholt looks suspiciously like one of my co-bloggers. And come to think of it, I’ve never seen them together in the same room …

...and now England appears capable of beating Australia after nearly twenty years of losses. With the first three Ashes (the name of the England/Australia series) tied 1-1-1, England has gotten off to a good start in the fourth five-day test. England scored 477 in its first innings whilst Australia has but 99 (after 5 wickets) in its first innings. Australia will need a very good showing tomorrow in the conclusion of its first innings if it is to avoid defeat (or another draw).

UPDATE: England in fact won the fourth Ashes test match today (Sunday) pulling ahead in the series 2-1-1. After forcing Australia to follow on, England needed only 129 runs in their second innings to win (though it took them 7 wickets to accomplish the task). Now England needs to force only a draw to win the series.

Confused? Go here for the rules.

This CBO Report, which I haven't read in its entirety, provides the following table of projections:

If this projection is at all accurate does GDP become less of an issue in future national political campaigns? JFK's arguments that the U.S. economy was in the garbage heap fell flat last time around. In the future, do the Dems and Repubs figure out that when the economy is 16 trillion dollars - 19 trillion dollars it will be harder to argue that the economy is in the "worst shape in fifty years" and so forth while keeping a straight face?

An article in today's AJC runs counter to the "selfless public servant" notion. Some excerpts:

Nancy Hall, acting head of Georgia Public Broadcasting, drives a car with untraceable license plates — the kind intended for an undercover cop worried that a blown cover could cost a life.

Her state car is just one of about 6,000 vehicles in Georgia that have been issued the stealthy tags, many for no clear reason. When police check the numbers on the confidential plates, they get back either no information or a phony name and address....

A month ago, Revenue Commissioner Bart Graham inherited responsibility for the special tags from the now defunct Department of Motor Vehicles — and with it complaints that confidential tags have been issued to county commissioners and doled out to state department heads as perks.

"In some organizations, people get country club memberships," Graham said. "Apparently, in state government, if you are a department head, you got a confidential tag." ...

Some government officials may want a confidential tag because they believe it's "a free pass" that protects them from being ticketed or even stopped by police, Graham suggested.

Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway said his officers don't view it that way. He said the only advantage he sees is that other motorists won't know if the driver who races past is a government employee.

"If they blow by you at 90 miles an hour and they don't have a government tag, then it's just another person," Conway said. "But if it's a government tag, it's likely somebody would take down the tag number and turn them in."

Hey, sheriff, taking down tag numbers and turning in the speeding officers would be a good thing.

Hmmm, maybe Buchanan and Tullock were onto something ...

Beloit College is out with its annual list of cultural experiences for entering college freshmen, most of whom were born in 1987. A few examples:

1. Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.
2. They don't remember when "cut and paste" involved scissors.
3. Heart-lung transplants have always been possible.
4. Wayne Gretzky never played for Edmonton.
5. Boston has been working on the "The Big Dig" all their lives.

I think at least one item on the list--number 58, they never saw Pat Sajak or Arsenio Hall host a late night television show--is incorrect. Didn't Bill Clinton play his sax on Aresenio Hall's show in 1992?

ADDENDUM: I think number 62--Tom Landry never coached the Cowboys--is also incorrect. Landry coached through the 1988 season; of course most toddlers wouldn't remember his coaching the Cowboys.

Thanks Hawaii for another example of how politicians can screw things up.

From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin

As gas pump prices continue to set record highs, the state today issued its first listing of maximum prices at which wholesale gasoline can be sold starting next week, when Hawaii’s one-of-a-kind gasoline price cap regulations begin. ...

The price caps represent the maximum cost at which wholesale gasoline can be sold in Hawaii. They are to be adjusted on a weekly basis to reflect changing market conditions in Los Angeles, New York and the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The retail price is not capped, so there will not be any long lines at the pump. If the cap is effective, it should reduce the quantity of gas supplied while also increasing price at the retail level. The spread between the wholesale price and the retail price should increase. What happens to profits at the retail level will depend on the price elasticity of demand. Assuming it is inelastic, profits should increase for retailers.

After my previous post on this subject, I received the following email from Gary Reed. He makes some really good points about the difference between a tip and a service charge. Thanks Gary
--------------------------------------------------
Boy, isn't that the question? Is a tip a service charge? That's what many restaurants want us to believe, isn't it?
What does replacing voluntary tips with a service charges actually mean?

Lets start off by understanding that tips and service charges are both defined under federal law. Did you know that federal regulations state that a tip is to be distinguished from a payment of a charge, if any, made for the service? Do you know why? You see it would be fraud if a customer gave a tip to an employee and the business owner kept it for himself or controlled that money to his own benefit. Service charges are not tips. Service charges may be kept by the business owner. Did you know that?

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From Page 7 of the Aug. 24, 1905 NYT comes this nugget to be filed in the "nothing ever changes" drawer:

The United Stated Government building at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, erected at a cost of $500,000, has been sold to a wrecking company for $10,500. The steel trusses in the structure alone cost $100,000.

Nice.

From Aug. 24, 1905, NYT is a report of the twentieth annual American Bar Association meetings in Narragansett Pier, R.I. The key-note speech was given by president Henry St. George Tucker who had the following nuggets:

We are a much-governed people, and there is nothing which affects the American citizen, from infancy to the grave, awake or asleep, in motion or at rest, at home or abroad, in his personal, social, political, or property rights which is not the subject of regulation by the State.

The home is no longer a man's castle, but it may be a prison house, with the Board of Health as jailer. When the State as parens patriae steps in and assumes control by boards and Commissioners and other agencies of the safety of society, of the health and morals of the people as well as their property rights, special care must be taken not to endanger any of those inalienable rights of 'life, liberty, and property' guaranteed to every citizen under 'the law of the land.' For it must be remembered that these are rights which do not proceed from government but are antecedent to government, and are those for the preservation of which Governments are ordained.

Wow. What would poor Mr. St. George Tucker have to say about the society an additional hundred years of regulation and control has created?

What are the chances that any president of the ABA could give a speech containing these two paragraphs at a national ABA meeting without being booed off the stage and having his/her reputation and intentions dragged through the mud by the pundits and talking heads?

Why can't we have rhetoric such as this and not what we get today?

That’s the attitude of this Republican administration. How else do you explain the new fuel economy standards? You are too stupid to buy a high mileage fuel efficient car and the auto producers are too stupid to respond to any increase in the demand for high mileage cars, so the government comes to our rescue by legislating standards. Without the government telling me what to do, I just might buy a muscle car or a V-8 to pull the boat. Thank god, they saved me from that stupidity. Better I should buy a Smart Car.

Congress is also thinking of changing daylight savings time. At the western end of the Eastern Time Zone that means we will have to go to work and school in the dark. Can’t Congress just legislate that the sun remain in the sky longer? Surely Congress has the power to do that.

Any other smart things the government has done lately?

Said by a wise man. In Turkmenistan:

He [the president] has outlawed opera and ballet and railed against long hair and gold teeth, but now Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov is determined to wipe out another perceived scourge: lip synching.

Yep, that's the problem. The CIA World Factbook estimates the country's per-capita income of $5,700. Somehow I don't think banning lip synching is the silver bullet to development.

From Andrew Roth on the Club for Growth blog:

The California Exodus - UHaul-Style

Some high income earners are leaving California because of its punitive tax rates. Could low- and middle-income workers be leaving as well? One crude measure is to examine the one-way rental rates for U-Haul vans. Using U-Haul’s website, I queried a one-way rental for a 10-foot van for October 1st, 2005.

One-Way Trip Price
Los Angeles to Las Vegas $454.00
Las Vegas to Los Angeles $119.00

Once again we see there's no accounting for tastes:

TAMPA, Fla. — More than 12,000 people came to the Museum of Science and Industry in the first four days of a controversial exhibit featuring preserved human cadavers and body parts, shattering previous attendance records.

Museum officials said "BODIES, the Exhibition," showcasing human bodies preserved and posed so visitors can see their inner workings, broke records set in December 2003 when artifacts from the Titanic were displayed.

And we have bad news for future corpse displays:

Report: Obesity Rates Up in Most States

John Tierney makes a bet on lower oil prices.

Today's WSJ has an article on environmental economics. Unfortunately, there is no mention of property rights, PERC, or even moderate enviro think tanks like Resources for the Future.

On Saturday I ran the Reykjavik Marathon in 3:18:42 (7:35/mile pace), which is a new PR. The official results aren't up yet, but I think I was 30th out of 330 overall, 27th out of 258 among men, and 13th out of 54 among men 29-49. The time is still a bit off my necessary Boston Marathon qualification time (3:15), but close enough to make me happy.

One really cool thing is that the winners of the men's full and half marathon are brothers from Sweden AND the winners of the women's full and half marathon are sisters from Iceland.

A news item:

Iowa City, Ia. - You wonder what Bo Schembechler would say, assuming he regained consciousness.

The sole refuge is two waist-level drinking fountains, cold and silver, floating like pinballs on the head of a strawberry shake. Aside from that, the new visitors' locker room at Kinnick Stadium is Barbie's Dream House on acid, a pastel nightmare. You feel naked without a little dog in one arm and a handbag in the other.

Pink walls. Pink stalls. Pink seats. Pink ceiling. Pink carpet. Pink urinals.

Of course there's an Arizona sheriff who dresses prisoners in pink underwear and striped uniforms.

Hat tip: Southern Appeal

In the course of another excellent column, David Warsh mentions DOL. Thanks!

The jobs do seem to follow the students, at least with a bit of a lag. From this year's Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac of Higher Education comes a few interesting tidbits. One interesting insight was this projection of the percentage increase in the number of high school graduates between now and 2015:

In my home state of Georgia, my targeted state of North Carolina, and where I am currently at, Texas, the future looks good.

Here's a bit of labor market gloom-and-doom:

The uncomfortable reality, as Andrew Sum sees it, is that there's a direct link between the steep national decline in teen employment rates and the growing practice of businesses hiring illegal immigrants and paying them off the books.

Sum is the director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University ...

That's not to say the sole reason teens are getting squeezed out is that businesses are breaking the rules, going underground and hiring unskilled immigrant labor.

It's always been the case that some high school kids might not get work because they are lazy, lack initiative, face racism, need contacts, don't have a car or can afford to do something else because they have rich parents.

Other empirical factors cited by Sum include recent reductions in government-sponsored employment programs and the ``age twist,'' the historically unprecedented influx of workers 55 and older into the job market, which may be a function of downsizing, forced retirements, spouses' having to work and the cost of health care.

Teens also face increased competition from 20- to 25-year-old college graduates who have been driven into less attractive jobs unrelated to their fields or who are vamping for time as retail clerks, waitresses and on-the-books construction workers.

My hunch--rising income has much more to do with declining teenage employment than illegals working off the books and all of the other pessimistic possibilities. I'd also suggest additional possibilities not included in the article--increasing college enrollment rates and structural changes over time (a smaller share of output in seasonal industries).

Prof. Sum seems to be a perpetual pessimist--here are his takes on 2003 and 2004. Interestingly, the 2003 blurb indicates that the National League of Cities commissioned the 2003 study. Interestingly, Prof. Sum's solutions include more spending on teen job programs. Coincidence?

ADDENDUM: Prof. Sum's hypothesis that illegals (and other factors) are crowding out domestic teens is testable by regressing state employment/pop rates on factors including estimates of the illegal population in each state. If I can endure BLS's awful website, I might revisit the topic.

My Berry College co-worker and biking buddy Aaron Jermundson has logged over 12,000 miles on his bike this year and ranks fifth in the BikeJournal.com rankings. Three other Rome riders are in the top 50. Yours truly is not logging miles and would be nowhere near the top 50.

Alexandra Starr in slate.com:

You could conclude from these exams that American high-schoolers are ill-taught and ill-prepared for the competitive global economy. But what if you look at these tests like a capitalist rather than an educator? Nothing is at stake for kids when they take the international exams and the NAEP. Students don't even learn how they scored. And that probably affects their performance. American teenagers, in other words, may not be stupid. It could be that when they have nothing to gain (or lose), they're lazy. ...

The dubiousness of these test results becomes clear when you compare them to the results of tests that actually do matter for teenagers: high-school exit exams and college boards. Nineteen states now require their students to pass assessments before they can don a cap and gown; seven others are testing students but not yet withholding diplomas. When states begin imposing penalties for failure, it makes a difference—sometimes a big one. Look at Texas: In 2004, results counted toward graduation for the first time, and pass rates on both the math and English portions of the test leapt almost 20 points.

Starr also reports that scores on the SAT and ACT--tests that have consequences--have increased over the last decade.

Hat tip: Wilson Mixon

From the Aug. 20, 1905 NYT is a report that Dr. Fred Wolle accepted the position of Chair of the Department of Music at California Berkley for $5000 per year.

According to Historical Economic Services:

In 2003, $5,000.00 from 1905 is worth:
$103,803.77 using the Consumer Price Index
$87,740.86 using the GDP deflator
$479,058.79 using the unskilled wage
$605,051.85 using the GDP per capita
$2,096,964.49 using the relative share of GDP

Today's UCB chair of Music is one Bonnie Wade. I don't know what she is making, but Donald Lowe, who is the chair of music at the University of Georgia, is paid $119,985.00 according to this database.

I suppose it is possible that Dr. Wade is paid more than her counterpart in Athens, but I wager it is not anywhere near $605k. It seems that real wages in the music department haven't increased much over the past century. Does this mean that productivity hasn't improved in that area or is it that society doesn't value the music department any more (or perhaps less) than it did back then? What about in other disciplines on campus?

Archie Bunker's solution to airline hyjackings was to give everyone a gun as they entered the plane. Using a similar approach the N.C. legislature has passed a law requiring that the courts provide battered spouses with information on obtaining a handgun. Good idea? If so, why not provide the same information to all victims of crime.

"We're not interested in them shooting their abusers," said Paul Valone, president of Grass Roots North Carolina. "We're interested in delivering a message: When police can't protect these people, they are capable of protecting themselves."

The secondary effects of the SCOTUS ruling keep coming in.
First, several state governments seem to be scrambling to enact anti-eminent domain legislation. Score one for the good guys.
Second, though, it appears that New London is getting even more brash. The Fairfield County Weekly reports that the city of New London:
a) claims that, thanks to the ruling vindicating the city's condemnation of their land, the homeowners have been living on city property and thus owe the city back rent,
b) claims that said homeowners have been living on city property ever since the city condemned their property back in 2000, and
c) therefore the city owes the homeowners "just compensation" according to the fair market value of the homes. But the fair market value in 2000, not today.

So, not only do these homeowners get kicked off their property for no good reason, not only do they not receive just compensation, but they also owe several thousands of dollars in back rent.

An interview in Reason discusses the problem of senility among members of the Court, and whether there should be an age limit. Interestingly, the oldest is Stevens at 85, who is younger than the 87-year-old woman whom he helped get kicked out of her childhood New London home.

I've had a low profile for the past week or so because of a series of beginning of semester meetings (groan). As a way of reviving my brain cells following the meetings, I've been reading Jay Winik's splendid April 1865. (The book was published in 2001; my not reading it until 2005 reflects (1) I don't read enough, (2) I have a backlog of books I'm interested in reading, and (3) I generally avoid reading books when first published in order to guage whether my interest outlasts any initial buzz about the books.) John Miller offers a synopsis here; the usual from Amazon is here.

Aug. 19, 1905, NYT reports that the governor of New York is taking a vacation to England, mainly because he wants to rest and the missus has hay fever (which at the time has no cure and a debated source). To be filed in the category of "things never change":

What the local Republican leaders wish is to have the State Gas Commission reduce the price of gas from $1 to 75 cents per thousand cubic feet. They understand that the people will not get the benefit of the reduction until after the law creating the State Gas Commission has been tested in the courts, but they believe that if the commission orders a 25 per cent reduction it will be good campaign material.

What isn't different between this scenario 100 years ago and today? It's August, the politicians are on vacation, gas (in 1905 used lighting and heat) is relatively more expensive than it recently has been, politicians want to be seen as doing something, the politicians know that whatever they do is likely to have no short term effect, politicians want to make a campaign issue out of high gas prices.

Gee, that could have come out of today's paper.

This one is making the rounds. A board game from the sixties promoting various careers for young girls.

More evidence of how far we have come in such a short time.

Whereis tells you where a particular server is on a Google map.

DOL is "located" in Jacksonville, FL, home of the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party - good onya.

Other sites of intere