The United States is the largest country to experience multiple consecutive years in which economic growth has been “decoupled” from growth in carbon dioxide emissions. From 2010 to 2012, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions declined by 6 percent (from 5.58 to 5.23 billion metric tons), while GDP grew by 4 percent (from $14.8 to $15.4 trillion).
Neil Irwin Is Far Too Generous to Economists: They Only Care About Efficiency When the Policy Redistributes Income Upward →
Neil Irwin raises the question of whether economists have been too single-minded in pushing efficiency, while ignoring issues of distribution. This is way, way too generous to economists. In fact, economists have been totally happy to ignore efficiency considerations when the inefficiencies redistribute income upward. This situation pops up all the time.
As I frequently point out in comments here and elsewhere, we protect doctors, dentists and other highly paid professionals from competition with their lower paid counterparts in the developing world or even other wealthy countries. We have maintained these protections even while our trade negotiators did everything they could to make steel workers and textile workers compete against their low-paid counterparts in Mexico, China, and other developing countries.
This protectionism is obviously inefficient and cost U.S. consumers more than $100 billion a year in higher medical bills and other costs...
The same story applies to patent and copyright protection. These are forms of protection that can be equivalent to a tariff of 1,000 percent or even 10,000 percent. The worst abuses are in the prescription drug industry where we spend around $430 billion a year on drugs that would cost around $40 billion in a free market. This is throwing $390 billion a year into the toilet and worsening people's health. Where is there concern for efficiency in this case?
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It is worth noting that the gains from the TPP projected by Peterson Institute study are more than twice as large as the gains projected by the non-partisan International Trade Commission (ITC). The ITC study projected that when most of the deal's benefits are fully realized in 2032, the benefits will be a bit larger than a typical month of GDP growth. This study also did not account for the costs associated with stronger and longer patent and copyright rules.
Home Computers Connected to the Internet Aren't Private, Court Rules →
An odd definition of privacy... Homes can be broken into, but they're rightly considered private.
A federal judge for the Eastern District of Virginia has ruled that the user of any computer that connects to the Internet should not have an expectation of privacy because computer security is ineffectual at stopping hackers.
This robot-powered burger joint could put fast food workers out of a job →
In 2012, secretive robotics startup Momentum Machines debuted a machine that could crank out 400 made-to-order hamburgers in an hour. It's fully autonomous, meaning the robot can slice toppings, grill a patty, and assemble and bag the burger without any help from humans. The internet flipped out.
Years of relative silence ensued, but in January, Hoodline's Brittany Hopkins learned that the San Francisco-based startup had applied for a building permit to convert a ground-floor retail space in the SoMa neighborhood into a restaurant.
Now it looks like the restaurant is actually happening. A job posting on Craigslist from early June gives us our first glimpse into how the company's future flagship, presumably opening soon, might work.
Obama signs FOIA reform bill →
The bill, called the FOIA Improvement Act, codifies a presumption of disclosure that Obama re-instituted at the outset of his presidency, but which requesters say has done little to make recalcitrant agencies fork over information. That presumption is now in law and may give requesters a stronger hand in court, although it's unclear how much stronger since similar court-authored precedents are already on the books.
The bill also makes it harder for government to withhold certain kinds of information that's more than 25 years old, although the impact of that provision was narrowed as the legislation pinged back and forth between the House and Senate.
Obama acknowledged Thursday that while battles continue over what should and shouldn't be released, federal agencies are struggling to keep up with the requests that are streaming in. The bill contains some measures designed to speed the process, but it also will make FOIA requests even easier to file, which could bog the system down more. Another challenge: the legislation, which emerged as a consensus measure after years of debate in Congress, does not contain any additional funding.
Pope Francis Denounces Armenian Genocide →
To avoid angering Turkey, some are loathe to describe the killing of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. Pope Francis, who's in Yerevan for the 100-year commemorations, is not shy about using the term...
Trump May Become The First Republican In 60 Years To Lose White College Graduates →
Interesting bit of historical data.
That’s really unusual for a Republican, and it means that among white voters overall, he’s probably not holding a winning hand.
If you look at seven live interview polls taken since Trump wrapped up the nomination in May, he has trailed among whites with a college degree by an average of 6 percentage points. The same polls have him losing among the overall electorate by an average of 5 percentage points. (That’s about where the race stands now.)
How Many Republicans Marry Democrats? →
First, 30 percent of married households contain a mismatched partisan pair. A third of those are Democrats married to Republicans. The others are partisans married to independents. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are twice as many Democratic-Republican pairs in which the male partner, rather than the female partner, is the Republican...