Charts for Evan Soltas' Comment

Evan has a post up about the North Carolina experiment of slashing unemployment insurance benefits.  He looks at some annual data and concludes that it:

should, but won’t, settle a partisan debate. Cutting unemployment insurance apparently hasn’t encouraged the unemployed to look harder for work: It has caused them to drop out of the labor force altogether.

But when I looked at the data, it wasn't nearly as clear to me as it was to him.  I agree with him that many people are being reported as no longer looking for work after the change in UI, which occurred in July.  How else to explain an increase in employment but a decrease in the labor force?  But the drop began back in January, which I have a hard time attributing to July UI cuts.  And we do see a bounce in employment in July, which is just what conservative critics of UI would predict.  So it's hard to imagine this experience ending the partisan debate.


Evan was patient enough to reply to my tweet asking why he focused on annual data, and explained that it is an easy way to avoid seasonality.  I agree, but looking at longer time horizons, I still don't see why he would've thought that his numbers were made more accurate by ignoring the post-July changes.  Anyway, maybe I'm missing something.  I hadn't looked at any of this until Evan usefully highlighted the issue today.  Thanks for bringing it up, Evan.

Helpful primer on Turkey

Not having had a chance to follow the story much, I found this, from Dani Rodrick, to be a helpful and no-too-long piece on what's happening in Turkey.  It is short on predictions but full of compact information and has a helpful comclusion:

Hate crime? (not from The Onion)

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/12/is-it-racist-to-call-someone-an-australian/265817/

Hurling abuse wasn't the problem for Petra Mills. But a court ruled that calling her New Zealand neighbor an Australian was racist and against the law. Czech-born Mills, 31, has been found guilty of racially aggravated public disorder after a rant at her New Zealand-born neighbor in Macclesfield, south of Manchester. Chelsea O'Reilly, who has dual British and New Zealand citizenship, said: "She called me a stupid fat Australian bitch. Because of my accent there can be some confusion over my nationality. She knew I was from New Zealand. She was trying to be offensive. I was really insulted. She said she would kill my dog. Bizarrely she then blew raspberries at me like a child."

...Two police constables told the court they had heard Mills use the word "Australian" during her drunken rant. At Macclesfield Magistrate Court Mills agreed she had shouted, but denied she was being racist. "I did not use the word 'Australian.' I used to lived with an Australian person. She was very nice."

But chairman of the bench Brian Donohue said: "You were in an emotional and inebriated state. The word 'Australian' was used. It was racially aggravated and the main reason it was used was in hostility."

Mills denied the charge of racially aggravated public disorder but was found guilty and fined 110 pounds. She admitted assaulting a police constable by kicking him in the shin and knee and was fined 200 pounds on that charge. She was also ordered to pay both victims 50 pounds compensation and 500 pound court costs. Mills and her husband moved to Scotland after the incident.

Quick reversal of fortune: NBA (also file under small sample size)

A couple weeks ago, the Wolves were the feel good story of the NBA.  They had huge injury problems (Love and Rubio both out) but were still winning games, leading to a flurry of speculation that they might be a playoff team and even that Adelman was making a case that the Lakers shouldve hired him instead of Mike Brown.  Here we are a few injuries later (Barea, Budinger, etc) and with KLove back in the lineup, and now a few losses have people questioning everything from KLove's offense to Adelman's subsitution decisions.  On some level I really enjoy the daily analysis of the NBA, but sometimes it's just ridiculous.  Depending on what day you checked last week, D'Antoni was either saving or screwing the Lakers, the Knicks were the best or more overrated team in the league, the Bobcats were en fuego or the same garbage as usual, etc.  Instant analysis is fun, but everything in moderation, guys!  Not every game is a sign of a permanent trend.

Don't pick up pennies

A fun post at xkcd on the economics of picking up pennies.  Some other issues they might've considered:  germs (bad), keeping the ground clean (good), likelihood that you will use the penny before you use it...

Knicks are going to continue getting Tech'd

An interesting article on Why Refs Hate the Knicks from the WSJ.  The main points:

1) older players get more technicals
2) high draft picks get more technicals
3) the Knicks are old and have the most top 5 draft picks in the league
4) the Knicks are going to continue wracking up the T's

Government Reform (FDA edition)

Via MR, I see that Rand Paul inserted language into FDA legislation recently passed by the Senate which would force the FDA to accept data from clinical investigations conducted outside the United States, including the European Union.  As Paul's press release claims, this would speed the process of getting drugs to market in the U.S., a process that has become increasingly burdensome, and unmatched to the task of reviewing the most advanced treatments.  Alex Taborrak has long advocated for automatic FDA approval of any drug or medical device that gains approval in the EU, Japan, Canada or Australia (I assume he would expand this list if offered the power to write the rules).  I'd be interested to see arguments against.  Is there a reason we shouldn't outsource this decision making, lessening the burden on U.S. govt resources and decreasing the time it takes for important medical treatments to come to market?