Mind: Competitiveness Peaks in Middle Age

New research finds middle-aged men are most willing to engage in competitive risk-taking.

Their study, described in the journal Psychology and Aging, was conducted at a shopping mall in Eugene, Oregon. Passersby were recruited to participate by the promise of earning anywhere from $2 to $15, depending on their decisions and performance. In the end, 543 people between the ages of 25 and 75 took part.

After a couple of practice rounds, each was instructed to perform a simple mental arithmetic task. They could either receive a fixed-rate payment of 25 cents per correct item, or opt for a competitive payment plan. If they chose the latter, they would be paid 50 cents per correct item, but only if they outscored a randomly chosen earlier participant.

So who was most willing to take a chance and double their money? The answer, by a wide margin, was men between the ages of 45 and 54. Both younger and older men were less willing to take the bet, with the percentage dropping off dramatically for those 65 and older.

This same pattern was found in women, although they were less eager than men to engage in competitive behavior at each stage of life. This confirms previous research that found a large gender gap regarding the willingness to compete — even in a task where women performed just as well as men.

For more, see Look Out, Kids: Competitiveness Peaks in Middle Age by Tom Jacobs, November 29, 2011 at Miller-McCune.

Taxes: Taxes at the Top

Defenders of low taxes on the rich mainly make two arguments: that low taxes on capital gains are a time-honored principle, and that they are needed to promote economic growth and job creation. Both claims are false.

When you hear about the low, low taxes of people like Mr. Romney, what you need to know is that it wasn't always thus — and the days when the superrich paid much higher taxes weren't that long ago. Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan — yes, Ronald Reagan — signed a tax reform equalizing top rates on earned income and capital gains at 28%. The rate rose further, to more than 29%, during Bill Clinton's first term.

Low capital gains taxes date only from 1997, when Mr. Clinton struck a deal with Republicans in Congress in which he cut taxes on the rich in return for creation of the Children's Health Insurance Program. And today's ultralow rates — the lowest since the days of Herbert Hoover — date only from 2003, when former President George W. Bush rammed both a tax cut on capital gains and a tax cut on dividends through Congress, something he achieved by exploiting the illusion of triumph in Iraq.

For more, see Taxes at the Top by Paul Krugman, January 19, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Miscellaneous: South African Weather Forecasters Who Get It Wrong Face Imprisonment

South African weather forecasters who predict severe storms or gales without permission from the authorities could be punished by up to ten years imprisonment or a hefty fine under new legislation.

The bill, officials say, is aimed at "protecting the general public against the distribution of inaccurate or hoax warnings or weather predictions that could cause public panic and lead to evacuations and/or the unwarranted waste of resources — money, people and technology".

It would mean that independent forecasters wanting to issue a severe weather warning would first need to get written permission from the state-run South African Weather Service.

Members of the public who ring in to radio stations or newspapers to warn of an impending storm without asking SAWS first could also find themselves criminalised under the bill.

First-time offenders face a penalty of up to five years imprisonment or a fine of five million rand (£400,000), while repeat offenders could be jailed for up to ten years or be made to pay a ten million rand (£800,000) fine

For more, see South African Weather Forecasters Who Get It Wrong Face Imprisonment by Aislinn Laing, January 14, 2012 at The Telegraph.

Society: Measuring the Top 1% by Wealth, Not Income

... an analysis of the [2009] Fed data is still revealing in that it shows the wealth gap, as measured by net worth, is much more extreme than the chasm as measured by income.

The Times had estimated the threshold for being in the top 1% in household income at about $380,000, 7.5 times median household income, using census data from 2008 through 2010. But for net worth, the 1% threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million, or 69 times the median household's net holdings of $121,000.

They controlled nearly a third of the nation's financial assets (investment holdings) and about 28% of nonfinancial assets (the value of property, cars, jewelry, etc.).

When asked if they feel lucky in their financial affairs, nearly 80% of the super-rich strongly agreed. The rest of us? Fewer than one-third feel that financial good fortune is shining upon us.

For more, see Measuring the Top 1% by Wealth, Not Income by Robert Gebeloff and Shaila Dewan, January 17, 2012 at Economix.

Politics: Time for Liberals to Give up Hope on Barack Obama?

The specific charge sheet against Obama could run for several pages and then several more. On the economy, the president is blamed for a lack of ambition, for passing a stimulus package of $787bn that, say the critics, should have been nearly twice the size. Obama erred, too, by allowing Democrats in Congress to write the stimulus bill, packing it with pet schemes and pork that would do little to get the economy moving. In an attempt to win Republican support — which never came — he also weighed down the bill with too many tax cuts. The result was action that was simply incomplete, leaving unemployment hovering around the 9% mark for most of Obama's presidency.

Former admirers say he was too weak on the banks, failing to declare war on those who had caused the 2008 crash. The clues were there in his senior appointments. While some liberals had fantasised about a dream ticket of Nobel laureate Paul Krugman and former labour secretary Robert Reich, Obama filled his two key economic posts with Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, both schooled by Robert Rubin, former co-chair of Goldman Sachs. Obama did legislate on financial reform, but the bill did not go far enough, with no restoration of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall act, which had previously separated casino and retail banking. Nor was there any action to cap the pay of top executives, even in companies majority-owned by the US government. It's not that Obama fought and lost on these issues. In most cases, he did not even fight.

His signature achievement, the passage of healthcare reform, also dismayed as many liberals as it delighted, chiefly because Obama surrendered on the so-called public option which, while not exactly establishing an American [British] NHS, would have at least offered a government-run insurance programme as an alternative to the private sector. That made Obama's bill no more radical than one proposed decades earlier by Richard Nixon, or the one passed by a certain Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts.

In his inaugural address Obama spoke often and poetically on climate change. He vowed to "harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories". But there has been no action and not even any serious advocacy. Aware that Republicans do not even believe there is an energy problem, he has shied away from offering a solution.

For much more, see Barack Obama's Presidency, Three Years on — Is It Time to Give up Hope? by Jonathan Freedland, January 19, 2012 at guardian.co.uk.

Gender: Sex on the Brain Proves Costly for Men

New research suggests the mere idea of an encounter with a woman can impair men's cognitive performance.

In one experiment, Casually mentioning a female instead of a male name was sufficient to impair men's cognitive performance, the team from the Radboud University Nijmegen Behavioral Sciences Institute writes in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. In another, a brief instant-messaging exchange was enough to do the trick.

Moreover, these effects occur even if men do not get information about the woman's attractiveness, adds the researchers, led by Sanne Nauts.

The research builds on a much-discussed 2009 study by Johan Karremans (one of the authors of the new paper). It found men's, but not women's, cognitive performance declined following five to seven minutes of socializing with an attractive stranger. That study concluded that heterosexual males are, in such situations, expending their cognitive resources ... on making a good impression.

Men's cognitive performance might be affected if they are talking to a woman on the phone (or already before that, while they were waiting for her phone call), if they are chatting with a woman online, or if they are sitting in the waiting room of their new, female, doctor, Nauts and her colleagues write.

The study took place in a university environment; the participants were mostly young (their mean age was 21). It's not certain the results would be duplicated among the general population.

For more, see Sex on the Brain Proves Costly for Men by Tom Jacobs, January 16, 2012 at Miller-McCune.

Taxes: Why Americans Think the Tax Rate Is High, and Why They're Wrong

Together, all federal taxes equaled 14.4% of the nation's economic output last year, the lowest level since 1950. Add state and local taxes, and the share nearly doubles, to about 27%, according to the Tax Policy Center in Washington — still lower than at almost any other point in the last 40 years.

For more, see Why Americans Think the Tax Rate Is High, and Why They're Wrong by David Leonhardt, January 19, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Miscellaneous: My 1,000th Post

This is my 1,000th post. I hope some of them have been useful or at least interesting.

My main interest has been about how bad we are at absorbing new information, correcting old beliefs, and making decisions (see the posts which have been labeled mind). We are far from the rational creatures which might like to think we are. Our brains naturally take shortcuts to make thinking quicker and easier, which is understandable for less important things, but our biases make it difficult for us to absorb information which challenges the biases unless we consciously work to overcome them, as evidenced by the state of our political system where the two sides talk past one another often without much interest in understanding the other side's point of view.

My growing interest is in how we mistake economic progress with human progress (see well-being). The average American now is no more satisfied with his life than he was many decades ago, yet we are far richer. Are we focusing on the right things?

-- DougL

Government: Number of Federal Employees

One measure of government size is the federal work force, measured by the White House budget office as civilian full-time equivalent employees, excluding the military and Post Office. The executive branch had about 1.875 million workers in 2008 when the financial crisis hit, a number that held relatively constant throughout the post-9/11 Bush Administration. That number climbed to 2.128 million two years later under the 111th Congress—or growth of 13.5%. That's the largest government since 1992, when the Clinton Administration began to slash defense spending.

From The Reorganization Man, January 14, 2012 at WSJ.com.

Climate: Climate Proposal Puts Practicality Ahead of Sacrifice

The current issue of the journal Science contains a proposal to slow global warming that is extraordinary for a couple of reasons:

1. In theory, it would help people living in poor countries now, instead of mainly benefiting their descendants.

2. In practice, it might actually work.

This proposal comes from an international team of researchers — in climate modeling, atmospheric chemistry, economics, agriculture and public health — who started off with a question that borders on heresy in some green circles: Could something be done about global warming besides forcing everyone around the world to use less fossil fuel?

Ever since the Kyoto Protocol imposed restrictions in industrial countries, the first priority of environmentalists has been to further limit the emission of carbon dioxide. Burning fewer fossil fuels is the most obvious way to counteract the greenhouse effect, and the notion has always had a wonderfully virtuous political appeal — as long as it's being done by someone else.

But as soon as people are asked to do it themselves, they follow a principle identified by Roger Pielke Jr. in his book The Climate Fix. Dr. Pielke, a political scientist at the University of Colorado, calls it iron law of climate policy: When there's a conflict between policies promoting economic growth and policies restricting carbon dioxide, economic growth wins every time.

After looking at hundreds of ways to control these pollutants, the researchers determined the 14 most effective measures for reducing climate change, like encouraging a switch to cleaner diesel engines and cookstoves, building more efficient kilns and coke ovens, capturing methane at landfills and oil wells, and reducing methane emissions from rice paddies by draining them more often.

If these strategies became widespread, the researchers calculate, the amount of global warming in 2050 would be reduced by about one degree Fahrenheit, roughly a third of the warming projected if nothing is done. This impact on temperatures in 2050 would be significantly larger than the projected impact of the commonly proposed measures for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Not incidentally, the researchers calculate, these reductions in low-level ozone and black carbon would yield lots of benefits long before 2050. Because people would be breathing cleaner air, 700,000 to 4.7 million premature deaths would be avoided each year. Thanks to improved crop yields, farmers would produce at least 30 million more metric tons of food annually.

The beauty of these pollution-control measures is that over five to 10 years they pay for themselves in the developing world, says Drew Shindell, the lead author of the proposal, who is a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and at Columbia University. They slow global warming, but there are local benefits, too. If you make black carbon reductions in China or India, you get most of the benefits in China or India.

For more, see Climate Proposal Puts Practicality Ahead of Sacrifice by John Tierney, January 16, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Diversion: Somali Pirates Arrested After Attempting to Hijack Spanish Warship

The gang sped up to the Spanish warship Patino and opened fire with assault rifles before trying to climb up the side of the 17,000-tonne vessel.

Its crew immediately returned fire, forcing the pirates off the hull and back into their skiff, where they dumped their weapons overboard and attempted to escape.

They were tracked by the Patino's helicopter and eventually surrendered.

It was unclear why the small group of pirates felt that they could overpower the Patino and its 150-plus crew.

For more, see Somali Pirates Arrested After Attempting to Hijack Spanish Warship by Mike Pflanz, January 13, 2012 at The Telegraph.

Politics: Mitt Romney and the Wealth Issue

Mitt Romney is a rich man, but is Mitt Romney's character formed by his wealth? Is Romney a spoiled, cosseted character? Has he been corrupted by ease and luxury?

The notion is preposterous. All his life, Romney has been a worker and a grinder. He earned two degrees at Harvard simultaneously (in law and business). He built a business. He's persevered year after year, amid defeat after defeat, to build a political career.

Romney's salient quality is not wealth. It is, for better and worse, his tenacious drive — the sort of relentlessness that we associate with striving immigrants, not rich scions.

For more, see The Wealth Issue by David Brooks, January 19, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Mind: Republicans like Candidates Who Look Republican

Although they can't put their finger on what a Republican looks like, when GOP voters think someone looks Republican, that candidate gets more votes.

The more Republican politicians seemed to look to people, the more votes they gained in red states at the actual polls. The facial stereotypes, in other words, predicted the outcomes of real elections. But that wasn't the strangest finding. Idea Lobby

Strangely ...

To our even greater surprise, Olivola said, we found no relationship whatsoever for left-leaning states. We certainly hadn't predicted that. That was a big surprise.

They also experimented on individuals (not just surveys of states) and found ...

... conservatives are more likely to be influenced by how Republican they think a candidate looks, whether they live in Massachusetts or Alabama. (It also means, oddly, that a Democratic candidate who looks sort of Republican may actually pick up a couple of Republican voters this way in a right-leaning district.)

And this is all the more mystifying given that voters don't have to size up a politician's cheekbones to figure out who the real Republican is. That information is readily available — right there on the ballot.

Why would a Republican vote for the more Republican-looking candidate if the ballot is telling them, ‘No, the other guys is actually a Republican'? Why would they be swayed to do that? We don't know. It is kind of worrying.

For more, see Republicans like Candidates Who Look Republican by Emily Badger, January 10, 2012 at Miller-McCune.

Healthcare: U.S. To Force Drug Firms to Report Money Paid to Doctors

To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.

The Times has found that doctors who take money from drug makers often practice medicine differently from those who do not and that they are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways, such as prescribing powerful antipsychotic medicines for children.

Under the new standards, if a company has just one product covered by Medicare or Medicaid, it will have to disclose all its payments to doctors other than its own employees. The federal government will post the payment data on a Web site where it will be available to the public.

For more, see U.S. To Force Drug Firms to Report Money Paid to Doctors by Robert Pear, January 16, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Society: Among the Wealthiest One Percent, Many Variations

The top 1% of earners in a given year receives just under a fifth of the country's pretax income, about double their share 30 years ago. They pay just over a fourth of all federal taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. In 2007, they accounted for about 30% of philanthropic giving, according to Federal Reserve data.

Of the 1 percenters interviewed for this article, almost all — conservatives and liberals alike — said the wealthy could and should shoulder more of the country's financial burden, and almost all said they viewed the current system as unfair. But they may prefer facing cuts to their own benefits like Social Security than paying more taxes. In one survey of wealthy Chicago families, almost twice as many respondents said they would cut government spending as those who said they would cut spending and raise revenue.

A higher proportion of 1 percenters (two in five) than 99 percenters (one in five) has inherited money, according to the Federal Reserve survey. The top earners got 10% of the inherited wealth in the country. Still, a majority of those earners reported no inheritance.

Many wealthy people have decried what they call class warfare. But that does not mean they think the system is not unjustly rigged in their favor. The investor who declined to be identified because he feared for his family said it was not fair that he paid a lower rate on his investment income than he would on a salary and asked why he should receive Social Security or Medicare.

For more, see Among the Wealthiest One Percent, Many Variations by Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff, January 14, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Diversion: Dominique Strauss-Kahn & Prostitutes

Dominique Strauss-Kahn had no way of knowing he was sleeping with prostitutes during swinger sessions because "the women were all naked at the time", his lawyer has claimed.

For more, see Dominique Strauss-Kahn Did Not Know He Was Sleeping with Prostitutes 'Because They Were All Naked', January 12, 2012 at The Telegraph.

Gender: Does It Matter What Sex Your Boss Is?

A recent study found that fewer Americans have a preference for a male or female manager. The research, which surveyed some 60,470 women and men, found that a small majority—54%— said they had no preference as to the gender of their boss.

When asked to rate their current bosses, respondents tended to favor bosses of the opposite sex. Female bosses were rated more favorably by men and male bosses garnered higher praise from women.

For more, see Does It Matter What Sex Your Boss Is? by Rachel Emma Silverman, January 12, 2012 at The Wall Street Journal.

Economics: Inside the Fed in 2006: A Coming Crisis

As the housing bubble entered its waning hours in 2006, top Federal Reserve officials marveled at the desperate antics of home builders seeking to lure buyers.

The transcripts of the 2006 meetings, released after a standard five-year delay, clearly show some of the nation's pre-eminent economic minds did not fully understand the basic mechanics of the economy that they were charged with supervising. The problem was not a lack of information; it was a lack of comprehension, born in part of their deep confidence in economic forecasting models that turned out to be broken.

The results are unlikely to burnish any of their reputations, inasmuch as they could not see the widening cracks beneath their feet. But the Fed's chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, appears as the most consistent voice of warning that problems in the housing market could have broader consequences.

One fundamental reason for this blindness was that Fed officials did not understand how deeply intertwined the housing sector and financial markets had become. They also were convinced that financial innovations, by distributing the risk of losses more broadly, had increased the strength and resilience of the system as a whole.

For more, see Inside the Fed in 2006: A Coming Crisis, and Banter by Binyamin Appelbaum, January 12, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Politics: Where Are the Liberals?

Why aren't there more liberals in America?

There are now two conservatives in this country for every liberal. Over the past 40 years, liberalism has been astonishingly incapable at expanding its market share.

The most important explanation is what you might call the Instrument Problem. Americans may agree with liberal diagnoses, but they don't trust the instrument the Democrats use to solve problems. They don't trust the federal government.

Why don't Americans trust their government? It's not because they dislike individual programs like Medicare. It's more likely because they think the whole system is rigged. Or to put it in the economists' language, they believe the government has been captured by rent-seekers.

For more, see Where Are the Liberals? by David Brooks, January 9, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Society: Israelis Facing a Seismic Rift over Role of Women

In the three months since the Israeli Health Ministry awarded a prize to a pediatrics professor for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews, her experience at the awards ceremony has become a rallying cry. Multimedia Slide Show In Israel, a Clash Between the Secular and Ultra-Orthodox Metro Twitter Logo. Connect With Us on Twitter

The professor, Channa Maayan, knew that the acting health minister, who is ultra-Orthodox, and other religious people would be in attendance. So she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But that was hardly enough.

Not only did Dr. Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, as men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage.

The list of controversies grows weekly: Organizers of a conference last week on women's health and Jewish law barred women from speaking from the podium, leading at least eight speakers to cancel; ultra-Orthodox men spit on an 8-year-old girl whom they deemed immodestly dressed; the chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army declined to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform; protesters depicted the Jerusalem police commander as Hitler on posters because he instructed public bus lines with mixed-sex seating to drive through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods; vandals blacked out women's faces on Jerusalem billboards.

As a group, the ultra-Orthodox are, at best, ambivalent about the Israeli state, which they consider insufficiently religious and premature in its founding because the Messiah has not yet arrived.

But while the community has gained increased economic might — there is a growing market catering to its needs — what is lacking is economic productivity. The community places Torah study above all other values and has worked assiduously to make it possible for its men to do that rather than work. While the women often work, there is a 60% unemployment rate among the men, who also generally do not serve in the army.

It is this combination — accepting government subsidies, refusing military service and declining to work, all while having six to eight children per family — that is unsettling for many Israelis, especially when citizens feel economically insecure and mistreated by the government.

... what children learn in the ultra-Orthodox school system — largely unregulated by the state as a result of political deals — is unsuited for the 21st century, so even those who wish to work are finding it hard to find jobs.

Their schools do not give them the skills to work in a modern economy and no training in civil or human rights or democracy, Mr. Ben-David said. They don't even know what we are talking about — what we want from them — when we talk about discrimination against women.

For more, see Israelis Facing a Seismic Rift over Role of Women by Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner, January 14, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Economics: Economic Turmoil and Social Upheaval Warning

The threat of fresh economic turmoil and social upheaval threaten to put at risk the gains produced by globalisation, the World Economic Forum said.

The survey of 469 global experts identified chronic problems with government finances and severe income inequality as the most prevalent risks over the next decade.

"These risks in tandem threaten global growth as they are drivers of nationalism, populism and protectionism at a time when the world remains vulnerable to systemic financial shocks, as well as possible food and water crises", the report said.

The study said early hopes that closer global integration would inevitably lead to higher living standards for all were at risk of being dashed by trends that left large numbers of people fearful about the future.

For more, see World Economic Forum Warns of Economic Turmoil and Social Upheaval by Larry Elliott, January 11, 2012 at guardian.co.uk.

International: Bill of Rights in Egypt

The leader of Al-Azhar, the pre-eminent institute of Islamic learning in the Sunni Muslim world, has put forward a Bill of Rights to uphold freedom of expression and belief ahead of the drafting of Egypt's new constitution.

El-Tayeb wants the bill to be part of the new constitution.

For more, see Leader of Al-Azhar Proposes Bill of Rights by The Associated Press, January 10, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Education: Education Pays

For more, see Don't Let the Economy Pick Your Major for You by Derek Thompson, January 6, 2012 at The Atlantic.

Environment: Taking Fears of Acid Oceans with a Grain of Salt

Coral reefs around the world are suffering badly from overfishing and various forms of pollution. Yet many experts argue that the greatest threat to them is the acidification of the oceans from the dissolving of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

The central concern is that lower pH will make it harder for corals, clams and other "calcifier" creatures to make calcium carbonate skeletons and shells. Yet this concern also may be overstated. Off Papua New Guinea and the Italian island of Ischia, where natural carbon-dioxide bubbles from volcanic vents make the sea less alkaline, and off the Yucatan, where underwater springs make seawater actually acidic, studies have shown that at least some kinds of calcifiers still thrive—at least as far down as pH 7.8.

In a recent experiment in the Mediterranean, reported in Nature Climate Change, corals and mollusks were transplanted to lower pH sites, where they proved "able to calcify and grow at even faster than normal rates when exposed to the high [carbon-dioxide] levels projected for the next 300 years." In any case, freshwater mussels thrive in Scottish rivers, where the pH is as low as five.

Laboratory experiments find that more marine creatures thrive than suffer when carbon dioxide lowers the pH level to 7.8. This is because the carbon dioxide dissolves mainly as bicarbonate, which many calcifiers use as raw material for carbonate.

Human beings have indeed placed marine ecosystems under terrible pressure, but the chief culprits are overfishing and pollution. By comparison, a very slow reduction in the alkalinity of the oceans, well within the range of natural variation, is a modest threat, and it certainly does not merit apocalyptic headlines.

For more, see Taking Fears of Acid Oceans with a Grain of Salt, January 7, 2012 at WSJ.com.

Education: Does Money Matter in Education?

Bruce Baker, a professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University in New Jersey, reviewed research on the subject. In this report released Friday by the nonprofit Albert Shankar Institute in Washington, concluded that money matters in improving the quality of schools in several important ways.

Of course, money by itself is not the answer (there is no single answer to improving schools). And it's not just how much money is spent but how it is spent. But the argument that money doesn't matter and that across-the-board budget cuts won't hurt student outcomes are not based in any evidence, Baker found.

Baker looked at evidence through the prism of these questions:

*Are differences in aggregate school funding associated with differences in short- and long-term measured outcomes?

*Are differences in access to specific schooling programs or resources — such as smaller classes, high salaries and instructional materials --associated with differences in measured outcomes?

*Do substantive and sustained reforms to state school finance systems, including raising the level of funding or redistributing money more equitably, lead to improvements in the level or distribution of student outcomes?

The answer to each is yes, he said.

For more, see Report: Does Money Matter in Education? by Valerie Strauss, January 6, 2012 at The Answer Sheet.

Politics: $480: The Price Rick Perry Paid for Each Iowa Caucus Vote

The blue bands are superpacs.

For more, see $480: The Price Rick Perry Paid for Each Iowa Caucus Vote by Derek Thompson, January 4, 2012 at The Atlantic.

Economics: Budget Cuts Hit Domestic Programs Harder than Defense

There's been plenty of chatter about the cuts to military spending that the Pentagon will have to make in the years ahead, thanks to last August's debt-ceiling deal.

But ...

In 2001, domestic discretionary programs were somewhat larger, as a percentage of GDP, than defense. By 2021, under the current deals, domestic spending will be slightly smaller than defense.

For more, see Budget Cuts Hit Domestic Programs Harder than Defense by Brad Plumer, January 4, 2012 at Ezra Klein.

Healthcare: Wyden-Ryan's Unrealistic Assumptions

... the Congressional Budget Office has consistently refused to recognize large potential savings in health care costs from reforms to increase competition among private insurance plans. Indeed, the C.B.O. has concluded that replacing traditional Medicare with competition among such plans would drive up total health care spending per Medicare beneficiary.

For more, see Wyden-Ryan's Unrealistic Assumptions by Laura D'andrea Tyson, December 30, 2011 at Economix.

Economics: Nobody Understands Debt

It's true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar's worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents' worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that's already deep in hock to the Chinese, you've been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction.

Now, the fact that federal debt isn't at all like a mortgage on America's future doesn't mean that the debt is harmless. Taxes must be levied to pay the interest, and you don't have to be a right-wing ideologue to concede that taxes impose some cost on the economy, if nothing else by causing a diversion of resources away from productive activities into tax avoidance and evasion. But these costs are a lot less dramatic than the analogy with an overindebted family might suggest.

And that's why nations with stable, responsible governments — that is, governments that are willing to impose modestly higher taxes when the situation warrants it — have historically been able to live with much higher levels of debt than today's conventional wisdom would lead you to believe. Britain, in particular, has had debt exceeding 100% of G.D.P. for 81 of the last 170 years. When Keynes was writing about the need to spend your way out of a depression, Britain was deeper in debt than any advanced nation today, with the exception of Japan.

For more, see Nobody Understands Debt by Paul Krugman, January 1, 2012 at NYTimes.com.

Well-being: Why Grow?

Growth commonly refers to an increase in gross domestic product, or GDP, the value of a country's goods and services in a given period. Because overall GDP can correlate with higher quality of life, officials in the U.S. and around the world often target GDP growth as an overriding policy objective in itself. But the correlation is strongest when countries are poor. After a point, studies show, the size of the economy has little bearing on living standards.

James Gustave Speth, a professor at Vermont Law School and author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, notes that the U.S. has the largest economy in the world, yet among wealthy nations it ranks last or near the bottom in 30 indicators of well-being, such as childhood poverty, income disparity, obesity, infant mortality, school performance, and prison population.

In 1950, ... per capita GDP in the U.S. was a fraction of what it is today (about one-fourth in adjusted dollars), yet surveys of happiness and life satisfaction — not to mention other indicators of well-being — have declined steadily.

For more, see The Growth of Degrowth Economics by David Villano, December 15, 2011 at Miller-McCune.