Tyler Cowen: Napoleon Chagnon and his Noble Savages: "I started reading Napoleon Chagnon’s Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes — the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists. The first fifty pages are excellent fun and well-constructed, though I cannot speak to the details of his claims…. At some point, however, I realized I don’t want to read an entire book on either tribe, at least not at this moment. I am not suggesting that the book gets worse, but my interest did ebb. I do not have a view about the controversies surrounding Chagnon, and ultimately that is what should decide the merits of this work. Here is Dreger’s systematic defense of Chagnon."
Taegan Goddard: The sequester showdown isn't really about spending cuts: "Obama has already proposed more spending cuts that the sequester would guarantee… if the Republicans would just agree to close certain 'tax loopholes'…. [T]he sequester fight is about protecting current low tax rates on capital gains and dividends and keeping open the carried interest loophole that hedge fund and private equity managers use to reduce their own tax burden…. A compromise that included both spending cuts and new revenues would obviously reduce the federal deficit by significantly more than the sequester alone. But Republicans have dug in, saying new tax revenues are off the table. Bottom line: Republicans don't really care any more about the deficit and spending cuts than they say Democrats do."
William Murray, Baron Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice: (June 22, 1772): Abolition wasn’t an Anachronism: "The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law."
Josh Marshall: 12 Dimensional Chess: "DC press so bored by sequester stand-off, now reduced to writing articles about how overwhelming public support may backfire on the President."
Ezra Klein: How Obama moved the tax debate to the right: "'One of the problems the president has is his promise that there won’t be a tax increase on anyone below those income levels', says Alan Viard…. 'You have to have some increase in tax burdens or benefit cuts on people making less than 250,000 to close the fiscal gap'. That pledge made the kind of revenue numbers envisioned by Simpson and Bowles or Domenici and Rivlin in their respective plans — both of which do increase taxes on some Americans making less than $250,000 — effectively impossible…. Yet even as the tax debate has moved to the right, the spending debate has moved to the left…. The consensus on spending, in other words, requires a very different consensus on taxes — or vice versa."
David Weigel: Nobody Mention the (Iraq) War!: "Marty Peretz writes in the Wall Street Journal that he can no longer 'recognize the magazine that I sold in 2012'. What follows is a helping of schadenfreude that blows right past the FDA limits. Other people, more serious historians of TNR, can pick it apart if they choose, but… was struck by… [o]nly natural for Peretz to imply that his enemies are anti-Semites, but a better explanation for the magazine's decline, in his era, was its bending-backwards advocacy for the Iraq War…. [I]ts circ dropped by 40 percent from 2002 to 2006, when TNR dug in on the Iraq War, endorsed Joe Lieberman in the 2004 Democratic primary, and generally made errors of trust and logic that poor Peter Beinart has spent years atoning for. The word "Iraq" doesn't make it into the Peretz op-ed at all…. [W]hy bother looking for consistency from Peretz in anything apart from Arab-bashing?… [H]totally glides past the magazine's backing of a trillion-dollar foreign policy disaster."
Alice Domurat Dreger: Darkness’s Descent on the American Anthropological Association: A Cautionary Tale | David Cutler and Nikhil Sahni: JAMA Forum: The Forecast Slowdown in Medicare Spending: Is More Coming? | Michael Pettis: A brief history of the Chinese growth model | Mark Thoma: Economist's View: Confidence is Just around the Corner! | Tim Duy: Economist's View: Fed Watch: Don't Dismiss the Communications Value of QE | Schedule your Tweets | Miles Corak (2012): The Economics of the Great Gatsby Curve | Ryan Avent: More Inflation Is the Cure for the Fed’s Impotence | Archaeology: Ramses II vizier's pyramid discovered
On February 22, 2013:
- A NOTED DOZEN FOR FEBRUARY 22, 2013 http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/noted-for-february-22-2013.html
- LIVEBLOGGING WORLD WAR II: FEBRUARY 22, 1943 http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/liveblogging-world-war-ii-february-22-1943.html
- HOW DID I MISS GREG MANKIW'S GRANDMOTHER VS. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR? http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/how-did-i-miss-greg-mankiws-grandmother-vs-supreme-court-justice-sotomayor.html
- DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN AND AVIK ROY: "YOU KNOW ALL THAT STUFF WE HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR FOUR YEARS? NEVERMIND!" http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/douglas-holtz-eakin-and-avik-roy-you-know-all-that-stuff-we-have-been-saying-for-four-years-nevermind.html
- READINGS FROM JÉRÉMIE COHEN-SETTON AND MARTIN KESSLER OF BRUEGEL: SAFE ASSETS, THE DOWNTURN, AND THE RECOVERY http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/readings-from-jérémie-cohen-setton-and-martin-kessler-of-bruegel-safe-assets-the-downturn-and-the-recovery.html
- PAUL KRUGMAN: PAUL DE GRAUWE AND THE REHN OF TERROR http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/paul-krugman-paul-de-grauwe-and-the-rehn-of-terror.html
- FRIDAY MUSIC: RILO KILEY: SILVER LINING http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/rilo-kiley-silver-lining.html
- EZRA KLEIN SMACKS DOWN DAVID BROOKS: "CENTRISM" WEBLOGGING http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/ezra-klein-smacks-down-david-brooks-centrism-weblogging.html
