It is often said that the environmental movement has less creativity than a dead clam. Nothing demonstrates this point better than the lack of interest in promoting pay by the mile auto insurance.
I am reminded of this issue by a piece on Morning Edition that discussed how the recent drop in gas prices will be associated with thousands of more deaths in traffic accidents. The point is simple: people will be driving more and faster, therefore there will be more accidents and more deaths.
This brings up pay by the mile insurance since the point of the piece is that high gas prices gave people an incentive to drive less and more slowly. If insurance were on a pay by the mile basis it would also give people an incentive to drive less and ideally more safely.
The arithmetic is straightforward and striking. The average insurance policy is around $1,000 a year. The average driver puts in roughly 10,000 miles a year on their car. (These are rough numbers, but last time I checked they were in the ballpark.) This comes to 10 cents if insurance were paid on a per mile basis.
If a typical car gets 20 miles a gallon, then having insurance paid on a per mile basis is the equivalent of a $2.00 a gallon gas tax in discouraging driving. That should be a big deal and the sort of thing that environmentalists should be pushing for, since it is likely far more politically feasible than a $2.00 a gallon gas tax.
Just to be clear, this is not on average increasing insurance costs. It will redistribute them from people who drive relatively little to people who drive a lot. (Insurers already have some differences based on miles driven, but they don’t come close to reflecting the actual difference in risks — as they will tell you.)
Also, charging per mile doesn’t prevent insurance companies from factoring in driving records or distinguishing between rural and urban miles. The insurers know where people live and they know their driving records. These could be easily factored in when setting the per mile rates.
Anyhow, a modest subsidy for people to buy pay by the mile policies could go a long way in changing incentives and reducing driving and greenhouse gas emissions. (Note the adverse selection goes in the right direction here. Low mileage drivers would opt for pay by the mile policies leaving high mileage high risk drivers in the conventional insurance pool.)
This should have been an obvious policy to push for those who want to stop global warming, but it might require a bit of new thinking.
It is often said that the environmental movement has less creativity than a dead clam. Nothing demonstrates this point better than the lack of interest in promoting pay by the mile auto insurance.
I am reminded of this issue by a piece on Morning Edition that discussed how the recent drop in gas prices will be associated with thousands of more deaths in traffic accidents. The point is simple: people will be driving more and faster, therefore there will be more accidents and more deaths.
This brings up pay by the mile insurance since the point of the piece is that high gas prices gave people an incentive to drive less and more slowly. If insurance were on a pay by the mile basis it would also give people an incentive to drive less and ideally more safely.
The arithmetic is straightforward and striking. The average insurance policy is around $1,000 a year. The average driver puts in roughly 10,000 miles a year on their car. (These are rough numbers, but last time I checked they were in the ballpark.) This comes to 10 cents if insurance were paid on a per mile basis.
If a typical car gets 20 miles a gallon, then having insurance paid on a per mile basis is the equivalent of a $2.00 a gallon gas tax in discouraging driving. That should be a big deal and the sort of thing that environmentalists should be pushing for, since it is likely far more politically feasible than a $2.00 a gallon gas tax.
Just to be clear, this is not on average increasing insurance costs. It will redistribute them from people who drive relatively little to people who drive a lot. (Insurers already have some differences based on miles driven, but they don’t come close to reflecting the actual difference in risks — as they will tell you.)
Also, charging per mile doesn’t prevent insurance companies from factoring in driving records or distinguishing between rural and urban miles. The insurers know where people live and they know their driving records. These could be easily factored in when setting the per mile rates.
Anyhow, a modest subsidy for people to buy pay by the mile policies could go a long way in changing incentives and reducing driving and greenhouse gas emissions. (Note the adverse selection goes in the right direction here. Low mileage drivers would opt for pay by the mile policies leaving high mileage high risk drivers in the conventional insurance pool.)
This should have been an obvious policy to push for those who want to stop global warming, but it might require a bit of new thinking.
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Robert Samuelson gave his assessment of where the economy stands in his column this morning. At one point he tells readers that if the economy creates 230,000 jobs a month, by the end of the year it will be approaching full employment.
Even if the economy adds 230,000 jobs a month in 2015, by the end of the year it will still be more than 3 million jobs below what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other forecasters projected before the downturn. That would imply that the economy would still be far below full employment.
Of course it is possible that CBO’s projections about the labor force from 2008 were wrong, but this raises the obvious question of when CBO stopped being wrong. It is not obvious that it has learned more about the economy and the labor market in the last seven years, therefore it is not clear that its current assessment of the labor market should be treated as more accurate than its assessment from 2008.
Also, contrary to what is asserted in the article, Japan has been seeing rapid growth in employment under its new stimulus policies. In fact, its employment to population ratio has risen more than twice as much as the U.S. ratio since the end of 2012 when it adopted these policies. It is likely to again see healthy growth in 2015 now that it has put off a scheduled increase in the sales tax.
Robert Samuelson gave his assessment of where the economy stands in his column this morning. At one point he tells readers that if the economy creates 230,000 jobs a month, by the end of the year it will be approaching full employment.
Even if the economy adds 230,000 jobs a month in 2015, by the end of the year it will still be more than 3 million jobs below what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other forecasters projected before the downturn. That would imply that the economy would still be far below full employment.
Of course it is possible that CBO’s projections about the labor force from 2008 were wrong, but this raises the obvious question of when CBO stopped being wrong. It is not obvious that it has learned more about the economy and the labor market in the last seven years, therefore it is not clear that its current assessment of the labor market should be treated as more accurate than its assessment from 2008.
Also, contrary to what is asserted in the article, Japan has been seeing rapid growth in employment under its new stimulus policies. In fact, its employment to population ratio has risen more than twice as much as the U.S. ratio since the end of 2012 when it adopted these policies. It is likely to again see healthy growth in 2015 now that it has put off a scheduled increase in the sales tax.
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Bob Kuttner has a column in the Huffington Post warning of the dangers of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP). Kuttner correctly points out that the deal is not really about reducing trade barriers, which are already minimal, but rather about locking in place a business-friendly structure of regulation (wrongly described as “deregulation”).
At one point Kuttner refers to projections that the TTIP will increase GDP in the EU and U.S. by 0.5 percent. It is important to note that this projection is for the period after the deal is fully implemented, more than a decade after it is signed. That means the projection implies an increase in the growth rate of less than 0.05 percentage points annually, an amount far too small to be measured accurately.
It is also worth noting that this projection does not incorporate any negative impact from the protectionist parts of the TTIP. The deal is likely to strengthen patent and copyright protections, leading to higher prices for drugs, software, and other products, all of which will be a drain on consumers and a drag on growth.
Bob Kuttner has a column in the Huffington Post warning of the dangers of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP). Kuttner correctly points out that the deal is not really about reducing trade barriers, which are already minimal, but rather about locking in place a business-friendly structure of regulation (wrongly described as “deregulation”).
At one point Kuttner refers to projections that the TTIP will increase GDP in the EU and U.S. by 0.5 percent. It is important to note that this projection is for the period after the deal is fully implemented, more than a decade after it is signed. That means the projection implies an increase in the growth rate of less than 0.05 percentage points annually, an amount far too small to be measured accurately.
It is also worth noting that this projection does not incorporate any negative impact from the protectionist parts of the TTIP. The deal is likely to strengthen patent and copyright protections, leading to higher prices for drugs, software, and other products, all of which will be a drain on consumers and a drag on growth.
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That’s what readers of a NYT article on the drop in the value of the euro would conclude. The piece told readers that the recent rise in the dollar is:
“A strong dollar is a welcome reflection of a United States economy that is growing and adding jobs at a faster clip than many of its peers.”
Of course a strong dollar will make U.S. goods and services less competitive internationally, leading to a rise in the trade deficit. the drop in the trade deficit in the third quarter added 0.8 percentage points to the quarter’s growth. It is likely that the rise in the deficit in the fourth quarter will subtract at least that much from the growth rate. In an economy that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is still operating at a level of output that is almost 4 percentage points (@ $600 billion a year) below its potential level of output, and is down close to 6 million jobs from its trend path, it is bizarre to call a rise in the dollar that will slow growth as “welcome.”
This article gets many other issues wrong as well. It tells readers;
“To jump-start growth and avoid deflation, many analysts say the most powerful policy arrow in Mr. Draghi’s quiver is to talk the euro sharply downward, which would bolster exports, increase the price of imports and ultimately, it is hoped, stimulate an increase in inflation.”
There is no reason to believe that Mr. Drago is in particular trying to avoid deflation unless he is a member of some bizarre cult of zero worshippers. Having the inflation rate cross zero doesn’t make any difference, the problem is that the inflation rate in the euro zone is too low. Draghi wants to raise the inflation rate, it’s that simple.
The piece also notes a shift in bank reserves from euros to dollars and comments that it, “could signal a long-term preference on the part of central bankers for high-yielding dollars in favor of less lucrative euros.”
Actually central banks usually are not especially interested in the returns on their reserve holdings and they certainly are not making long-term plans since they shift their holdings all the time. If there is a return issue at hand, some central banks may have made the bet that the euro would fall in the short-term against the dollar. Now that the euro has lost considerable ground, they may make a decision to start shifting back to euros from dollars.
Remarkably in the discussion of relative currency values the piece never refers to the trade deficit in the United States. This deficit is the primary cause of the secular stagnation, or lack of demand, that many economists have now determined to be the country’s main economic problem. The trade deficit pulls more than $500 billion in demand out of the economy every year. From an economic standpoint it has the same impact as if people suddenly decided to cut back their annual consumption by $500 billion. There is no easy way to replace this demand domestically, which is why the United States economy remains severely depressed more than seven years after the recession began.
That’s what readers of a NYT article on the drop in the value of the euro would conclude. The piece told readers that the recent rise in the dollar is:
“A strong dollar is a welcome reflection of a United States economy that is growing and adding jobs at a faster clip than many of its peers.”
Of course a strong dollar will make U.S. goods and services less competitive internationally, leading to a rise in the trade deficit. the drop in the trade deficit in the third quarter added 0.8 percentage points to the quarter’s growth. It is likely that the rise in the deficit in the fourth quarter will subtract at least that much from the growth rate. In an economy that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is still operating at a level of output that is almost 4 percentage points (@ $600 billion a year) below its potential level of output, and is down close to 6 million jobs from its trend path, it is bizarre to call a rise in the dollar that will slow growth as “welcome.”
This article gets many other issues wrong as well. It tells readers;
“To jump-start growth and avoid deflation, many analysts say the most powerful policy arrow in Mr. Draghi’s quiver is to talk the euro sharply downward, which would bolster exports, increase the price of imports and ultimately, it is hoped, stimulate an increase in inflation.”
There is no reason to believe that Mr. Drago is in particular trying to avoid deflation unless he is a member of some bizarre cult of zero worshippers. Having the inflation rate cross zero doesn’t make any difference, the problem is that the inflation rate in the euro zone is too low. Draghi wants to raise the inflation rate, it’s that simple.
The piece also notes a shift in bank reserves from euros to dollars and comments that it, “could signal a long-term preference on the part of central bankers for high-yielding dollars in favor of less lucrative euros.”
Actually central banks usually are not especially interested in the returns on their reserve holdings and they certainly are not making long-term plans since they shift their holdings all the time. If there is a return issue at hand, some central banks may have made the bet that the euro would fall in the short-term against the dollar. Now that the euro has lost considerable ground, they may make a decision to start shifting back to euros from dollars.
Remarkably in the discussion of relative currency values the piece never refers to the trade deficit in the United States. This deficit is the primary cause of the secular stagnation, or lack of demand, that many economists have now determined to be the country’s main economic problem. The trade deficit pulls more than $500 billion in demand out of the economy every year. From an economic standpoint it has the same impact as if people suddenly decided to cut back their annual consumption by $500 billion. There is no easy way to replace this demand domestically, which is why the United States economy remains severely depressed more than seven years after the recession began.
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The it’s hard to get good help crowd keep trying to push the bizarre line that the world is running out of people. This theme appears in a NYT piece on Japan’s efforts to end gender discrimination in the work place and to make it easier for women to hold on to jobs as they raise children. For example, it tells readers:
“The national birthrate is just 1.4 children per woman, among the lowest in the world and well below the level needed to ward off a sharp decline in population in the coming decades. And when Japanese women do have children, they quit their jobs more often than mothers in other industrialized countries, leaving a hole in an already dwindling work force.”
There is no obvious problem with a declining work force. This means that there will be more demand for the workers Japan does have. They will shift from relatively low productivity jobs (e.g. the midnight shift at a convenience story or parking cars at restaurants) into higher productivity and higher paying jobs that otherwise might go vacant. From the standpoint of the well-being of the Japanese population, this is good news since it is likely to increase pay for most workers, even if it means less overall growth. It is per capita income that is relevant for well-being, not total GDP. People in Denmark are much wealthier than people in Bangladesh, in spite of the higher GDP in the latter.
Also, it is important to note that in even modest increase in productivity growth will swamp the impact of plausible differences in the dependency ratios that would result from more children. (Also, the relevant dependency ratio includes dependent children.) It is also necessary to remember that hours worked can various enormously. Since the collapse of its bubbles in 1990 the length of the average work year has declined by almost 15 percent in Japan, the equivalent of more than seven weeks of annual vacation. This is not a pattern we would expect to see in a country suffering from a shortage of workers.
Finally, a smaller population will make it easier for Japan to reduce its greenhouse emissions, helping to contain global warming. It will also make a densely populated island less crowded.
The it’s hard to get good help crowd keep trying to push the bizarre line that the world is running out of people. This theme appears in a NYT piece on Japan’s efforts to end gender discrimination in the work place and to make it easier for women to hold on to jobs as they raise children. For example, it tells readers:
“The national birthrate is just 1.4 children per woman, among the lowest in the world and well below the level needed to ward off a sharp decline in population in the coming decades. And when Japanese women do have children, they quit their jobs more often than mothers in other industrialized countries, leaving a hole in an already dwindling work force.”
There is no obvious problem with a declining work force. This means that there will be more demand for the workers Japan does have. They will shift from relatively low productivity jobs (e.g. the midnight shift at a convenience story or parking cars at restaurants) into higher productivity and higher paying jobs that otherwise might go vacant. From the standpoint of the well-being of the Japanese population, this is good news since it is likely to increase pay for most workers, even if it means less overall growth. It is per capita income that is relevant for well-being, not total GDP. People in Denmark are much wealthier than people in Bangladesh, in spite of the higher GDP in the latter.
Also, it is important to note that in even modest increase in productivity growth will swamp the impact of plausible differences in the dependency ratios that would result from more children. (Also, the relevant dependency ratio includes dependent children.) It is also necessary to remember that hours worked can various enormously. Since the collapse of its bubbles in 1990 the length of the average work year has declined by almost 15 percent in Japan, the equivalent of more than seven weeks of annual vacation. This is not a pattern we would expect to see in a country suffering from a shortage of workers.
Finally, a smaller population will make it easier for Japan to reduce its greenhouse emissions, helping to contain global warming. It will also make a densely populated island less crowded.
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That’s what millions of readers of Ron Haskins’ column in the NYT on designing effective social programs will be asking. The column tells readers:
“When John M. Bridgeland led Mr. Bush’s Domestic Policy Council, he was amazed to find 339 federal programs for disadvantaged youth, administered by 12 departments and agencies, at a cost of $224 billion.”
The piece doesn’t indicate whether this spending is for one or ten years. (My guess is the latter, but I’m not really sure without looking at the research to see what is included.) Also, unless folks have a good memory, they are unlikely to know how important this spending was to the government and the economy. The budget was just under $1,800 billion in 2000, which would make the spending close to 12 percent of the budget for one-year. Projected spending for the ten-year budget horizon was over $20 trillion, which would have made the spending in question close to 1.0 percent of projected spending.
Ron Haskins is a serious researcher raising an important point, but it would be helpful if this number were expressed in a way that provided meaningful information to readers.
That’s what millions of readers of Ron Haskins’ column in the NYT on designing effective social programs will be asking. The column tells readers:
“When John M. Bridgeland led Mr. Bush’s Domestic Policy Council, he was amazed to find 339 federal programs for disadvantaged youth, administered by 12 departments and agencies, at a cost of $224 billion.”
The piece doesn’t indicate whether this spending is for one or ten years. (My guess is the latter, but I’m not really sure without looking at the research to see what is included.) Also, unless folks have a good memory, they are unlikely to know how important this spending was to the government and the economy. The budget was just under $1,800 billion in 2000, which would make the spending close to 12 percent of the budget for one-year. Projected spending for the ten-year budget horizon was over $20 trillion, which would have made the spending in question close to 1.0 percent of projected spending.
Ron Haskins is a serious researcher raising an important point, but it would be helpful if this number were expressed in a way that provided meaningful information to readers.
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The NYT reported that the European Union (EU) will start collecting a tax on digital transactions in 2015 that is expected to raise $1 billion this year. For those who are not very familiar with the size of the EU economy, it is projected to be close to $19 trillion in 2015, which means that the revenue from this tax will be a bit less than 0.006 percent of GDP.
The NYT reported that the European Union (EU) will start collecting a tax on digital transactions in 2015 that is expected to raise $1 billion this year. For those who are not very familiar with the size of the EU economy, it is projected to be close to $19 trillion in 2015, which means that the revenue from this tax will be a bit less than 0.006 percent of GDP.
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That’s what readers of his column on Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo would likely conclude. The column has the subhead, “Gina Raimondo’s approach to income inequality.”
There is not much in the piece that directly addresses income inequality as most of us would think about it. The piece highlights Raimondo’s cuts to the pensions of public sector workers. This is not a group of people that ordinarily is considered to be among the rich. While the piece tells us that she “framed the cutbacks as progressive,” it doesn’t follow that they are in fact progressive. (The piece neglected to mention that under Raimondo’s plan hedge funds may make large profits on handling the state’s pension fund money at the expense of public sector workers and taxpayers.)
The piece then tells readers that the pension cuts:
“provided a template for how politicians in Washington could try to rein in Social Security and Medicare spending, if they wished.”
The piece also indicates that Raimondo is either incredibly naive or dishonest. It reports:
“She said that she has told Wall Street titans point blank that they should be paying higher federal taxes and leveling the playing field, but with this message: ‘I need you to double down on America. We need you. We need your brains, we need your money, we need your engagement — not because it’s Wall Street versus Main Street, but because you’re some of the smartest, richest people in the world, and you need to be a part of fixing America, because you want to live in an America that’s the best country in the world.'”
Wall Street titans make investment choices based on profits, not admonitions from politicians. If Raimondo doesn’t understand this fact, she is dangerously naive. If she does, then her comment was meant to deceive the public.
That’s what readers of his column on Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo would likely conclude. The column has the subhead, “Gina Raimondo’s approach to income inequality.”
There is not much in the piece that directly addresses income inequality as most of us would think about it. The piece highlights Raimondo’s cuts to the pensions of public sector workers. This is not a group of people that ordinarily is considered to be among the rich. While the piece tells us that she “framed the cutbacks as progressive,” it doesn’t follow that they are in fact progressive. (The piece neglected to mention that under Raimondo’s plan hedge funds may make large profits on handling the state’s pension fund money at the expense of public sector workers and taxpayers.)
The piece then tells readers that the pension cuts:
“provided a template for how politicians in Washington could try to rein in Social Security and Medicare spending, if they wished.”
The piece also indicates that Raimondo is either incredibly naive or dishonest. It reports:
“She said that she has told Wall Street titans point blank that they should be paying higher federal taxes and leveling the playing field, but with this message: ‘I need you to double down on America. We need you. We need your brains, we need your money, we need your engagement — not because it’s Wall Street versus Main Street, but because you’re some of the smartest, richest people in the world, and you need to be a part of fixing America, because you want to live in an America that’s the best country in the world.'”
Wall Street titans make investment choices based on profits, not admonitions from politicians. If Raimondo doesn’t understand this fact, she is dangerously naive. If she does, then her comment was meant to deceive the public.
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That’s a question millions are asking after seeing the results of a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that showed that 41 percent of the public believes the Affordable Care Act created
“a government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare.”
An equal number knew that no such panel existed and the rest didn’t know. If we assume that support for Obamacare among the 41 percent who believe in death panels is in the single digits, then support among the people who know that the ACA did not create death panels must be well over 70 percent.
That’s a question millions are asking after seeing the results of a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that showed that 41 percent of the public believes the Affordable Care Act created
“a government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare.”
An equal number knew that no such panel existed and the rest didn’t know. If we assume that support for Obamacare among the 41 percent who believe in death panels is in the single digits, then support among the people who know that the ACA did not create death panels must be well over 70 percent.
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