Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

Economics

The Federal Budget: Getting What We Asked For.

Budgeting is governing, so the federal budget is rightly the stage for intense political struggle. It also means that a budget is fundamentally as much about setting the stage for a political fight as it is a reflection of priorities. So what does the new stage look like? You can see a more interactive version here. [...]

Mills College: Women’s Education in a Post-Male World

Towards the end of last year’s hit movie, The Kids are All Right, Nic and Jules (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore) drop off their daughter Joni (Mia Wasikowska) to begin her freshmen year at an attractive, unnamed college. The campus was gorgeous — its stately buildings and lawns captured the promise of a nourishing and provocative [...]

The Long Slide: Amazon Sells More Digital than Printed Books.

I have always loved printed books. I like discovering them and reading them. I like how they look, feel, and smell. I like rooms filled with books like the reading room of the British Museum or the New York Public Library or the rare book room at Shakespeare’s. I like the cluttered shelves of professor’s [...]

Obama: Looking for Dumb Federal Programs? Kill 13(c).

Obama this week announced an effort to hunt and destroy stupid federal programs. As he well knows, these programs are easy to find but tough to kill. I learned this when I was put in charge of a really stupid federal program. I got agreement at the highest levels of government to kill it. The [...]

California is Italy. Texas is Russia. Vermont is Yemen.

Always a sucker for a good graphic or a good map. Note that you can compare states with countries based on their populations or on the size of their respective economies.

Finally — a People’s Diesel Comes to the US

I fell in love with diesel engines back when they had glow coils, sulfuric fuel, and took 30 seconds to start. Diesel was the sound and smell of progress in every real factory and many cities. What was not to like? For good reason, California never shared my enthusiasm. Diesel engines coughed up a lot of [...]

My Two Worst Technology Predictions

In the spirit of the New Year, it is time to take stock, confront shortcomings, and resolve to improve. I’ll get 2011 off to a clean start byI confessing to two whopping errors. There were plenty of small things that did not work out as I said they would, but two of my predictions were [...]

When will China overtake the US as the world’s largest economy? Place your bets…

The Economist has a useful tool. Plug in the variables and see when the Chinese economy gets larger than ours. (Hint, if you get a date before 2015 or after 2020, you are dreaming…)

Brad DeLong: Seven Reasons That Markets Work Well — and Seven Reasons That They Don’t.

Brad DeLong is an accomplished economic historian at Berkeley, a former Clinton official, and a pioneering blogger. His posts are a mix of uncommonly intelligent economic policy thoughts, useful links to other economists, and reflections about about technology. DeLong recently gave his students some well thought out advice: What Econ 1 Students Need to Remember Most from the [...]

On Obama’s Presidential Week

For those keeping score at home, Barack Obama is having the best week of his Presidency. He has or is about to get Congress to: repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which will go down in history as a civil rights landmark ratify a new START treaty, the first arms control treaty every ratified by a Democratic [...]

Wave Goodbye to Traditional Telcos

A third wave is about to hit the telecommunications industry. It is very unlikely to damage the industry, but it will force some of its biggest players to once again become dull and regulated. Consumers will celebrate because telcos that provide only dumb pipes are not a problem, they are a solution.  The first wave to [...]

A Whitman Deer in California Headlights

It’s a good time to live in the Bay Area. Not only do you get to watch the Giants absolutely pulverize the Texas Rangers, but you get to watch Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina spend a great deal of their own money on vanity campaigns. Politico reports that as of last week, Meg has spent [...]

Five Thousand US Janitors have PhDs. So?

With a kid in college, I naturally wonder whether the cost is worth it. So take a look at the following BLS data on a couple of million people who went to college but did not end up doing work that requires a college degree: NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES WITH COLLEGE DEGREES   What is going [...]

Inside Job: Charles Ferguson Brings his Camera Home

Charles Ferguson has done it again. His second film, Inside Job is a good movie and an extremely important one. Whether you enter the theater Democrat or Republican, you will leave it ready to man the barricades against Wall Street. You will also leave the theater much smarter: despite an MBA and more than a [...]

A Tribute to Our New Apple Masters

I praised Steve Jobs for his presentations, his products, and his audacity. I have criticized him for his imperiousness, his meglomania, and his high control business strategy. Like you, I shoulda bought the stock when it fell to $80 during the crash (“Apple is trading for it’s friggin’ CASH!” I yelled at my wife and myself at the [...]

Chance Favors the Connected Mind

This weekend, the Wall Street Journal published a very insightful article by Steve Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You, which argues that video games and TV shows are actually making us smarter and The Ghost Map, which chronicles the heroic efforts of John Snow to prove that London’s terrifying 19th century cholera epidemics were [...]

Tax Cars, Not Gas

If, like many people, you think that we are burning more carbon than is healthy for the planet, you are likely of the view that we need to put a price on carbon. You would assert that like any other kind of pollution, our carbon output represents what economists like to term an externality:  the market [...]

In Praise of Dumb Pipes

“Net neutrality” is a confusing term that describes an important debate over the rights of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like cable, mobile, satellite, and telephone companies. At its simplest, the issue is will we force ISPs to be “dumb pipes” by law or can they “add value”? To a first approximation, the right answer turns [...]

Ben Horowitz: High Tech’s New Andy Grove

If Silicon Valley is rich, how come it ain’t smart? How is it that we consistently generate innovative companies but rarely produce management thinkers of consequence? Part of the problem is that many technology leaders are neurotic. They need to be: nobody really knows what is going to work and your idea will most likely [...]

The Kindle: Dead, Deadly, and Dominant

Just before the launch of the iPad, I ventured the safe prediction that Amazon’s ebook reader, the Kindle, was kindling. It was doomed to  be crushed by Apple’s reactionary, if magical, iPad. As hardware, the Kindle is history, but as software it is brilliant, with enduring advantages over Apple’s iBook. During the last four months, Amazon has [...]