Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

Politics

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…)

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 [...]

WikiLeaks: A Problem, Not a Solution

In rushing to defend and celebrate WikiLeaks, an unruly collection of progressives, libertarians, and hackers are guilty of basic and careless policy mistakes. Some believe that WikiLeaks is a basic first amendment matter. It should not be. So far, with no exceptions that I am aware of, leakers get punished and publishers do not. Once [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Trading With the Enemy: Smart, but Never Popular

The recent and overdue debate about the Israeli blockade of Gaza raises an old, unresolved question: does shunning our enemies work or do we do them more harm by embracing them? For me, this is not a theological or moral question, although I always loved the suggestion attributed to Mark Twain to “love your enemies — [...]

The First Rule of Holes

California is quickly learning the first rule of holes: when you find yourself at the bottom of one, stop digging. Banks, insurance companies, and pension funds buy government bonds because they are a very safe investment. Suppose they have to choose between the bonds of: a) Mexico. The world's newest narco-state, so beloved by its citizens [...]

From the New Deal to the BFD

You had to laugh. When Joe Biden introduced the President at the White House health care bill signing today, he leaned over and quietly reminded Obama that "this is a big fucking deal". His comment was off color but on target.  Health care reform is a watershed. Not only did the federal government finally grant [...]

The People's Republic of Apple

Apple, Google, and Microsoft are the three most important technology companies in the world and they  now mirror the world's three most important economies. Apple is China, booming but autocratic. Microsoft is Europe, wealthy, stagnant, and declining. Google is the USA, an immature but powerful force for freedom prone to arrogance and to fighting too many wars at [...]

The Elephant in the Room on Health Care

Today is Obama's health care summit, and there is an elephant in the room. To find it, start by identifying which of the following health care plans is or was sponsored by a Republican?     a) A 1996 plan to cover every American      b) A 1992 plan to cover 30 out of 35 million uninsured Americans     c) A [...]

Warfare at the PhD level

Failure is usually easy to spot since mistakes are costly, painful, or at least embarrassing. Success, on the other hand, is easy to overlook. Noticing what works is important in business and in wartime — especially if the war is not going well.  I wrote earlier about the success of the 101st Airborne in Mosul, [...]

Health Care: simple, basic, fully financed

Martha Coakley's unwelcome but richly-deserved loss of the Democratic Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy has recast the debate over health care reform. Many Democratic Senators from states less blue than Massachusetts are recalibrating their commitment to the current bill. If he wants a bill he can proudly sign, Obama needs to focus the Congress [...]

The speeches that made Barack Obama

More than any president since Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama reveals himself through the speeches he gives at critical moments. Like FDR, Kennedy, and Lincoln, Obama has given his best speeches under pressure, before hostile audiences, or in the face of excruciating pressure. He has done this often enough that it is worth laying these speeches [...]

Atul Gawande: America's Doctor

Who is Atul Gawande and why is he having a bigger impact on your life than any physician in America who is not treating you? Gawwande is a cancer surgeon in Boston. A Rhodes Scholar and the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant", he trained at Harvard, and Stanford and grabbed a Masters in Public [...]

The Great Sell-out.

It's Oaklandish — the great liberal caterwauling about the death of the public option and the claims that Obama has sold out to big insurance and pharma. To humiliate a liberal, film this stuff and replay it in ten years. If this is a sell-out, count me a buyer. Last night's Senate deal killed Harry [...]

Solar Power

There is a natural and healthy tension between politics and markets. The tension is the difference between socially oriented citizens who are often unfamiliar with business and in any case favor the strong, visible hand of government protection and their commercially-oriented brethren who prefer the invisible hand of market competition and generally view government as [...]

The Hamilton Mixtape: "Cause I'm the damned genius that shot him"

One of the cool things about being President is that talented people of all sorts are happy to drop by and perform for you. Last May, the White House sponsored "Poetry, Music, and Spoken Word", an opportunity to let people most of us have never heard of get their 15 minutes.   In the Heights [...]

Did Susan B. Anthony and Abraham Lincoln elect Barack Obama?

In the earliest days of the United States, only white protestant men with property were eligible to vote, Since that time however, the US has steadily, if unevenly, advanced the cause of suffrage. Has it mattered? To find out, ask how the 2008 presidential election would have turned out if only white men had voted. [...]