Or a good weekend of binge drinking

3 IQ points, that is. The statistically significant, but not quite practically, significant difference in the IQs between eldest Norwegian men and their siblings. Jake Young says so what here.

To put this into perspective, the traditional standard deviation of IQ is 15 points. In the standard deviation for height in inches in the USA for 19 year olds, is about 5 inches. So, 3 IQ points can be compared to to one inch of height for American 19 year olds.

Yeah, fuck judicial review

So exactly why do we put up with this? If the Supreme Court is not going to enunciate, generation after generation, a basic set of rights, what good is it? If it doesn't represent a place where the little guy can get justice, then what good is it? We hardly need another institution where individual freedom is trampled on. We certainly need no reinforcement for the power of vested interest. And we don't need an overseer of limited capacity and overwrought opinions to tell expert agencies, much less overburdened legislatures, what to do.

Opines Reed Hundt, former FCC chairman.

Almost everything about the Supreme Court's traditions, not to mention its actions, seems increasingly anachronistic. Why do they wear robes? Who else wears such garments? Why don't they all feel the need to talk -- surely Justice Thomas doesn't think he's helping America by his silence, and the others don't help matters by making such an enormous deal out of their weirdly coded speaking. Why are they so obscure and often arrogant in their language? Is this what they were trained to do, or have they expanded on this trait only after getting lifetime appointments?

The punchline is, and I shit you not when I blockquote this from his bio

Reed Hundt graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School, practiced law for 18 years

Libertarians for Bloomberg '08 - "Remember who he isn't."

Discussing this interview of Ralph Nader, Matt Yglesias says:

From a Reason magazine perspective, it seems to me that a Bloomberg Administration is likely to be substantially more libertarian than either a Democratic or a Republican one would be. Bloomberg, however, is specifically identified with a brand of trivial nanny-stating -- indoor smoking ban, trans fat ban -- that seems to be to aggravate libertarians in a manner that's out of proportion to the actual significance of the policy issues.

In defense of the Bloomberg haters, he is "specifically identified" with trivial nanny-stating because it's the main thing he's known for on the national stage and he does tend to take it too far, even by the standards of many people who don't mind a little gov't meddling. Libertarians aren't reflexively rejecting any candidate who engages in a little nanny statism - Bill Richardson is a smoking ban supporter (not to mention a cock-fight ban supporter), but they're not exactly calling for his blood.

On the other hand, I don't think I'd be risking my libertarian cred too much to say that Bloomberg may accomplish the small feat of being the most libertarian-friendly presidential candidate coming out of New York this election.

"With input and ideas from our users..."

Google's public policy team has a blog. Mosey on over and vent your semi-informed opinions on net neutrality!

Friday WTF?!: The Obvious Choice

You know your local crazy guy with a public access cable show? Alaska's is running for president.

Cut and Run

First Iraq, and now an in-depth debate about interpretations of Richard Rorty But given the facts on the ground it's probably the best decision in both cases.

And now a significantly less snarky post about Prof DeLong's Plan

The plan is here if you haven't seen it. Aside from disagreements over how much health paternalism the government sound engage in to keep down costs (Brad favors A LOT), the funding scheme also raises some issues.

First off, 20% of your income can be a lot of money depending on your situation. This doesn't matter that much for people who do have insurance who will recoup most of the cost of their previous insurance plans. However, this will be a major drain on the liquidity of those who don't currently have insurance who will have to fork over 20% of their current income up front. Three quarters of this (15% of total) goes into a HSA, but for someone who is unlikely to need much non-emergency care (young males) or will be mostly covered by the free preventative care (young females), this money is effectively tied up until the next tax rebate.

For most people who have insurance, it will be a step down in coverage. This may actually drive savings by making costs more transparent to the consumers, but on the other hand, it means that there will still be an unsatisfied demand for insurance due to risk adversity (15% of most people's income is a lot for them), so unless it is outlawed, the demand for some private insurance will still be out there. I'd also like to point out that insurance companies are probably more efficient drivers of cost suppression than individuals, since assessing medical necessity requires specialized knowledge and they both have a financial incentive.

Finally, health care spending, the distribution of which is neatly displayed in Figure 1 here is dominated by the top quintile, which accounts for 80% of spending. Accounting for a mere 3.4% of costs, the bottom 50% would mostly be using just the preventative care and will have a bunch of money pointlessly locked up in an HSA. On the other hand, the top 5%, where 49.2% of the costs lie, will tend to be well past the maximum out of pocket. The area where the least cost-effective interventions lie is also where government rationing is going to be the dominant factor, which you may take in whatever direction your presumably strong preexisting opinion of the efficiency of government health care rationing guides you. This is also unlikely to be covered by the 5% of income allocated for both it and the free preventative care (aside: Free preventative care isn't that expensive and probably isn't a horrible idea if you're going single payer. Of course, insurance companies tend to cover it well too, so there's nothing special about single payer here either.), so we'd be on the hook for some general budget tax increases on top of the 5-20% extra on income.