I generally find more bad news than good news in the actions of governments, but there have been a few recent bright sports.
The Paradox of Shrink
Earlier this week Alex Tabarrok highlighted the opposite trends in the numbers of fires and firefighters. Despite the 40% decrease in fires over the past 35 years, the number of career firefighters has increased 40%. With the huge increase in firefighters per fire, a lot of them spend more time tagging along with ambulances or finding other city busywork.
Many commenters denied this was proof that firefighters are oversupplied, but I think they either have to be oversupplied now or very undersupplied 35 years ago. Given the apparent lack of a fire apocalypse in the 80’s, and the increasing non-firefighting work of firefighters today, I think the evidence is pretty strong. Some argued that it’s useful for firefighters to answer medical calls as they often arrive quicker than ambulances, but that doesn’t prove that firefighters need to be the ones doing that, especially if “it costs $3,500 every time a fire truck pulls out of a fire station in Washington, DC.”
If firefighters are oversupplied, who is to blame? It’s easy to pick on pushy unions taking advantage of budgets in good times, but maybe we need to look no farther than ourselves.
The Economics of Home Alone
Last night I watched Home Alone, the 1990 hit film about a boy who is accidentally left at home and defends himself from a couple of dumb burglars. I couldn’t help thinking about many of the interesting ways life has changed in the last twenty years.
1. VCRs were worth stealing. It’s hilarious that the crooks are excited about breaking into the McCallister home because of its “stereos” and “VCRs.” VCRs had become much cheaper and popular by 1990 (Somewhere around 65-70% of households owned one), and based on multiple anecdotes from highly scientific Google searches it looks like they were available around the $200 range (about $357 in 2012 dollars), though more expensive ones existed. Common, valuable, easy to steal.
Today, of course, you can get VCRs for $20 or less at thrift stores. Almost 80% of households own the newer DVD players, of which numerous models exist for under $50. Blu-Ray DVD players are easily found in the $100 range. So after 20 years, more households have much better technology that is much cheaper to buy, even before factoring inflation. Sometimes capitalism is awesome like that.
Everything You Need To Know About Last Week’s News
In reverse order of importance:
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got divorced. Or maybe it was the week before. Somehow they managed to stay in the headlines all week.
There was some controversy over a revelation that US Olympic uniforms were made in China. Next they’ll be telling us the athletes sometimes eat fruit grown in South America! By the way, the 2012 Summer Olympics start July 27.
The sun is ramping up to the most active phase of its 11-year cycle. On Thursday it released an X-class solar flare directly at the earth. Looks like pretty much all it did was create some pretty auroras when it slammed into the earth’s magnetic field over the weekend. (SpaceWeather.com is an incredible resource for keeping up with this stuff.)
Continue reading Everything You Need To Know About Last Week’s News
White House Petitions and the TSA
There’s a petition over on the White House website to “Require the Transportation Security Administration to Follow the Law!” A federal appeals court ordered the TSA to do some stuff a year ago and they still haven’t done it. Unlike most meaningless Internet petitions, if this petition gets to 25,000 signatures in 30 days the White House will issue a response – and it’s already about halfway there after five days.
The Maddening Media
Is it just me, or are the maddening hypocritical focuses of Democrats and the media even more maddening than usual lately?
They’re obsessed that Romney used the word “Obamacare” at an NAACP speech, but they don’t care that Obama and many other liberals have used the same word many times.
They’re obsessed with getting Romney to release his old tax returns, but they don’t care that Obama won’t release his old college transcripts.
They’re obsessed with Romney’s contradictions about his past work at Bain, but they don’t care about Obama’s contradictions about his past involvement with the extreme left New Party.
Voting For Conservative Judges
It’s no secret that many anti-establishment Tea-Party and/or libertarian conservatives don’t like Mitt Romney. Still, many are so fed up with Obama that they seem to be searching for reasons to justify voting for Romney anyway.
One oft-cited reason has to do with the Supreme Court, whose justices tend to be reliably “conservative” or “liberal.” Since they serve for life, it’s a pretty big deal when a President gets to appoint one, and he generally tries to appoint someone who fits his ideology (assuming he can get the current Congress to approve the person). I’ve seen conservatives who don’t like Romney say they plan to vote for him at least so he can appoint conservative judges.
What I Missed
Or, Everything You Need To Know About Last Week’s News
In reverse order of importance:
Anderson Cooper is gay. Andy Griffith is dead. Justin Bieber got a speeding ticket. It’s probably the hottest and driest in most of the US since the 1930’s. Some think climate change is more to blame for this time than the last time. Some don’t.
No More Blogging This Week.
I won’t be doing any more blogging this week. On the off chance that anything crazy happens while I’m gone and you’re actually curious about my opinion on the matter, feel free to leave comments here with requests. Or to talk amongst yourselves. Or to create spam for your acai berry products. I’ll probably be checking the comments though. If you get bored, check the sidebar for more interesting blogs written by more knowledgeable people. Thanks for visiting.
Beware Agenda 21!!!
I got another scary email from AmeriPAC a few days ago about the United Nation’s dangerous “Agenda 21”: