Is There Really A Honey Bee Shortage?

Fewer bees in US a threat to world's almond supply By GOSIA WOZNIACKA. The bees are needed for pollination and they have been suffering from colony collapse disorder in recent years.Excerpt:

"Bee brokers, beekeepers and almond growers around the state say there's a shortage of healthy honeybees for this year's pollination, especially after colony collapse disorder took a higher toll this winter. The disorder, in which honey bees suddenly disappear or die, wipes out thousands of colonies each year.

The shortage has some growers scrambling for bees — even sub-performers — as trees are about to bloom, driving up bee prices again this year, to an all-time high of more than $200 per colony.

"There's definitely a shortage of strong bee colonies," said Joe Traynor, owner of Scientific Ag, which connects growers with beekeepers. "There is a problem covering all the acres of almonds in the state.""

It is not clear that there is really a shortage. For a shortage, there has to be a greater quantity demanded than supplied at a given price. But as the supply of bees has decreased, the price as risen, as the article says. That is how markets work. Yes, there are fewer bees than there used to be, but that does not mean we have a shortage.

What Does Nike Sell?

Click here to find out. It may not be what you think.

Do Illegal Immigrants Actually Hurt the U.S. Economy?

Click here to read the article from today's NY Times magazine. Excerpts:

"Illegal immigration does have some undeniably negative economic effects. Similarly skilled native-born workers are faced with a choice of either accepting lower pay or not working in the field at all. Labor economists have concluded that undocumented workers have lowered the wages of U.S. adults without a high-school diploma — 25 million of them — by anywhere between 0.4 to 7.4 percent.
      

The impact on everyone else, though, is surprisingly positive. Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California, Davis, has written a series of influential papers comparing the labor markets in states with high immigration levels to those with low ones. He concluded that undocumented workers do not compete with skilled laborers — instead, they complement them. Economies, as Adam Smith argued in “Wealth of Nations,” work best when workers become specialized and divide up tasks among themselves."

 

"In states with more undocumented immigrants, Peri said, skilled workers made more money and worked more hours; the economy’s productivity grew. From 1990 to 2007, undocumented workers increased legal workers’ pay in complementary jobs by up to 10 percent."

 

"There are many ways to debate immigration, but when it comes to economics, there isn’t much of a debate at all. Nearly all economists, of all political persuasions, agree that immigrants — those here legally or not — benefit the overall economy. “That is not controversial,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told me. Shierholz also said that “there is a consensus that, on average, the incomes of families in this country are increased by a small, but clearly positive amount, because of immigration.”

 

The benefit multiplies over the long haul. As the baby boomers retire, the post-boom generation’s burden to finance their retirement is greatly alleviated by undocumented immigrants. Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, told me that undocumented workers contribute about $15 billion a year to Social Security through payroll taxes. They only take out $1 billion (very few undocumented workers are eligible to receive benefits). Over the years, undocumented workers have contributed up to $300 billion, or nearly 10 percent, of the $2.7 trillion Social Security Trust Fund."

Does Qatar Have The Highest Per Capita GDP Or Is It Another Country?

Click here to see the CIA rankings on capita GDP. Here is the current top 15:

1	Qatar	$102,800
2	Liechtenstein	$89,400
3	Luxembourg	$80,700
4	Macau	$74,900
5	Bermuda	$69,900
6	Singapore	$60,900
7	Jersey	$57,000
8	Falkland Islands	$55,400
9	Norway	$55,300
10	Hong Kong	$50,700
11	Brunei	$50,500
12	United States	$49,800
13	United Arab Emirates	$49,000
14	Switzerland	$45,300
15	Guernsey	$44,600

The estimates for a few of these countries is for a year before 2012. Qatar has been number 1 for 2-3 years.

But, Monaco, which is listed on the CIA page ranking total GDP, has a per capita GDP of about $179,000. It is not clear why Monaco is listed in the total GDP rankings but not in the per capita GDP rankings. Click here to see the CIA rankings for total GDP.

Monaco has a population of 30,510. It has a total GDP of $5,470,000,000. Both figures are according to the CIA. That would be a per capita GDP of about $179,000, much higher than any other country. But I have never seen Monaco in the per capita GDP rankings.

Click here to see the Monaco page at the CIA.

A Special Valentine's Message On Romantic Love

Below is a repeat of last year's Valentine's day post. I am not sure if the links are still working:

The first one is Researchers at AAAS Annual Meeting Explore the Science of Kissing . The following quote gives you an idea of what it is all about: "Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women." I guess economists call this "interdependent utility functions." Meaning that what brings one person pleasure brings brings the other person pleasure, and vice-versa.

The other is Cocoa Prices Create Chocolate Dilemma. The article opens with "Soaring cocoa prices are creating a Valentine's Day dilemma for chocolate makers. They don't want to raise retail prices when recession-weary consumers are trying to limit their spending." The problem is crop diseases in Ivory Coast and Ghana. You might need to be a WSJ subscriber to read the whole article.

Here is a new article from yesterday's San Antonio Express-News (2-13-2011). Romance in bloom at workplace: Survey indicates 59% have taken the risk-filled leap. It seems like many people admit to having a romance at work and/or meeting their spouse at work. So what starts out as economic activity leads to some other needs being met.

Now the economic definition of romantic love.

Abstract: "Romantic love is characterized by a preoccupation with a deliberately restricted set of perceived characteristics in the love object which are viewed as means to some ideal ends. In the process of selecting the set of perceived characteristics and the process of determining the ideal ends, there is also a systematic failure to assess the accuracy of the perceived characteristics and the feasibility of achieving the ideal ends given the selected set of means and other pre-existing ends.

The study of romantic love can provide insight into the general process of introducing novelty into a system of interacting variables. Novelty, however, is functional only in an open system characterized by uncertainty where the variables have not all been functionally looped and system slacks are readily available to accommodate new things. In a closed system where all the objective functions and variables must be compatible to achieve stability and viability, adjustments in the value of some variables through romantic idealization may be dysfunctional if they represent merely residual responses to the creative combination of the variables in the open sub-system."

The author was K. K. Fung of the Department of Economics, Memphis State University, Memphis. It was from a journal article in 1979. More info on it is at this link. The entire article, which is not too long, can be found at this link.

Then there was this related article: Love really is blind, U.S. study finds. Here is an exerpt:

"Love really is blind, at least when it comes to looking at others, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

College students who reported they were in love were less likely to take careful notice of other attractive men or women, the team at the University of California Los Angeles and dating Web site eHarmony found.

"Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to work in very specific ways in enabling you to push thoughts of that tempting other out of your mind," said Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony, whose study is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

"It's almost like love puts blinders on people," added Martie Haselton, an associate professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA."

What College Majors Pay The Highest?

See this report from payscale.com  

Click here to see more info from Yahoo Finance

Here are the top 15

Here is an excerpt from the Yahoo article

"Regardless of what career path you choose, Katharine Brooks, author of "You Majored in What? Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career," says students need to think beyond their bachelor's degrees.

"Start acquiring experience early on in your academic career. Don't wait until your senior year to look for an internship," she says.

To get a jump on the job hunt, Brooks recommends students create a LinkedIn account, make contacts and reach out to professional associations in their field as soon as possible."

""Economics majors tend to pursue business and finance-related fields," says Brooks. "Banking and finance are in the top of the salary strata."

While econ majors do land lucrative gigs with banks and other financial institutions, the degree is also frequently used to establish careers in law, consulting, education, research, government, nonprofit and public policy work, reports the American Economic Association.

Brooks adds that how much you make corresponds more to your career field than your major. For example, an economics major who goes into nonprofit work may earn less than a liberal arts major who enters the financial sector. When choosing a major, Brooks encourages students to think about their desired career field and how well skills developed in a given major might parlay into different occupations."

But neuroscience says that maybe you will be more successful if you do something you love. Click here to read about that

Public universities spend more per athlete than they do per student

See Report Describes Big Gaps in Athletic vs. Academic Spending by Brad Wolverton of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Excerpts:

"Public universities in the six most powerful NCAA conferences surpassed $100,000 per player in median annual athletic spending in 2010, a new study has found—six to 12 times the amount those colleges spent per student on academics."

"According to the report, “Academic Spending Versus Athletic Spending: Who Wins?,” athletic departments in the Southeastern Conference—which have some of the swankest facilities and best-paid coaches—spent nearly $164,000 per athlete in 2010. That was 12 times as much as those institutions spent per student on academic expenses..."

"Only a couple of dozen athletic programs operate in the black, with many major-college programs requiring a substantial institutional subsidy to remain competitive. The less-wealthy FBS programs now spend $11-million to $14-million a year to subsidize sports..."

"Athletic costs increased at least twice as fast as academic spending, on a per-capita basis, across each of the three Division I subdivisions."

There are alot of interesting comments. One is from Chris Marrou (and it might be the former San Antonio news anchor). Here is his comment:

"When an academic criticized Darrel Royal's salary at the U. of Texas in the 1960s, he replied, "When a math professor can draw 80,000 people at Memorial Stadium by working out equations on a blackboard at midfield, I'll take a lower salary." And so it continues..."

IHOP Gives Away Free Pancakes And Gets Slammed

See Bird Road IHOP Slammed Yesterday During Free Pancake Day by Ily Goyanes of the Miami New Times. They wanted to raise money for charity. Excerpt:

"Cherry, a server who has been with IHOP for 13 years, told us they had been swamped the entire day. "From 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., it was like this. Then when school let out, it started again and has been this way nonstop."

""This way" refers to there not being a single table available and a waiting list. Did they raise a lot for charity, though? "We had a lot of teenagers.""

"Even though the majority of patrons were flapjack freeloaders, the restaurant was able to raise some funds for Miami Children's Hospital." "Most of the employees had been there since early in the morning. During our interviews, they were going on 15 hours of cooking, serving, and cleaning..."

Yes, strange things happen when you give a scarce good away for free. There is not enough to go around so people have to wait.

Click here to read about a mom who had a bad experience last year on free pancake day

Yesterday Was The 100th Anniversary Of The Ratification Of The 16th Amendment To The Constitution

It authorized a federal income tax. See Many Unhappy Returns—Millions of Them: It's the 100th anniversary of the 16th Amendment. Don't forget to file your taxes By JAY STARKMAN, from Saturday's WSJ. Excerpt:

"The country's first income tax was implemented to raise money during the Civil War. The tax was repealed in 1872 because the revenues were no longer needed. The idea was resurrected in 1894 as a populist measure to tax the rich when William Jennings Bryan successfully championed passage of a 2% income tax on annual income over $4,000. The rich denounced it as communistic and predicted that many would flee the country rather than pay the tax."

"Over the years, the personal exemption and standard deduction have not kept pace with inflation, so today 70% of the population is subject to income taxes. Almost 60 million returns, mostly under $20,000 in gross income, pay no income tax, largely the result of the earned-income and child tax credits. The individual income tax today raises $950 billion annually through 144 million tax returns. Of this, the top 40 million returns pay about $856 billion and the bottom 104 million returns only about $94 billion."

See also Mickelson and the Sports Star Tax Migration: If Lefty moves to a state with no income tax like Florida, he'll find he has plenty of elite athlete company by ALLYSIA FINLEY, from the WSJ, 1-27-2013. If you can't access either article, email me. I might be able to email them to you.

To see the history of federal income tax rates, go to U.S. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates History, 1913-2013 (Nominal and Inflation-Adjusted Brackets) from the Tax Foundation. In 1913, you paid 1% on all income up to $20,000. Any amount over $500,000 you paid 7%.

Fake Economist Fools Portugal

See The fraudster who fooled a whole nation: Portuguese media pundit exposed as conman: Artur Baptista da Silva faces prosecution after faking his 'career' as an economics expert by Alasdair Fotheringham of The Independent.

What a heinous crime, impersonating an economist. There surely is no punishment too great for this outrage. His behavior is an insult to all real economists. Make him walk the plank. Throw him to the lions in the Coliseum.

Excerpts:

"As an ex-presidential consultant, a former adviser to the World Bank, a financial researcher for the United Nations and a professor in the US, Artur Baptista da Silva's outspoken attacks on Portugal's austerity cuts made the bespectacled 61-year-old one of the country's leading media pundits last year.

The only problem was that Mr Baptista da Silva is none of the above. He turned out to be a convicted forger with fake credentials and, following his spectacular hoodwinking of Portuguese society, he could soon face fraud charges.

Mr Baptista da Silva's conversion into the latest must-interview figure on the media circuit began when he turned up last April at Lisbon's main philanthropic institution, the Academia do Bacalhau, with a large supply of business cards – which, it later turned out, bore false credentials – and an impressive-sounding dissertation entitled Growth, Inequality and Poverty. Looking Beyond Averages which, it also transpired, was "borrowed" from its writer, a World Bank employee, via the internet.

At the time, Mr Baptista da Silva also claimed to be a social economics professor at Milton College – a private university in Wisconsin, US, which actually closed in 1982 – and to be masterminding a UN research project into the effects of the recession on southern European countries. He even, some reports say, tried to pass himself off as a former adviser to Portugal's President, Joaio Sampaio, and the World Bank."

Now if only more people watched more Law Order: Criminal Intent. Click on the link to see more information about that episode from 2002 titled "Phantom." Here is the description:

"Goren and Eames must untangle the story behind a mysterious man living a double life while telling his family that he is an economist for the United Nations. As his world of lies unravels, murder seems to be his only way out."

Here are links with more information on that episode:

Wikipedia  

Law Order Wiki

Tradeoffs: More Goods And Services Might Mean Less Clean Air

In my macro classes this week, we covered opportunity cost, the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch. See Pollution highlights the price China is paying for rapid development by David Piper of Fox News. Excerpts:

"Beijing has developed into an impressive modern city over the past two decades. But a tourist visiting the Chinese capital over the past four days would have difficulty seeing many of its ancient and modern landmarks because of the horrendous pollution hanging over the city."

"The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center is recommending that children and the elderly stay indoors.

Local media has reported a sharp rise in people seeking treatment at hospitals in the capital for respiratory problems."

"According to the Beijing authorities, measurements show the air containing more than 700 micrograms per cubic meter in many parts of the city over the weekend.

To put that into context, the World Health Organization considers it safe to only have as much just 25 micrograms per cubic meter."

Another Semester Has Started

Welcome to any new students. I usually post something three times a week on Wed., Fri. and Sun. The next post should be next Wed. The entries usually have something to do with a basic economic principle that is related to a recent news story. If you want to learn more about me go to Why is college so hard?

Structural Unemployment In The News-Computers Can Now Tell Jokes

See A Motherboard Walks Into a Bar ... by ALEX STONE, from yesterday's NY Times.

There is a program "called Standup (for System to Augment Non-Speakers’ Dialogue Using Puns), a program that generates punning riddles."

If you are replaced by a machine, you are structurally unemployed. So I guess Jerry Seinfeld will soon be out of a job. All the programmers have to do is have an animated or holographic image of a "comic" telling the jokes the computer has come up with. Imgaine paying only 25% or 50% of the price Seinfeld charges for the same amount of laughs.

The Jazz Protagonists Perform Heroic Tribute To Dave Brubeck At Boardwalk Bistro And The Joint Was Really Flipping

Dave Brubeck died on December 5. The music the Jazz Protagonists played last night was great, lots of Brubeck's best stuff. Here is a link to their site:

Jazz Protagonists

It seemed more crowded than usual at Boardwalk Bistro and I think many people came especially for the music.

Dave Brubeck made the cover of time magazine in 1954, just before he turned 34. Here is the cover

 

 

Here is a link to a post from a couple of years ago: Dave Brubeck, Economist

Jerry Seinfeld, Like The Novelist Marcel Proust, Is A Neuroscientist

Here is what Jerry Seinfeld said in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine about why he keeps practicing his stand up act:

"When he can’t tinker, he grows anxious. “If I don’t do a set in two weeks, I feel it,” he said. “I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down. Reading that changed my life. I used to wonder, Why am I doing these sets, getting on a stage? Don’t I know how to do this already? The answer is no. You must keep doing it. The broadband starts to narrow the moment you stop.”"

See Jerry Seinfeld Intends to Die Standing Up. I like this part, too:

"Seinfeld believes funniness is genetic. When his father, Kalman, was stationed in the Pacific during World War II, he’d transcribe jokes he heard and store them in a box for safekeeping. “In the army, that’s kind of how you got through it,” Seinfeld says. “People would tell jokes by the score, because what else are you going to do to maintain sanity? The recognizing of jokes as precious material: that’s where it starts. If you’ve got the gene, a joke is an amazing thing. It’s something you save in a box in a war.”"

Everyone knows that Proust sas a neuroscientist because there is a book by that title. Click here to go to the Amazon link. Here is their description:

"In this technology-driven age, it’s tempting to believe that science can solve every mystery. After all, science has cured countless diseases and even sent humans into space. But as Jonah Lehrer argues in this sparkling debut, science is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first.

Taking a group of artists — a painter, a poet, a chef, a composer, and a handful of novelists — Lehrer shows how each one discovered an essential truth about the mind that science is only now rediscovering. We learn, for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory; how George Eliot discovered the brain’s malleability; how the French chef Escoffier discovered umami (the fifth taste); how Cézanne worked out the subtleties of vision; and how Gertrude Stein exposed the deep structure of language — a full half-century before the work of Noam Chomsky and other linguists. It’s the ultimate tale of art trumping science.

More broadly, Lehrer shows that there’s a cost to reducing everything to atoms and acronyms and genes. Measurement is not the same as understanding, and art knows this better than science does. An ingenious blend of biography, criticism, and first-rate science writing, Proust Was a Neuroscientist urges science and art to listen more closely to each other, for willing minds can combine the best of both, to brilliant effect."

A New York Times blog has more. See Jerry Seinfeld, Comedy Athlete

The San Antonio Express-News Printed My Op-Ed On Taxes And Spending

It was in today's paper. Here is the link: Cut government spending to boost economy. Here is the article in case the link does not last very long.

Re: “Laffer Curve a tool to help avoid fiscal cliff,” Other Views, Dec. 10:

Mickey Roth, the president of Intercontinental Asset Management, seems to think we need higher tax rates. I disagree.

He correctly explained the Laffer Curve, which relates tax revenue and tax rates. His reading of the historical record leads him to say the high tax revenue and budget surpluses of the late 1990s were due to raising the top tax rate to 39.6 percent in 1993.

We must realize that maximizing the federal tax revenue is not an official policy goal. The goals are low unemployment, low inflation and high GDP growth. Now if tax revenue is spent wisely on things like education and infrastructure, it can help the economy grow. But this is not always the case.

Higher tax rates hurt economic incentives. Investment decisions are made at the margin, based on after tax income.

As tax rates rise, some investments are no longer viable. Less investment, less growth. A slight change makes a big difference in the long run. For example, in 2010, liberal economist Paul Krugman mentioned that the per capita GDP since 1980 had grown 1.95 percent annually in the U.S. and 1.83 percent in the European Union, hinting that their higher tax rates were not a problem. But, if per capita income was $20,000 in both the U.S. and the E.U. in 1980, the per capita income now would be $1,372 higher in the U.S. at those annual growth rates. After 100 years, the U.S. income level would be 12 percent higher.

The harm taxes do to economic efficiency is called “deadweight loss.” It grows exponentially; more harm is done in raising rates from 35 to 40 percent than in raising rates from 30 to 35 percent. If the Bush tax cuts expire, some Americans in states like New York (which has its own income tax) will pay marginal tax rates of over 50 percent, if you include additional taxes to pay for Obamacare.

Roth says we should take a lesson from the 1990s. But in 1997 President Clinton agreed to cut the capital gains tax to 20 percent It is possible that the high tax revenue of the late 1990s was due to a fast growing economy which in turn was caused by the high tech boom and low oil prices.

Economist Alan Reynolds has said, “The unexpected revenue windfalls in President Bill Clinton's second term were largely a consequence of lower tax rates on capital gains.”

William McBride of the Tax Foundation found in a survey of studies that “lower-tax economies are more productive and that raising taxes has negative dynamic effects on revenue collection.”

Spending may be a bigger issue than tax revenue (Roth did call for less spending). As former World Bank Group president Robert Zoellick recently said, “Federal spending has traditionally been about 18-19 percent of the U.S. economy. It has now surged to 23-24 percent.”

Leszek Balcerowicz, the former central banker of Poland, says that countries grow rapidly out of recessions when they cut spending since this increases confidence in markets. Let's give that a try.

Cyril Morong, Ph.D., is an associated professor of economics at San Antonio College.

President Obama Vs. Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Who Has The Best Statement For NATIONAL ENTREPRENEURS' DAY?

Here is what President Obama said:

“During National Entrepreneurship Month, we celebrate the hard work, ingenuity, and courage of our thinkers, doers, and makers. I call upon all Americans to celebrate November 16, 2012, as National Entrepreneurs' Day”

Click here to learn more.

Nicholas Taleb has also proposed a NATIONAL ENTREPRENEURS' DAY. Here is the statement he wants read:

“Most of you will fail, disrespected, impoverished, but we are grateful for the risks you are taking and the sacrifices you are making for the sake of the economic growth of the planet and pulling others out of poverty. You are the source of our antifragility. Our nation thanks you.”

Click here to learn more. Taleb is the author of such books as Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

Great Blog-Entrepreneurship Matters

Here is the link

Entrepreneurship Matters

It is by Paul McManus. It is "An exploration of entrepreneurial thought and action for high impact entrepreneurial builders & leaders, social innovators and global changemakers."

McManus teaches entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial leadership at the School of Management and leads the entrepreneurship program at Boston University.

The Sound of a Dry Martini: Remembering Paul Desmond-Great Jazz CD by Brent Jensen

Paul Desmond played the alto saxophone with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. He said that he wanted to sound like a dry martini. On this CD, Jensen pays homage to Desmond and it sounds great.

Click here to go to the Amazon page for the CD. You can listen to samples of all the songs. "Take Five" is one of them.

Click here to go to Jensen's home page. It has links to videos of his performances.

Greece Tries Again to Cut Tax Evasion

Click here to read The Wall Street Journal article. Excerpt:

"Customers of all sorts of businesses in Greece will be able to walk away without paying if they don't receive a record of their transaction, under rules set to take effect soon.

Restaurants—seen as among the worst offenders, in part because much of their business is transacted in cash—will be required to add a notification about the right to refuse payment to their menus. But everyone, from doctors and lawyers to plumbers and taxis, also is liable to be stiffed if they don't give receipts.

The new regulations are the latest effort by the cash-strapped Greek government to crack down on endemic tax evasion—adding an extra incentive for businesses to issue receipts. The receipts produce a record of the transactions, and authorities use that record to calculate taxes owed by the business.

"With this measure the consumer is protected and a bold step is taken against tax evasion," said Athanasios Skordas, Greece's deputy development minister.

The "shadow economy" accounts for about 24% of Greek gross domestic product, according to a study by Margarita Tsoutsoura of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Tax dodging costs Greece about €28 billion ($36 billion) a year, an amount equivalent to roughly 15% of annual economic output, the study says."

Here is a related story. Greece takes bottom EU spot in global corruption index. What would Plato or Socrates say?