Peggy Noonan: Bring the Insurrectionists to Justice
Peggy Noonan is a Republican Wall Street Journal opinion columnist who has become more and more disgusted with Donald Trump. Like her, some other prominent Republicans have begun putting distance between themselves and Trump since his encouragement of the insurrection against the presidential vote counting in Congress. To me it is a very good thing for the nation if a large part of the Republican party distances itself from Donald Trump. I have certainly had other differences with Donald Trump (see for example “It Isn't OK to Be Anti-Immigrant”), as well as some somewhat common views (particularly on the potential value of negative interest rate policy). But, to put it simply, it is definitely not OK for a president to advocate the violent overthrow of the US government. For, make no mistake, to encourage people to use force to interrupt the constitutionally mandated procedures for determining who won a presidential election is to advocate the violent overthrow of the US government as the US government is defined by the Constitution of the United States. For Donald Trump to send lawyers into court to argue about what the constitution and the election facts on the ground allow is one thing. To inspire an armed mob to attack the Capitol is quite another thing.
I can understand other judgments, but in my view, opposing attempts at the violent overthrow of the US government is not a partisan issue. It is the agreement by both Democrats and Republicans that we should follow constitutional procedures (with the Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of disputes about what is a constitutional procedure) that makes our nation a democracy. I am for democracy. Many other systems of government have been tried. Everything else tried so far has been much worse than democracy. (And many things people want to try are much closer to political systems that we have historical evidence on than some people realize.) The democratic power of the electorate to “Throw the bums out,” though not always put in action at the most appropriate moments, is one of the greatest defenses we have against great political ills.
In addition to agreeing with Peggy Noonan’s sentiment that, without hesitation, and without excusing them for what they did, we should bring the insurrectionists to justice, I have flagged her op-ed because of this passage:
True conservatives tend to have a particular understanding of the fragility of things. They understand that every human institution is, in its way, built on sand. It’s all so frail. They see how thin the veil is between civilization and chaos, and understand that we have to go through every day, each in our way, trying to make the veil thicker. And so we value the things in the phrase that others use to disparage us, “law and order.” Yes, always, the rule of law, and order so that the people of a great nation can move freely on the streets and do their work and pursue their lives.
I want to keep living in a free country. Without adhering to constitutional procedures, we won’t stay a free country for long.
Postscript
Let me admit here that I was mistaken in my predictions. I thought Donald Trump would push every possible legal argument he could, but then would grudgingly accept the outcome when the courts said he had lost (while of course saying that he had really won). Donald Trump went a big step beyond that. I was wrong.
Don’t miss these closely related posts:
The Optimal Rate of Inflation
Link to the Wikipedia article “Inflation”
The Bank of Finland asked me to respond to a survey about the optimal rate of inflation. (This was the sort of survey that is sent to those who might have a professional opinion about the optimal rate of inflation.) I thought I’d share my answers here. I give their questions in bold. I give my answers in italics.
Should the central bank have an explicit inflation target? If so, what rate of inflation should it seek to achieve, given the current longer-term, structural economic trends?
Yes. 0%.
My answer of 0 inflation as the best target is assuming what I consider the appropriate strategy of being willing to use deep negative interest rates. I have written about that here:
All the pieces flagged here provide context:
Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which the central bank had previously not adopted an inflation target but now decides to adopt one. What rate of inflation should the central bank target, given the current longer-term, structural economic trends?
0%.
The argument is the same. The readiness to use deep negative rates (which is the appropriate strategy) makes an inflation target of zero optimal. But it is also important to do the transition from a higher inflation rate to zero in a low-cost way. Distinguish between paper currency and bank money ("electronic money"), allowing a nonpar exchange rate between them. While most prices are sticky in the paper unit of account, mechanically make e-money have a zero rate of inflation. Having established credibility in that way, it is likely that gradually more prices will be set in terms of the e-money unit of account. That can be encouraged by shifts in the literal accounting rules. As more and more prices are set in terms of the e-money unit of account, zero inflation in that e-money unit of account needs to be maintained by standard monetary policy tools. That can no longer be done mechanically when almost all prices are set in terms of the e-money unit of account.
What should the central bank's objective(s) be?
Please choose only one option.
Here, ‘central bank’ refers to the central bank responsible for monetary policy in your country of residence.
Price stability only
Price stability and other objective(s) with equal weights.
Price stability and subordinate objective(s). Please feel free to specify the secondary objective(s)
No opinion
Price stability and other objective(s) with equal weights.
Please feel free to specify the other objective(s):
Keeping the output gap equal to zero
Although not literally true, I consider the "divine coincidence" a useful rough approximation. Price stability and keeping the output gap at zero are the same objective when the "divine coincidence" holds, but to the extent that the divine coincidence does not hold, a central bank should worry about both objectives.
Among the options below, what specific observable variable(s) would be the most preferable target(s) for the central bank in the conduct of its monetary policy?
Please choose only one option.
Here, ‘central bank’ refers to the central bank responsible for monetary policy in your country of residence.
The inflation rate
The price level
The inflation rate and the unemployment rate
The growth rate of nominal GDP
The level of nominal GDP
Other, please specify
No opinion
The level of nominal GDP
What specific price index should the central bank use in the conduct of its monetary policy?
Here, ‘central bank’ refers to the central bank responsible for monetary policy in your country of residence.
Headline consumer price index
Core consumer price index (excluding food and energy prices)
Headline personal consumption expenditures index
Core personal consumption expenditures index (excluding food and energy prices)
GDP deflator
Other, please specify
No opinion
A price index with a higher weight on investment goods prices and other durables prices than the GDP deflator
How likely is the central bank to achieve its inflation target over the next three years?
Here, ‘central bank’ refers to the central bank responsible for monetary policy in your country of residence.
Relatively unlikely
The only reason I think average unemployment would decrease is that I believe unemployment is convex in inflationary/disinflationary pressures.
Given the current longer-term, structural economic trends, do you think that the benefits of increasing the inflation target of the central bank would outweigh the costs of doing so?
Costs clearly outweigh benefits
The right solution is readiness to use deep negative rates when called for, not increasing the inflation target. The appropriate paper currency policy for deep negative rates engineers inflation relative to paper currency, but not relative to e-money. Better to have comparatively innocent inflation relative to paper currency only when needed than to ever have the quite damaging inflation relative to the e-money unit of account.
Tiktok of Econolimerick #2
I hope you like the tiktok above. It is a duet with my former intermediate macro student Taylor McCoy, who devotes her tiktok channel to tiktoks about economics.
Here are links to all of my econolimericks so far (not all of which have TikToks yet):
Being of Normal Weight Seems to be More Protective against Cardiovascular and Heart Disease than against Cancer
In “Association of Body Mass Index With Lifetime Risk of Cardiovascular Disease and Compression of Morbidity,” by Sadiya Khan, Hongyan Ning, John T. Wilkins, Norrina Allen, Mercedes Carnethon, Jarett D. Berry, Ranya N. Sweis, Donald M. Lloyd-Jones argue that the claim moderately overweight people have greater longevity gives the wrong idea. For one thing, people who are already sick can lose weight for two different reasons: the direct effect of their illness, and doctors telling them they need to lose weight. When people talk about the effect of weight on illness, what they would normally be thinking of is the effect of one’s weight when seemingly healthy on later disease and mortality risk.
Also, some studies don’t look at survival to a given age, instead looking at survival from time of diagnosis. If risk of disease goes up for any reason, one is likely to get the disease at a younger age. Conditional on being diagnosed with a disease, one will probably survive more years beyond that time of diagnosis if one is younger at the time of diagnosis.
One way to address both of these problems is to find a set of apparently healthy people of the same age, some of normal weight and others in various overweight categories, and track what happens to them.
The simple answer from this study is that obese folks (body mass index 30 or above) tend to die quicker and get more of all kinds of diseases. Folks who are merely overweight (25.0-29.9 body mass index) die at about the same rate as those of normal weight (18.5 to 24.9 body mass index), but die a lot more from cardiovascular and heart disease and a lot more from other causes. Of course, we are all mortal, so if we don’t die of one thing we will die of another. But overall death rates at given ages are pretty similar for the overweight and those of normal weight.
I take this to mean that, leaving out the officially “obese,” the typical variation that makes some people of normal weight is helping those normal weight folks reduce their cardiovascular and heart disease risk a lot more than it is helping them reduce their cancer risk. The authors argue that reducing cardiovascular disease and heart disease risk is especially valuable, so there is a great benefit to whatever it is that makes people of normal weight. But I would argue that we need to understand where the extra cancer risk is coming from.
We don’t even have conclusive science on what makes some people of normal weight while others are overweight; there is a big debate about whether dietary sugar or dietary fat is a bigger culprit. (I blame dietary sugar.) And we don’t know why whatever makes people of normal weight instead of overweight contributes to cancer. But here is one hypothesis that needs to be closely examined: what if those who consume less sugar and other refined carbohydrates consume more protein? My reading suggests that both sugar and too much protein (especially animal protein) are cancer risks. If you reduce sugar and increase protein, what happens depends on the relative strength of the effect of sugar and the effect of protein. Among the health conscious, I think protein has much too positive a reputation at this point in history.
Another possibility is that the combination of having a metabolism that allows one to eat a lot without gaining weight and actually eating that food is a cancer risk. This seems a real possibility to me. A cancer cell with a high metabolism and plenty of available food might grow fast.
In all of this, it is crucial to notice my emphasis on the variation in the population that causes most of the difference between being (moderately) overweight and of “normal” weight. People who lose weight by regular fasting are probably not well represented in population data sets because not many people in the population have been serious fasters in the past. (I hope more people use fasting as a weight-loss and health tool in the future.) So losing weight by fasting could have a dramatically different effect on cancer mortality at each age than, say, cutting back on sugar while increasing animal protein consumption.
Don’t forget that normal weight seems protective against cardiovascular disease and heart disease. That is a benefit. But unless you are obese to begin with, you probably need to lose weight the right way to reduce cancer risk.
Posts on Anti-Cancer Eating:
Meat Is Amazingly Nutritious—But Is It Amazingly Nutritious for Cancer Cells, Too?
Cancer Cells Love Sugar; That’s How PET Scans for Cancer Work
For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:
Tiktok of Econolimerick #1
I hope you like the tiktok above. (This will be a test of my understanding of the technology.) It is a duet with my former intermediate macro student Taylor McCoy, who devotes her Tiktok channel to Tiktoks about economics.
Here are links to all of my econolimericks so far (not all of which have TikToks yet):
The Federalist Papers #22 C: Pillars of Democracy—The Judicial System, Military Loyal to the Constitution, and Police Loyal to the Constitution
Recent events make it worth thinking about what it is that can keep our nation’s government from being overthrown. I want to point to two key elements. First, judges whose partisanship is tempered by caring about the law and the respect for the judicial system that leads many powerful people outside the judicial system to take decisions of the Supreme Court as final. Second, a powerful military loyal to the Constitution, including the role of the Supreme Court in that Constitution.
Going beyond simply avoiding the overthrow of the government, in achieving social justice, a third element is key: police loyal to the Constitution—especially the 14th amendment that makes all equal before the law, regardless of race and other caste markers.
On judges, let me make an analogy. Unlike some, I am not worried about a resurgence of inflation in the United States (and have similar views for many other rich countries) because I know how the economists who staff the Fed are trained. They are all taught about the Great Inflation of the 1970s and how overly stimulative monetary policy caused that Great Inflation. Similarly, I believe that legal training instills a respect for the law that, for a large majority of judges, significantly influences their decisions away from being 100% partisan. Indeed, I believe that the law—the letter of the law and precedents—has at least as big an effect on judges as considerations of the good of the nation (beyond partisan ideology) has on voters.
On the military, I am very grateful that military training puts loyalty to the Constitution ahead of loyalty to the Commander in Chief. The words “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” come first, before mention of the President of the United States as Commander in Chief to be obeyed. Under some circumstances, the President of the United States could come within the set of “all enemies, foreign and domestic,” especially at moments of time close to a constitutionally ordained transfer of power. (See “John Locke: If Rebellion is a Sin, It is a Sin Committed Most Often by Those in Power.”)
On the police, I think we fall short in inculcating into them loyalty to the constitution. In particular, in order to carry out the promise of the 14th amendment which made all equal before the law, regardless of race, everything should be done to hire a police force composed of individual significantly less racist than the general population. I don’t think we have achieved this.
Rather than defund the police, I think we should spend more on one specific item: requiring all new hires to the police force to have bachelor’s degrees from rounded curricula at colleges and universities. (For adequate recruiting, I assume this will require somewhat higher average pay for those new hires.) Both sides of the partisan divide seem to agree that colleges and universities have some effect in getting students to try to be more politically correct. In the extreme, there may be some professions for which that is bad training (as when political correctness causes people to distort the truth of social-science findings). But I want the police to be a lot more politically correct than they have been, on average.
I don’t know the percentages, but I suspect that most police forces have at least a substantial minority of officers who have bachelor’s degrees already, so the danger of police forces giving the new, all college educated recruits too hard a time.
The bottom line is that we need to even more than we have in the past to inculcate loyalty to the constitution in those who get legal training, in our military, and in our police. That includes especially (since this seems to be difficult) to the 14th amendment, whose words I find inspiring:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Judges should be—and to an important extent, are in the real world—like priests of the Constitution. Without the judicial system and the respect it is afforded, the Constitution would be in grave danger of being merely words on paper, ignored whenever convenient. Alexander Hamilton made this point in the last five paragraphs of the Federalist Papers #22. In the last two paragraphs, he also points to two other great strengths of the then proposed constitution: first, that it had checks and balances in its structure, and second, that through ratification by a vote of the people it would have a clear supremacy over state governments.
Notice that the spirit of what Alexander Hamilton says about the importance of ratification by the people really goes well beyond ratification: it is of great importance that even in times of great stress, a large majority of people in the United States feels a deep loyalty to the constitution. And it is especially important that those given the heavy guns or the great power that police wield have a deep loyalty to the constitution.
Below is the full text of the last five paragraphs of the Federalist Papers #22:
A circumstance which crowns the defects of the Confederation remains yet to be mentioned, the want of a judiciary power. Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation. The treaties of the United States, to have any force at all, must be considered as part of the law of the land. Their true import, as far as respects individuals, must, like all other laws, be ascertained by judicial determinations. To produce uniformity in these determinations, they ought to be submitted, in the last resort, to one SUPREME TRIBUNAL. And this tribunal ought to be instituted under the same authority which forms the treaties themselves. These ingredients are both indispensable. If there is in each State a court of final jurisdiction, there may be as many different final determinations on the same point as there are courts. There are endless diversities in the opinions of men. We often see not only different courts but the judges of the came court differing from each other. To avoid the confusion which would unavoidably result from the contradictory decisions of a number of independent judicatories, all nations have found it necessary to establish one court paramount to the rest, possessing a general superintendence, and authorized to settle and declare in the last resort a uniform rule of civil justice.
This is the more necessary where the frame of the government is so compounded that the laws of the whole are in danger of being contravened by the laws of the parts. In this case, if the particular tribunals are invested with a right of ultimate jurisdiction, besides the contradictions to be expected from difference of opinion, there will be much to fear from the bias of local views and prejudices, and from the interference of local regulations. As often as such an interference was to happen, there would be reason to apprehend that the provisions of the particular laws might be preferred to those of the general laws; for nothing is more natural to men in office than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence. The treaties of the United States, under the present Constitution, are liable to the infractions of thirteen different legislatures, and as many different courts of final jurisdiction, acting under the authority of those legislatures. The faith, the reputation, the peace of the whole Union, are thus continually at the mercy of the prejudices, the passions, and the interests of every member of which it is composed. Is it possible that foreign nations can either respect or confide in such a government? Is it possible that the people of America will longer consent to trust their honor, their happiness, their safety, on so precarious a foundation?
In this review of the Confederation, I have confined myself to the exhibition of its most material defects; passing over those imperfections in its details by which even a great part of the power intended to be conferred upon it has been in a great measure rendered abortive. It must be by this time evident to all men of reflection, who can divest themselves of the prepossessions of preconceived opinions, that it is a system so radically vicious and unsound, as to admit not of amendment but by an entire change in its leading features and characters.
The organization of Congress is itself utterly improper for the exercise of those powers which are necessary to be deposited in the Union. A single assembly may be a proper receptacle of those slender, or rather fettered, authorities, which have been heretofore delegated to the federal head; but it would be inconsistent with all the principles of good government, to intrust it with those additional powers which, even the moderate and more rational adversaries of the proposed Constitution admit, ought to reside in the United States. If that plan should not be adopted, and if the necessity of the Union should be able to withstand the ambitious aims of those men who may indulge magnificent schemes of personal aggrandizement from its dissolution, the probability would be, that we should run into the project of conferring supplementary powers upon Congress, as they are now constituted; and either the machine, from the intrinsic feebleness of its structure, will moulder into pieces, in spite of our ill-judged efforts to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its force an energy, as necessity might prompt, we shall finally accumulate, in a single body, all the most important prerogatives of sovereignty, and thus entail upon our posterity one of the most execrable forms of government that human infatuation ever contrived. Thus, we should create in reality that very tyranny which the adversaries of the new Constitution either are, or affect to be, solicitous to avert.
It has not a little contributed to the infirmities of the existing federal system, that it never had a ratification by the PEOPLE. Resting on no better foundation than the consent of the several legislatures, it has been exposed to frequent and intricate questions concerning the validity of its powers, and has, in some instances, given birth to the enormous doctrine of a right of legislative repeal. Owing its ratification to the law of a State, it has been contended that the same authority might repeal the law by which it was ratified. However gross a heresy it may be to maintain that a PARTY to a COMPACT has a right to revoke that COMPACT, the doctrine itself has had respectable advocates. The possibility of a question of this nature proves the necessity of laying the foundations of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.
Related post:
Links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:
The Federalist Papers #1: Alexander Hamilton's Plea for Reasoned Debate
The Federalist Papers #3: United, the 13 States are Less Likely to Stumble into War
The Federalist Papers #4 B: National Defense Will Be Stronger if the States are United
The Federalist Papers #5: Unless United, the States Will Be at Each Others' Throats
The Federalist Papers #6 A: Alexander Hamilton on the Many Human Motives for War
The Federalist Papers #11 A: United, the States Can Get a Better Trade Deal—Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist Papers #12: Union Makes it Much Easier to Get Tariff Revenue—Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist Papers #13: Alexander Hamilton on Increasing Returns to Scale in National Government
The Federalist Papers #14: A Republic Can Be Geographically Large—James Madison
The Federalist Papers #21 A: Constitutions Need to be Enforced—Alexander Hamilton
2020's Most Popular Posts
The "Key Posts" link in navigation at the top of my blog lists all important posts through the end of 2016. Along with "2017's Most Popular Posts," “2018's Most Popular Posts” and “2019's Most Popular Posts,” this is intended as a complement to that list. (Also, my most popular storified Twitter discussions are here, and you can see other recent posts by clicking on the Archive link at the top of my blog.) Continuing this tradition, I give links to the most popular posts in the 2020 below into six groups: popular new posts in 2020 on diet and health, popular new posts in 2020 on political philosophy, popular new posts in 2020 on other topics, and popular older posts in those three categories. I provide the pageviews in 2020 for each post as counted when someone went specifically to that post.
I am pleased to be able to report 613,658 Google Analytics pageviews in 2020—over 50,000 pageviews per month. Of these, 31,480 were pageviews for my blog homepage. One other thing that stands out from the data is how well my back catalog does because of Google search.
New Posts in 2020 on Diet and Health
Getting More Vitamin D May Help You Fight Off the New Coronavirus 559
Don't Drink Sweet Drinks Between Meals—Whether Sugary or with Nonsugar Sweeteners 356
The Surprising Genetic Correlation Between Protein-Heavy Diets and Obesity 220
Fasting Tips 200
My Pillbox 123
Journal of the American College of Cardiology State-of-the-Art Review on Saturated Fats 118
An Inexpensive Cold Sore Treatment That Doubles as an Antiseptic Towelette 97
Potential Protective Mechanisms of Ketosis in Migraine Prevention 89
New Posts in 2020 on Political Philosophy
The Federalist Papers #14: A Republic Can Be Geographically Large—James Madison 109
The Federalist Papers #4 B: National Defense Will Be Stronger if the States are United 90
New Posts in 2020 on Other Topics
How Economists Can Enhance Their Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact 1,671
How Even Liberal Whites Make Themselves Out as Victims in Discussions of Racism 1,059
Logarithms and Cost-Benefit Analysis Applied to the Coronavirus Pandemic 995
100 Economics Blogs and 100 Economists Who Are Influential Online 795
Thinking about the 'Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping' 371
Responding to Negative Coverage of Negative Rates in the Financial Times 368
Seconding Paul Romer's Proposal of Universal, Frequent Testing as a Way Out 297
Narayana Kocherlakota Advocates Negative Interest Rates Now 283
Indoors is Very Dangerous for COVID-19 Transmission, Especially When Ventilation is Bad 262
Vicky Biggs Pradhan: How Crises Make Us Rethink Our Lives 255
Matt Adler's Critique of Methods Based on the Value of a Statistical Life 226
Brian Flaxman—Bern Notice: Why Bernie Sanders is the Best Candidate to Take on Donald Trump in 2020 216
The University of Colorado Boulder Deals with a Free Speech Issue 194
On Ex-Muslims 191
Michael Lind: College-Educated vs. Not is the New Class War 186
Dan Benjamin, Mark Fontana and Miles Kimball: Reconsidering Risk Aversion 179
The Mormon Church's Counterpart to a Sovereign Wealth Fund 176
Recognizing Opportunity: The Case of the Golden Raspberries—Taryn Laakso 166
Lumpers vs. Splitters: Economists as Lumpers; Psychologists as Splitters 162
On Policing: Roland Fryer, William Bratton, John Murad, Scott Thomson and the American People 161
Eric Lonergan and Megan Greene: Dual Interest Rates Give Central Banks Limitless Firepower 155
Marc Lipsitch: The New Coronavirus May Be Worse Than You Think (link post) 137
'Everything Happens for a Reason' for Nonsupernaturalists 108
Pressure on the Fed from the Market and Trump for Negative Rates 102
A Nonsupernaturalist Perspective on Meridians in Chinese Medicine 90
What Fraction of Participants in a Randomized Controlled Trial Should Be Treated? 90
Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Diet and Health
Which Nonsugar Sweeteners are OK? An Insulin-Index Perspective 44,997
Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid 38,366
How Fasting Can Starve Cancer Cells, While Leaving Normal Cells Unharmed 18,025
Why a Low-Insulin-Index Diet Isn't Exactly a 'Lowcarb' Diet 16,636
Obesity Is Always and Everywhere an Insulin Phenomenon 4,347
Using the Glycemic Index as a Supplement to the Insulin Index 3,314
What Steven Gundry's Book 'The Plant Paradox' Adds to the Principles of a Low-Insulin-Index Diet 2,803
Jason Fung's Single Best Weight Loss Tip: Don't Eat All the Time 1,375
Jason Fung: Dietary Fat is Innocent of the Charges Leveled Against It 1,217
Meat Is Amazingly Nutritious—But Is It Amazingly Nutritious for Cancer Cells, Too? 1,201
The Keto Food Pyramid 1,069
The Case Against Sugar: Stephan Guyenet vs. Gary Taubes 1,004
Layne Norton Discusses the Stephan Guyenet vs. Gary Taubes Debate (a Debate on Joe Rogan’s Podcast) 940
David Ludwig: It Takes Time to Adapt to a Lowcarb, Highfat Diet 870
Don't Tar Fasting by those of Normal or High Weight with the Brush of Anorexia 751
My Giant Salad 717
Best Health Guide: 10 Surprising Changes When You Quit Sugar 665
Anthony Komaroff: The Microbiome and Risk for Obesity and Diabetes 498
A Low-Glycemic-Index Vegan Diet as a Moderately-Low-Insulin-Index Diet 478
After Gastric Bypass Surgery, Insulin Goes Down Before Weight Loss has Time to Happen 470
Mental Retirement: Use It or Lose It—Susann Rohwedder and Robert Willis 466
How Important is A1 Milk Protein as a Public Health Issue? 463
Kevin D. Hall and Juen Guo: Why it is So Hard to Lose Weight and So Hard to Keep it Off 451
Eggs May Be a Type of Food You Should Eat Sparingly, But Don't Blame Cholesterol Yet 312
Cancer Cells Love Sugar; That’s How PET Scans for Cancer Work 303
Is Milk OK? 231
The Case Against the Case Against Sugar: Seth Yoder vs. Gary Taubes 228
Is 10,000 Steps a Day More Than is Necessary for Health? 177
Carola Binder: The Obesity Code and Economists as General Practitioners 102
On the Epistemology of Diet and Health: Miles Refuses to `Stay in His Lane’ 98
Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Political Philosophy
John Locke: Freedom is Life; Slavery Can Be Justified Only as a Reprieve from Deserved Death 3,901
John Locke on Punishment 2,877
John Locke: The Only Legitimate Power of Governments is to Articulate the Law of Nature 2,154
John Stuart Mill’s Vigorous Advocacy of Education Vouchers 1,297
Freedom Under Law Means All Are Subject to the Same Laws 1,107
John Locke: Defense against the Black Hats is the Origin of the State 961
John Locke: People Must Not Be Judges in Their Own Cases 913
On the Achilles Heel of John Locke's Second Treatise: Slavery and Land Ownership 764
John Locke's Smackdown of Robert Filmer: Being a Father Doesn't Make Any Man a King 691
John Locke: How to Resist Tyrants without Causing Anarchy 671
An Experiment with Equality of Outcome: The Case of Jamestown 566
John Stuart Mill on Balancing Christian Morality with the Wisdom of the Greeks and Romans 512
John Locke: The Right to Enforce the Law of Nature Does Not Depend on Any Social Contract 446
John Locke: By Natural Law, Husbands Have No Power Over Their Wives 410
Social Liberty 405
On Despotism 403
John Locke Off Base with His Assumption That There Was Plenty of Land at the Time of Acquisition 382
John Stuart Mill on the Protection of "Noble Lies" from Criticism 343
John Locke: If Rebellion is a Sin, It is a Sin Committed Most Often by Those in Power 330
John Stuart Mill on the Sources of Prejudice About What Other People Should Do 280
John Locke on Monarchs (Or Presidents) Who Destroy a Constitution 266
The Federalist Papers #2 A: John Jay on the Idea of America 246
John Stuart Mill on Being Offended at Other People's Opinions or Private Conduct 237
The Federalist Papers #1: Alexander Hamilton's Plea for Reasoned Debate 226
John Stuart Mill’s Brief for the Limits of the Authority of Society over the Individual 195
John Locke Looks for a Better Way than Believing in the Divine Right of Kings or Power to the Strong 189
John Locke: The Law of Nature Requires Maturity to Discern 182
John Locke: Law Is Only Legitimate When It Is Founded on the Law of Nature 171
If the Justice System Does Not Try to Deliver Justice, We Are in a State of War 131
John Stuart Mill's Argument Against Political Correctness 128
John Locke: Rivalry in Consumption Makes Private Property Unavoidable 115
John Stuart Mill—The Great Temptation: Telling Others What to Do 114
John Locke: An Unjust War Cannot Win Any True Right to Rule 109
John Stuart Mill on China's Technological Lost Centuries 102
John Stuart Mill on the Need to Make the Argument for Freedom of Speech 98
John Locke: Thinking of Mothers and Fathers On a Par Undercuts a Misleading Autocratic Metaphor 89
Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Other Topics
What to Call the Very Rich: Millionaires, Vranaires, Okuaires, Billionaires and Lakhlakhaires 3,153
The Medium-Run Natural Interest Rate and the Short-Run Natural Interest Rate 2,687
Adding a Variable Measured with Error to a Regression Only Partially Controls for that Variable 2,662
Monetary vs. Fiscal Policy: Expansionary Monetary Policy Does Not Raise the Budget Deficit 2,550
How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide 2,183
The Logarithmic Harmony of Percent Changes and Growth Rates 1,543
Why I Write 1,321
An Optical Illusion: Nativity Scene or Two T-Rex's Fighting over a Table Saw? 1,297
The Complete Guide to Getting into an Economics PhD Program 1198
Greg Shill: Does the Fed Have the Legal Authority to Buy Equities? 967
Supply and Demand for the Monetary Base: How the Fed Currently Determines Interest Rates 889
The Message of Mormonism for Atheists Who Want to Stay Atheists 825
There's One Key Difference Between Kids Who Excel at Math and Those Who Don't 772
The Deep Magic of Money and the Deeper Magic of the Supply Side 637
Returns to Scale and Imperfect Competition in Market Equilibrium 602
Netflix as an Example of Clay Christensen's 'Disruptive Innovation' 583
Reza Moghadam Flags 'Enabling Deep Negative Rates to Fight Recessions' in the Financial Times 534
The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult—and That's Why They Work 456
Co-Active Coaching as a Tool for Maximizing Utility—Getting Where You Want in Life 413
Even Central Bankers Need Lessons on the Transmission Mechanism for Negative Interest Rates 330
How Subordinating Paper Currency to Electronic Money Can End Recessions and End Inflation 324
Negative Interest Rate Policy as Conventional Monetary Policy: Full Text 298
Clay Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang on the Three Basic Types of Business Models 282
Rodney Stark on the Status of Women in Early Christianity 270
Ezra W. Zuckerman—On Genre: A Few More Tips to Academic Journal Article-Writers (link post to a pdf) 268
Marriage 101 265
When the Output Gap is Zero, But Inflation is Below Target 263
18 Misconceptions about Eliminating the Zero Lower Bound 258
Michael Weisbach: Posters on Finance Job Rumors Need to Clean Up Their Act, Too 250
The Shape of Production: Charles Cobb's and Paul Douglas's Boon to Economics 243
The Mormon Church Decides to Treat Gay Marriage as Rebellion on a Par with Polygamy 242
What is the Effective Lower Bound on Interest Rates Made Of? 234
Economics Needs to Tackle All of the Big Questions in the Social Sciences 232
Let's Set Half a Percent as the Standard for Statistical Significance 231
Markus Brunnermeier and Yann Koby's "Reversal Interest Rate" 213
Eric Weinstein: Genius Is Not the Same Thing as Excellence 184
Godless Religion 183
Roger Farmer and Miles Kimball on the Value of Sovereign Wealth Funds for Economic Stabilization 182
Silvio Gesell's Plan for Negative Nominal Interest Rates 170
The Coming Transformation of Education: Degrees Won’t Matter Anymore, Skills Will 162
How and Why to Expand the Nonprofit Sector as a Partial Alternative to Government: A Reader’s Guide 159
Robert Eisler—Stable Money: The Remedy for the Economic World Crisis 158
Sticky Prices vs. Sticky Wages: A Debate Between Miles Kimball and Matthew Rognlie 152
Marriage 102 130
Matthew Shapiro, Martha Bailey and Tilman Borgers on the Economics Job Market Rumors Website 121
Why I am a Macroeconomist: Increasing Returns and Unemployment 115
Miles's April 9, 2006 Unitarian Universalist Sermon: ‘UU Visions’ 113
Ruchir Agarwal and Miles Kimball—Enabling Deep Negative Rates to Fight Recessions: A Guide 109
Leveling Up: Making the Transition from Poor Country to Rich Country 108
Noah Smith: Why Do Americans Like Jews and Dislike Mormons? 108
Bruce Bartlett on Careers in Economics and Related Fields 98
‘The Hunger Games’ Is Hardly Our Future--It's Already Here 98
How Conservative Mormon America Avoided the Fate of Conservative White America 97
Ryan Silverman—$15 Federal Minimum Wage: Positive Intentions, Negative Results 91
Wallace Neutrality Roundup: QE May Work in Practice, But Can It Work in Theory? 91
So What If We Don't Change at All…and Something Magical Just Happens? 91
My Dad 90
Annie Atherton: I Tried 7 Different Morning Routines — Here’s What Made Me Happiest (linkpost) 90
The Logarithmic Harmony of Percent Changes and Growth Rates 89
How Mormon Scripture Declares the US Constitution to be the Work of God 87
How Many Thousands of Americans Will the Sugar Lobby's Latest Victory Kill?
Here is the news from Andrea Petersen’s December 29, 2020 Wall Street Journal article “New U.S. Dietary Guidelines Reject Recommendation to Cut Sugar, Alcohol Intake Limit”:
The federal government on Tuesday issued new dietary guidelines that keep current allowances for sugar and alcohol consumption unchanged, rejecting recommendations by its scientific advisory committee to make significant cuts.
The scientific committee, which was composed of 20 academics and doctors, had recommended cutting the limit for added sugars in the diet to 6% of daily calories from 10% in the current guidelines, citing rising rates of obesity and the link between obesity and health problems like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer. The committee also recommended lowering the limit for alcoholic beverages for men to one drink per day from two, matching the guidance for women. It pointed to research linking greater alcohol consumption to a higher risk of death.
Many of my readers are already convinced of the toll that sugar takes on our bodies, but may think that moderate drinking is harmless. If that is you, take a look at “Data on Asian Genes that Discourage Alcohol Consumption Explode the Myth that a Little Alcohol is Good for your Health” to have all the relevant information at your disposal. For some, the benefits of moderate drinking in other dimensions may make up for the physical harm, but there is some physical harm. If you thought in the past that there was no physical harm (or perhaps even the benefit claimed by those only looking at raw correlations) from alcohol, understanding the “Mendelian randomization” evidence about alcohol should lower your estimate of the optimal level of alcohol consumption.
Also, it should be noted that, according to Peter Attia, alcohol, even in moderate amounts, tends to seriously lower sleep quality. That alcohol sometimes makes it easier to fall asleep sometimes gives people the idea that alcohol is good for sleep, but overall it is disruptive of sleep. (It is seen as a bad sign in our culture if someone begins drinking early in the day. But for the sake of sleep, it would be better if our culture saw drinking at any time other than the morning—and that in moderation—as a shocking thing.)
Turning to sugar, I don’t know the precise death toll from the sugar lobby’s victory, but my title above asks the right question. Suppose for example that a reduction in the recommended ceiling from 10% of calories from sugar to 6% of calories from sugar led to people actually reducing sugar intake by half a percent of all calories? How many lives could have been saved over the coming five years (before the next set of guidelines are created)?
Although Brandon Lipps, deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the Department of Agriculture paid lip service to an insufficiency of scientific evidence in explaining the decision. But Andrea Petersen reports this on the lobbying in favor of that decision:
The American Beverage Association, which represents drink makers including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, urged the government to keep the 10% added-sugars limit during a public meeting in August. In response to the new guidelines, the organization’s president and chief executive Katherine Lugar said in a statement, “America’s beverage companies appreciate the common sense approach taken by USDA.”
The alcohol industry also lauded the government’s decision, with a spokesman for the Beer Institute praising “maintaining the long-standing definition of moderate alcohol consumption.”
A surprisingly large percentage of Americans believes in secret conspiracies. It is hard to keep secrets in large groups of people, so I tend to be skeptical about claims of secret conspiracies. But all one has to do is look around to see open conspiracies to harm the American people (for the sake of a buck). This is one.
(At least the new official guidelines recommend zero added sugar for children under two years old.)
For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:
Only What is in Our Power is Our Duty
Too often, we act as if we have control over external things we can’t control—and as if we can’t control our own attitudes, which are well within our control. Seeing the truth of what we control and what we don’t control is a big part of wisdom. Here is how Ryan Holiday puts it in The Obstacle is the Way:
… recovering addicts learn the Serenity Prayer.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
This is how they focus their efforts. It’s a lot easier to fight addiction when you aren’t also fighting the fact that you were born, that your parents were monsters, or that you lost everything. That stuff is done. Delivered. Zero in one hundred chances that you can change it.
So what if you focused on what you can change? That’s where you can make a difference.
Behind the Serenity Prayer is a two-thousand-year-old Stoic phrase: “ta eph’hemin, ta ouk eph’hemin.” What is up to us, what is not up to us.
And what is up to us?
Our emotions
Our judgments
Our creativity
Our attitude
Our perspective
Our desires
Our decisions
Our determination
This is our playing field, so to speak. Everything there is fair game. What is not up to us? Well, you know, everything else. The weather, the economy, circumstances, other people’s emotions or judgments, trends, disasters, et cetera.
…
In its own way, the most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change. That someone decided not to fund your company, this isn’t up to you. But the decision to refine and improve your pitch? That is. That someone stole your idea or got to it first? No. To pivot, improve it, or fight for what’s yours? Yes.
There are many things beyond your control. For example, for economists, opinions differ so widely on what is good and what is not so good that which referees an editor assigns to read your paper makes a huge difference to whether your paper gets accepted to an economics journal. And unfortunately for you, which particular referees an editor assigns to judge your paper is probably beyond your control. (I call this the “referee lottery.” Understanding the importance of the referee lottery is crucial to the mental health of economists who meet with bad luck when trying to publish. That understanding can also be a source of appropriate humility for those who meet with good luck in trying to publish.)
Many things are beyond your control. But I’m willing to bet that if you look closely enough, you’ll find that at least half of what makes your life pleasant or unpleasant has to do with what is going on within your own brain. This is your domain. It can be tricky to avoid overly self-critical or otherwise unproductive states of mind, but I’m willing to bet that the total amount of effort and consistent practice it takes to be able to intentionally get your mind into a better state is much, much less than the amount of effort and consistent practice that you and others reading my blog put into getting good at changing things in the world outside their heads. For many, then, there is likely to be a serious imbalance between the effort put into learning outward skills and the effort put into learning inward skills.
For the development of inward skills, in addition to using one of the many good meditation apps (in my case, “10% Happier”) I am a fan of the Shirzad Chamine’s pedagogy, which he has branded Positive Intelligence. He lays things out in a no-nonsense way, trying to use the latest neuroscience and findings in psychology. I have been impressed enough with the results from using these Positive Intelligence tools in my own life that I wanted to teach them to economists and their families. On that, see “How Economists Can Enhance Their Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact.”
At a more modest level, I have a set of blog posts about positive mental health and how to maintain your moral compass. I think you will find them useful.
Don’t Miss These Other Posts Related to Positive Mental Health and Maintaining One’s Moral and Scientific Compass:
Co-Active Coaching as a Tool for Maximizing Utility—Getting Where You Want in Life
How Economists Can Enhance Their Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact
Recognizing Opportunity: The Case of the Golden Raspberries—Taryn Laakso
Taryn Laakso: Battery Charge Trending to 0% — Time to Recharge
Savannah Taylor: Lessons of the Labyrinth and Tapping Into Your Inner Wisdom
Economics Needs to Tackle All of the Big Questions in the Social Sciences
Let's Set Half a Percent as the Standard for Statistical Significance
John Furlan on Shifts over Time in Leftwing Politics in the US →
I don’t agree with all the political view here, but the analysis of this part of political history seems on target to me.
How Perfectionism Has Made the Pandemic Worse
The Covid-19 pandemic has dominated the news in 2020. I’ve noticed one regularity in how the US (and many other countries) have handled the pandemic: perfectionism has been getting in the way of a quick and powerful response. Every little bit would have helped reduce the reproduction ratio of the coronavirus, but only things that were big bits were allowed. Let me list some instances of this perfectionism:
Early on, not yet having clear evidence of the benefits of masks was described to the public in a way that made it sound as if masks wouldn’t help much.
Highly accurate tests whose results take many days to arrive are next to useless. But the US government was very slow to approve tests of lower accuracy that could have made a big difference because they gave results within minutes.
Many decision-makers acted as if each person needed a test, when tests of samples pooled from many people could be very useful in showing where individual tests were needed and where they weren’t.
In what could have been a big mistake, the government was saying it would only allow a vaccine that was at least 50% effective, when even a 30% effective vaccine could have put a lot of downward pressure on the reproduction ratio of the virus—meaning that in conjunction with continued social distancing it could have brought the epidemic under control. Fortunately, the key vaccines seem to be coming in with effectiveness closer to 95%, making what could have been a big mistake moot.
Despite evidence that having had Covid-19 confers decent immunity, there is little push to conserve currently scarce vaccine doses by strongly discouraging those who have had Covid-19 from getting vaccinated until supplies of the vaccine are more abundant. I think using scarce vaccine doses on those who have already had the disease is motivated by the idea that the immunity of those who have had the disease is probably imperfect, which no doubt is true, because nothing is ever perfect. But Tom Frieden writes in “How to Handle the Covid-19 Vaccine Breakthrough the Right Way”: “very encouraging are the results of three new studies appearing to show that infection with the virus creates a high level of immunity to Covid-19. In the first study, examining a large outbreak on a fishing ship, none of the three people with antibodies got sick, while nearly everyone else got infected. In the second, of an outbreak at a summer camp, none of the 16 people with prior antibodies got sick or tested positive, while nearly everyone else did. More recently, a preliminary report from a study of infected health-care workers found that immunity appears strong and seems to last at least six months.”
Because the vaccine protocol used two doses, the vaccine-rollout plan while vaccine doses are scarce is to vaccinate half as many people with two doses rather than twice as many people with one dose, which the vaccine trials suggest has a high enough level of efficacy that vaccinating twice as many people with one dose would lower the vaccines reproduction ratio much more.
Finally, in something that shocks me, the article at the top, “Highly Touted Monoclonal Antibody Therapies Sit Unused in Hospitals” by Sarah Toy, Joseph Walker and Melanie Evans suggests that there is a reluctance to use monoclonal antibodies because there is not yet evidence that goes far beyond what was needed to get government approval. Monoclonal antibodies work by the same principles as vaccines; the big differences are (a) vaccines get your body to make antibodies, monoclonal antibody treatment directly injects antibodies, (b) the monoclonal antibodies are chosen to be especially high-quality antibodies, while your body might or might not make a lot of high-quality antibodies after you are vaccinated, and (c) you have to vaccinate everyone, but the monoclonal antibody treatment can be given to people after they start to show some symptoms and so can be prioritized better. You can bet that I would ask for monoclonal antibody treatment if I got Covid-19.
Some of the caution about evidence, accuracy, efficacy and side-effects would make sense if we were facing a lesser disease. But when people are dying all around, getting the job done is what counts, even if you get the job done by imperfect means. The way the reproduction ratio works, combining a set of several very imperfects means that pushed the reproduction ratio below the critical value of 1 could crush the spread of the coronavirus.
For a while, the Union’s top general in the Civil War was a perfectionist: George McClellan. George McClellan kept looking for the perfect opportunity to engage the forces of the Confederacy in battle. He accomplished little. Ulysses Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman got the job done by their willingness to use imperfect methods.
Other posts about the pandemic:
Indoors is Very Dangerous for COVID-19 Transmission, Especially When Ventilation is Bad
Paul Romer on How to Do Universal, Frequent Testing through Pooled Testing
Testing: Frequent, Fast, and Cheap is Better than Sensitive—Alex Tabarrok
Logarithms and Cost-Benefit Analysis Applied to the Coronavirus Pandemic
Seconding Paul Romer's Proposal of Universal, Frequent Testing as a Way Out
Two other related posts:
Daniel Jacobson on Freedom of Speech at Universities in the Age of Cancel Culture →
The title of this post links to an interview with Daniel Jacobson. I am proud to have served on the search committee that chose Daniel Jacobson for his current position at the University of Colorado Boulder. As a teaser, here are some quotations from this interview (bullets added):
I have become increasingly alarmed at the lack of intellectual and political diversity in philosophy and academia, as well as by its political biases and even bigotry. Scholars with heterodox views — conservatives, libertarians and classical liberals — are widely discriminated against and called racists for supporting race-neutral principles.
In my experience, some universities practice hiring and admissions policies that are blatantly illegal, even at public institutions in states that have more stringent anti-discrimination laws. Meanwhile, Jews and Asian-Americans are discriminated against openly …
… universities increasingly accept a dubious ideology that demonizes whatever it considers “whiteness.”
The University of Colorado, to its great credit, has a conception of diversity that includes opinion, not just identity group.
The series is about the rapid increase in social coercion of speech and the narrowing of the range of socially acceptable opinion among elite institutions. More and more, scholars and journalists with politically unpopular views are being harassed and personally attacked for questioning prevailing dogma. In the current phrase, they are being canceled — or at least people are attempting to cancel them.
This is antithetical to the proper mission of universities and the media. It is also exactly what those of us who have been defending freedom of speech predicted would happen once classes of opinion were put beyond the pale with terms such as “hate speech.” That creates an incentive for those who would silence unpopular opinions to classify their opponents as being motivated by hate or fear (as with the tendentious “-phobic” suffix). It seems absurd, but Martin Luther King Jr. would be guilty of committing “microaggressions” according to official University of California guidelines, which are unofficially accepted far more broadly in academia.
We humans are deeply conformist, and we tend to accept uncritically the opinions of those around us. This makes the ideological takeover of academia and prestige media especially harmful to the intellectual development of students.
I have taught advanced undergraduate courses where most students had never been exposed to the arguments for the morality of capitalism, for example. They were entirely unaware of arguments in favor of market-based economies over central economic planning. Somehow senior majors in PPE (Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics) had never read Hayek, Friedman or Thomas Sowell.
Nicole Rura: Close to Half of US Population Projected to Have Obesity by 2030
A big part of my motivation for blogging about diet and health (along with all the other subjects I blog about) is my awareness of how bad the trendlines are for obesity and other avoidable health problems.
Because we are affected by the behavior of those around us, anything visible that you do that is good or bad for your health also has spillovers for those around you. If you go off sugar, or pursue a more ambitious program of eating right, or exercise, you are benefitting not only yourself, but all the people who (possibly unconsciously) are inspired by your example. Conversely, if you eat scores of different foods with substantial sugar content (as you well might—look at the details on the box), delve deeply into junk food, or pursue the life of a couch potato, you harm not only yourself, but all the people who see such destructive behavior as a little more normal because so many people act that way. And some of the people you are likely to affect most strongly by the example of your behavior are those in your own household.
I am coming more and more to the view that a lot of what we think of as the normal effects of aging are the result of ways of behaving we take for normal in 2020, but won’t look normal at all when people look back from the year 2100. Much of what you need to know to be much healthier is known now but will take decades to become conventional wisdom and decades beyond that to be embraced as actual behavioral change. I hope to shorten that lag time for readers of my blog.
So far in this post, I was talking about physical health. But mental health is crucial as well. A key dimension of positive mental health is turning down the volume on the voice in your head that is constantly hypercritical of you. I am trying to write things that will be helpful there, too.
Don’t suffer in ignorance of all the things that could make your life better.
For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:
For links to posts on positive mental health and maintaining one’s moral compass, see: