Economics of Life by Gary S Becker & Guity Nashat Becker

Economics of Life: From Baseball to Affirmative Action to Immigration, How Real-World Issues Affect Our Everyday Life (publ 1999)

"We do not identify with any political party in the United States since none takes a consistent position on whether individuals respond to incentives and know their own interests better than politicians and bureaucrats do," Gary S. Becker, Nobel Prize in Economics 1992

"Some intellectuals even expect politicians, voters, and readers to quickly accept cogent analysis that is stated clearly and forcefully. In our judgment, this claim is a very mistaken view of the impact of ideas on policies and beliefs. Political decisions are not mainly determined by a dispassionate evaluation of ideas and analysis, but by a pragmatic balancing of power among competing special and general purpose pressure groups. Ideas are often impotent when arrayed against powerful interests."

"The economic way of thinking, with its recognition that choices are sensitive to the costs and benefits of different actions, offers many insights into economic, social & political behavior. These insights are overlooked by persons who look at behavior from purely political, social, or psychological perspectives."

On: Do rich countries inherently have lower economic growth rates than developing countries?
"Rich countries that do not perform well should blame policies and behavior - not age and wealth. Their rate of growth will not slow if they avoid complacency and the perennial temptation to overregulate and control economic life."

"It is far easier to create bad public programs than to eliminate them once they have been around for a while. This old but frequently ignored law of political science has been called "the tyranny of the status quo," and it helps explain why even downright perverse government policies stubbornly survive and sometimes even expand."


k's notes:
(1) Highlights in bold and/or italic were added by me to capture and remember the essence.
(2) Author Gary Becker has not published another book since this one appeared in 1999. Unfortunately, it has major drawbacks:
- It is a collection of essays written for Business Week and, therefore, are too short to include actual data. References to others' research is documented and we are told why it is wrong. But the author's own research is not and so cannot be compared.
- The author likes to predict things like "the immense cost to business" of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Predictions are ridiculous when there is no follow-up work to refine the model based on actual data.
- Heavy slant toward companies, as expected in Business Week. While the authors rightfully claim no pressure to slant articles by Business Week, the authors were specifically chosen to write a Business Week column due to their slant toward business. Interestingly, the authors ignore this fact - that analyses are biased in both directions.
- Some interesting ideas in the book but, if you have read Freakonomics first, don't bother with this 1999 book. Although hailed as the first "freakonomic," Becker's work suffers greatly by the time periods he would select for studies, specific comparisons of regions of his own choosing, and assumptions of how people behave based on his lifetime (basically 1960-1990) experience.
- The only way to truly learn from this book is by doing or finding the follow-up data & research that tells us if his predictions came to pass - especially with the recent massive global trade increase and the current economic crisis. One simple example: Becker is positive that unemployment would go up 1-2% (from 5 to 7%) if the minimum wage was increased. Since his prediction, unemployment went down significantly due to economic growth even in the face of higher minimum wages, but unemployment is currently about 10% - well above anything Becker imagined. Rather obviously, increasing the minimum wage is only one small part of the health of companies. And, it's not worth raving about as a giant issue!

Good Omens 12/27/09

"Ineffability"
- Good Omens (book) by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

"Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow."

On Writing &/or other Professional Expertise
"Terry [Pratchett] has been writing professionally for a very long time, honing his craft, getting quietly better and better. The biggest problem he faces is the problem of excellence: he makes it look easy. This can be a problem. The public doesn't know where the craft lies. It's wiser to make it look harder than it is, a lesson all jugglers learn."
- Neil Gaimen on Terry Pratchett

On Writing &/or other Professional Expertise
"Well, he's no genius. He's better than that. He's not a wizard in other words, but a conjurer. Wizards don't have to work. They wave their hands and the magic happens. But conjurers now... conjurors work very hard. They spend a lot of time in their youth watching,very carefully, the best conjurors of their day. They seek out old books of trickery and, being natural conjurors, read everything else as well, because history itself is just a magic show. They observe the way people think, and the many ways in which they don't."
- Terry Pratchett on Neil Gaimen

Seven Years in Tibet 12/26/09

"Tibetans believe all living things were their mothers in a past life. So we must show them respect and repay their kindness. And never ever harm anything that lives."
- The Dalai Lama, Seven Years in Tibet (movie - docudrama)

"When you are not strong enough to fight, you should embrace your enemy. With both arms around you, he cannot point a gun at you. Nothing in politics is a matter of honor, my friend."
- The Dalai Lama

"All beings tremble before danger and death. Life is dear to all. When a man considers this, he does not kill or cause to kill. You must understand that these words are engraved in the heart of every Tibetan. It is why we are a peaceful people who reject violence on principle. I pray you will see this as our greatest strength, not our weakness."

"Religion is poison."
- Communist Chinese General

"To return a gift is unforgiveable."

"There was a time I would have wished you dead. But your shame will be your torture and your torture will be your life. I wish it to be long."

"We have a saying in Tibet. If the problem can be solved, there is no use worrying about it. If it can't be solved, worrying will do no good."
- The Dalai Lama

Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

"The media never met a potential apocalypse it didn't like."

"People respond to incentives."

"People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable or manifest. Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences."

"The brilliant rationalist had encountered a central, frustrating tenet of human nature: behavior change is hard."

"When people aren't compelled to pay the full costs of their actions, they have little incentive to change their behavior."

"Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self-disgust, and that eternal human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods. And the fear of climate change is like a religion in this vital sense, that it is veiled in mystery, and you can never tell whether your acts of propitiation or atonement have been any way successful."
- Boris Johnson, journalist and previous mayor of London

"The Hangover" or twas too much for facebook... 12/27/09

“Yeah, well, if I ever get a gun again, I’ll probably shoot him.”
“Why don’t you just ruin his laundry?”
-State of Nature: War by Nicholas Slaughter

“There are these little spots floating around. Are any of you getting this?”
In his most derisive voice, Horace said, “It’s snow, you moron.”
“Fuckin’ A.”
-State of Nature: Civilization by Nicholas Slaughter

"In life a person really only has three choices: to run, to spectate or to commit."
- City of Joy (movie)

"The stated authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
- Galileo (presumed)

"Billiions of dollars could be saved annually on packaging materials if all shipping boxes and all packages of food in the supermarket were spheres."
- The Pluto Files by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

"You might become more skeptical of the conventional wisdom; you may begin looking for hints as to how things aren't quite what they seem; perhaps you will seek out some trove of data and sift through it, balancing your intelligence and your intuition to arrive at a glimmering new idea. Some of these ideas might make you uncomfortable, even unpopular...But the fact of the matter is that Freakonomics-style thinking simply doesn't traffic in morality. As we suggested near the beginning of this book, if morality represents an ideal world, then economics presents the actual world."
- Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

And more on the true scientific method...
"The organization of the solar system, how the solar system came to be the way it is - those are genuine scientific questions. But the labels you give things - no. You're having an argument over something you generate rather than what is fundamental to the universe."
- The Pluto Files by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

"Power is a disease one has no desire to be cured of."
- Giulio Andreotti, Italian politician from 1946 to the present notable for his scandalous schemes and intimate connections with the mafia & the Roman Catholic Church.

"There's something wonderful about the way dogs live in the moment. They don't look back. They don't yearn. They don't want what they don't have. Clearly, we are not like that as a nation." - David Frankel, director "Marley & Me"

“Economy in decline. Sound familiar? What a difference three months doesn't make.” - CNBC, January 2009

“Love him or hate him, Bush has undeniably been a President who tried doing things differently, but nevertheless got different results. He is the free-market apostle who wound up ordering massive government intervention. The clarion of free trade and lawful immigration who leaves office with protectionism and isolationism resurgent. The would-be uniter with the wedgelike effect.” - Time, 1/26/09

“We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless it conveyed a different message.” - George W. Bush's final news conference, January 2009.

"Sometimes you misunderestimated me," George Bush, final news conference as President, 1/12/09