Is "Snuck" a Word?

Conan can gloat over finding "snuck" in the dictionary (Jennifer Garner, in the video above, told Conan O'Brien that "snuck" was not a word), but "sneaked" would have been a more traditional usage (here). Is a little slap on the wrist from Jennifer Garner really that hard to take?

Sturgeon Bay Fog Horn, Not The Sound I Remember

This is a great video shot in 2009 from the sand beach just south of the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, Sturgeon Bay, WI. The video was shot from the beach of the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Nature Preserve. Toward the end of the video, if you listen carefully above the wind noise, you can hear the fixed fog horn at the end of the ship canal. There is some controversy over whether or not the fog horn is still in use but at least it was still being used in 2009.

The fog horn sounds different from the one I remember hearing back in the 1950's. The current fog horn sound has been described as "a cow about to croak," probably by someone with farm experience. The sound I remember was a low, deep "Beeeeeeeee-Ohh, Beeeeeeeee-Ohh," a low musical fifth. At the end of the video above the camera pans around looking South along Lake Michigan. The log cabin my father and his brothers built, Shady Nook, was about 300 yards down the beach, very close to the ship canal.

The cabin still stands but has been substantially altered since the 1950's. The beach and the old road in front of the house have also been eroded away to their present location. My father and his brothers sold the cabin when a neighbor to the North built a large, modern home on the adjoining lot. The house was built very close to the log cabin and, in my father's words, "ruined it." The area is still beautiful and a substantial sand beach remains.

The View From Cana Island, Door County, WI

Since you can't all be here...

Film Review: Inside Job

I just viewed Inside Job, an award winning documentary about the late 2000 Financial Crisis. The film starts as an indictment of Wall Street and the US Political System. It ends with an indictment of Academia and the Economics profession. Neoliberal corruption of US institutions runs very, very deep.

The film makers also produced a study guide (available here). I particularly liked the interviews with Raghuram Rajan, an economist who saw the financial crisis coming in 2005 and a sweating economist, Glen Hubbard, one of President George W. Bush's economic advisor (currently Dean of the Columbia Business School) and architect of the 2003 Bush Tax cuts, who did not see the crisis developing.

Paul Ryan and the Theory of Income Inequality

Paul Ryan, R-WI, is a conservative philosopher and theoretician of the first rank and it's a real challenge to get the best of him intellectually. He makes a very strong defense of US income inequality using the following theoretical framework.

Neoliberalism and free-market fundamentalism lead to income inequality. Rewarding people in the upper income distribution increases economic growth. Growth generates jobs. Jobs then reduce income inequality. In the economics profession, the role of income inequality in creating economic development is called a Kuznets process (or Kuznets curve) named for the economist Simon Kuznets who studied the empirical foundations of economic growth.

The Pew Economic Mobility Project makes a little different analysis, exploring the link between economic mobility and income inequality (you can read the executive summary of their report here). 
The theory underlying the PEW mobility research can be summarized with the following directed graph.

Economic growth creates absolute mobility (in terms of the video, everyone is moving up the income escalator). However, economic growth under certain conditions (neoliberalism) blocks individuals from moving up the escalator as they enter on the bottom (relative mobility). In the view of the PEW researchers, the lack of relative mobility is "destroying the American Dream." The result is the type of class conflict that Paul Ryan accuses Democrats of inflaming.

Clearly, Rep. Ryan sees neoliberalism creating absolute mobility and endorses the rise in income inequality (declining relative mobility) because he thinks it feeds back to create growth. In a globalized world system, however, growth may not feedback to the benefit of the working and middle classes.

What seems evident from the late 2000 Financial Crisis is that income inequality leads to the concentration of cash looking for a high-rate of return. Financialization leads to the risky investments necessary to provide high rates of return. Risky investments eventually create a financial crisis which, to some extent, reduces income inequality. The extent of the reduction, however, still leaves the majority of high and low income individuals at the same place in the income distribution.

Rep. Ryan does not mention the financial crisis (and neither does the Pew Center video). However, both the Great Depression and the 2000 Financial Crisis both occurred at secular peaks in US income inequality. The conjuncture of high inequality and financial crisis must be more than a coincidence.

Economist Greg Mankiw's gives his explanation of the growth in US income inequality. He does bring the late 2000 Financial Crisis into his discussion.

BMW Clean Coal (?) Ad Wins Green Tweener

I wonder if the Coen brothers did BMWs "clean" diesel ad (above). Looks a lot like the Coen brothers "clean" coal ad (below). In any event, both deserve a Green Tweener Award.

...or maybe, even better, another Coen brothers "clean" coal ad: