At this point, it just strikes me as fundamentally unlikely that bold policy innovation is going to come out of the sclerotic United States.
What a great point. The US still does some things arguably better than other countries, but we also do plenty worse. Our scientific output is great. The new products and ingenuity from IT are fantastic. Our health care, even after health care reform is weak compared to other countries. Our transportation priorities are certainly lame (cars only!). So we have this whole mixed bag of things, like I’m sure many countries do. But what policies helped enabled those great things to happen? And when were those policies implemented?
Looking back, I see that the US led the way with environmental policy (wilderness areas, clean air act, etc.) up through about Nixon. After that, policy changes were a bit more impotent, but we still benefit tremendously from this foresight.
What else? When was the last time the US enacted some new, substantial, policy that changed things for the better, and did so before any other country?
On of the most fun running experiences I’ve had was training for and running the 2010 Cape Cod Marathon in Falmouth, MA. At 30 years old and a competitive runner for about 20 of those years, this was my first marathon. I had long sworn I would never run a marathon, simply because I figured it was too hard on the body. Yet, somehow, in the spring of 2010, I found myself tentatively agreeing to run the marathon. How did this happen?
In October 2009 my wife, infant son and I moved the Bronx, NY: this was a tough gig for my outdoorsy/Alaskan roots and I was struggling to find a way to stay fit. So when my never-run-more-than-three-miles-in-his-life friend Kevin Hanscom called me up and said he was signing up for a marathon, I was caught in a flurry of emotions. If he could do it, I should be able to, right? And with that, Kevin became my virtual training partner for marathon to be run on October 31st, 2010.
I put in some intermittent running in March and early April, didn’t run at all for nearly a month, then finally got into a routine starting May 25th. Between May 25th and October 31st, I logged 1008 miles exploring all neighborhoods in the Bronx, and well into Westchester County. Interesting anecdotes include:
My first and only run with Kevin (aside from the marathon itself) was a 21.5 mile run on August 8th from Brooklyn, through Manhattan, to our apartment in the Bronx.
My longest week was 75 miles.
My longest run was 26.75 miles, I took the bus the last few miles home.
I ran 99 out of 153 days. 2 out of every three days was typical.
I only ran 10 days in the month of September, due to illness and other family matters. Bad timing, but nothing I could do.
I wore five pairs of shoes (most of the 1000 miles was on two pairs).
I absolutely loved (virtual) training with Kevin and by the time the marathon rolled around, I was so happy with having managed to stay in shape in such a horrible environment, that I didn’t even need to run the marathon. Although, of course I did 🙂
Before running the marathon I estimated that I should be able to run between 3:15 and 3:25 given the shape I was in. Ultimately I ran a 3:19. That would seem like I was pretty right on, but as it turns out, I went out too hard, hit the wall, and crawled (not literally) the last few miles to the finish line.
My pace, in minutes per mile, versus distance for the 2010 Cape Cod Marathon. See the step function centered at mile 21? That's the wall.
Notice just how beautifully consistent my pace was for the first 20 or so miles. That’s pretty impressive if you consider that the course wasn’t completely flat (the hills started about half way in). I ended up running faster than my anticipated pace simply because I joined up with a really great group of people (Matthew Wohlever and Brustolon). We ended up running and chatting for most of the race. Laura left Matt and me sometime around mile 17, and Matt kindly left me when I crashed and burned in the Sippewissett Hills.
So yeah, that’s the wall. I think that the pace versus distance chart is a pretty dramatic visual of what that’s like. If you’d asked how fast I was running at the time, I would have estimated something like 12 minutes per mile, not 9 — so it felt substantially slower than it actually was. It wasn’t a matter of working through pain or anything like that, I just simply couldn’t make my legs go any faster — it was a pretty strange feeling.
Neither at the time, nor now, do I have any regrets for going out too aggressively. If I ever run a marathon again, I’m just going to make sure I can go out and keep that pace 🙂
Kevin ran spectacular race — much more consistent than mine. In every photo I saw of him he was smiling!
Krugman links to a David Frum piece which basically points out the Krugman’s predictions between 2000 and 2011 were much more on the money than the Wall Street Journal.
A few hours later, Krugman points out the that the US 10-year bond rates reflect exactly what he said would happen.
To be clear here, I don’t think Krugman is able to predict the future — or is some super genius — nor do I think believe that there’s (too much) confirmation bias. I think that Krugman is simply a good scientist and applies the right economic theories to appropriate situations. By his own account, this all textbook stuff.
I heard this absolutely horrible story on NPR this morning called Progress and Promise For A Town Once In Crisis. The progress the town has made so far is certainly okay on some level (reducing unemployment), but the plan is now to cut down from 22 parks, to just five big parks. The justification? In the words of the mayor Wayne Seybold,
“Years ago you had to have a different park in every neighborhood because people walked,” says Seybold. “But it’s a different world today, and I think that’s what you have to do with the federal government.”
OMG, did he really just say that? People used to walk? So the idea is now that parks are for people a) over the age of 16 who b) own a car? Seybold is much the definition of an elitist.
I should mention that I don’t exactly agree with his ideal that plopping in Starbucks, Kohls and chain restaurants make his town look more attractive, but that’s one of the reasons I don’t live in the midwest anyway (IOW, to each his own).
Juanita Drive is one of the most unfriendly roads possible for walkers and bicyclists. The cyclist was killed within a 100 meters of a section of the road with no shoulder (thanks to parked cars) on a corner that is blind at 15 mph (the road has a 35 mph speed limit). I have wanted to start advocating for a separated bicycle lane the entire length of Juanita, extending from the Burke-Gillman trail down to Juanita Bay. I guess I’m too late.
At a community meeting several months ago, I heard from neighbors that refused to let their children walk anywhere along Juanita. Personally, I effectively choose to do the same, despite my advocacy for walking and bicycling. The result of this is that people are trapped to their cars. There is literally no alternative out of some of our neighborhoods.
The story has been going around the transportation blogosphere about the mother who was convicted of vehicular manslaughter because her 4-year-old son was killed why trying to cross the road. Check out the maps from that Infrastructurist article and I think it’s clear that she didn’t exactly have any alternatives on getting across the road. That people were outraged at the mother, and that she was convicted, just shows how much of a reality distortion field we live in. It’s time for people to start thinking beyond cars.
What really should have happened is that the Georgia DOT should be held responsible for not providing safe streets. Their Mission Statement reads,
The Georgia Department of Transportation provides a safe, seamless and sustainable transportation system that supports Georgia’s economy and is sensitive to its citizens and environment.
Reading that mission statement, and looking at the traverse from the bus stop to the home, it sounds to me like the Georgia DOT completely failed, not the mother.
Ars Technica has a wonderful article this morning, filled with lots of links, that really echos many of the conversations I’ve had over the last few years about the problems with the current publication process and what it’s missing.
I’m actually going to quote a quote from the article, because it best summarizes the sentiment,
As Wired’s Dan MacArthur put it, “it is a source of constant wonder to me that so many scientists have come to regard a system [the existing publication process] that actively inhibits the rapid, free exchange of scientific information as an indispensable component of the scientific process.”
I know that I (and many others) have lots of ideas on how to improve upon the system, but it’s a big beast, and will be difficult to change. But, it will change.
I don’t know anything about economics, so why do I advocate for particular economic policies? The reason is simple: as a scientist, I have a particular way of analyzing and solving problems, and when I see another person apply that same technique to a different field, I am more likely to trust their conclusions. For this reason, I trust a lot of what Paul Krugman says about economics: he thinks like me.
…terrible growth prospects; low inflation; oh, and low interest rates, with no sign of the bond vigilantes.
So what’s the solution? He writes,
Ordinary macroeconomic analysis tells you very clearly what we should be doing: fiscal expansion and monetary expansion by any means we can manage; in fact, the case for a higher inflation target pops right out of just about any model capable of producing the kind of mess we’re in.
Sounds like a reasonable analysis. So what is the solution that our politicians (including the president) are advocating? Krugman writes,
And what are we talking about in policy terms? Spending cuts and an end to monetary expansion.
In other words, they’re doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing.
It has become pretty clear that the the two congressional parties are not equal: one side is willing to compromise, the other is not. It’s also clear that our President, all too willing to compromise, strongly aligns his fiscal policy with one of those parties, and no, it’s not the democrats. As pointed out by Nate Silver, President Obama’s revenue-to-cut ratio is actually more conservative than the average Republican voter in the United States. This makes the G.O.P.’s no-revenue stance pretty far outside of the political mainstream.
Even if Republican congressmen weren’t outside of the mainstream, I’m sick of this no-compromise crap, especially on fiscal policy. I’m even more sick of the media pretending as if both sides are to blame here… and yes, I’m talking to you, NPR. Things aren’t always equal and there aren’t always two-sides to the story. The Republican party is perfectly willing to admit that they’re not here to compromise, while the Democratic party is. So it’s crystal clear that one party is a bunch of jerks, and other is far more reasonable. At this point, since these values are all out in the open anyway, it should be perfectly acceptable to just openly report who’s being a jerk and who’s not. Instead, we hear that ‘both sides have work to do’ and other similar BS.
