Market Power

Mike Leachisms from the 2009 Big XII Media Days

Mike Leach, Texas Tech head football coach and pirate afficianado addressed the press today at the Big XII media days.  He is also one of the most colorful interviewees in college football today.  The following are Dave Matter's Twitter posts, verbatim, from the media gathering.

• Leach feels really good about QB mix. "If Potts is our starter, I know we got a good one. If someone beats him out, we got a better one."
• Leach on DE McKinner Dixon's departure: "I think it'll help our team. That's addition by subtraction." Ouch.
• Leach on the complex process of fixing Taylor Potts' passing mechanics: "Hey, Taylor, lift your elbow up."
• Leach: I've studied tattoos and body piercing over the years. ... It's not my cup of tea but there's a creative element to it.
• Leach: "If I would be interested in something it would be a piercing bc if I got tired of it I could pull it out."
• Leach hopped on 64-team playoff soapbox. "Everyone else does it this way. I'm the mainstream." Imagine that
• Leach: "Everyone thinks I went into a cave and carried this out." Nope. He cites the playoff systems in Texas HS, Division 2 & 3 and NFL.

Dave Matter is the Mizzou football beat writer for the Columbia Daily Tribune and one of the best college football bloggers (and not because he covers Mizzou, although that's a definite plus).  Here is his Twitter page.  Here is his Behind the Stripes college football blog.

Hall of Fame Chances

Using a radial bias function network, a sort of neural net, Dr. Smith and Dr. Downey were able to identify statistical commonalities among Hall of Famers. As it turns out, hits, home runs and on-base plus slugging percentages are what count for hitters, while wins, saves, earned run average and winning percentage are what count for pitchers. All-Star Game appearances count for both, being especially valuable for hitters as they serve as a useful proxy for position.

Nothing surprising here, but I'd like to know, according to the model, the probability that Ron Santo gets into the HOF. 

Keep in mind I haven't seen the model at the time of this writing.  But it might make an interesting model to use to analyze the effect of the steroids era on the chances players get into the HOF.

HT Ihsuan Li

Classroom Experiment in Socialism

Link here.

What's Wrong with the Stimulating View of the Minimum Wage Hike?

From NPR:

But liberal economists say this summer is the perfect time for a wage hike: It will put more money into the pockets of people who need it most. Fatter paychecks will stimulate spending and help the economy, they say. Kai Filion, a policy analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group, says this wage hike will generate $5.5 billion in consumer spending over the next 12 months.

It is my understanding that studies show that a 10% increase in the minimum wage, all else held equal, leads to about a 1% decrease in employment.  This gives us an elasticity of unskilled labor demand of -0.1, making unskilled labor a good with inelastic demand. 

Economic theory tells us that when demand for something is inelastic and its price rises, the incomes of the good's providers increases, even though though quantity demanded falls.  In the unskilled labor market, the "good" is unskilled labor, the "price" is the wage, and "providers" responds to the workers themselves.

Keynesian economic theory tells us that when a given amount of money is injected into the economy, overall spending in the economy will increase by a multiple of the original amount injected. 

So what's the problem?  Unskilled workers will have more money and that should lead to a multiple increase in overall spending, right? 

Wrong.  It's because the marginal income received by minimum wage workers lucky enough to still have jobs does not represent an injection of money into the economy.  It represents a redistribution of income and nothing more.  The added income of unskilled workers will come from the incomes of business owners who employ minimum wage workers and from the people who buy goods produced with unskilled workers through higher prices.  While unskilled workers may spend more overall, that will be offset by decreased spending in other areas of the economy.

Too bad NPR missed that point.

Big XII North Questions

Dave Matter nicely describes what the Big XII North teams are looking forward to this year.

Nebraska is the sexy pick by the media to win the Big XII North this year.  I just don't see it.  They may have the best DL in Ndamukong Suh, but their defense was anything but dominant last year.  The Huskers gave up 24 points to CU (7 of CU's 31 points came on a botched fake field goal, not the D's fault) in the final regular season game and had to get a late field goal by Alex Henery to win that game against the horrible Buffs.  They gave up 45 against Mizzou at home (the final was 52-17, but 7 Tiger points came on an interception return by Brock Christopher in the second quarter, hardly the fault of the Husker D). 

It's pretty clear to me that the media's infatuation with the Huskers is nothing more than infatuation with Husker tradition.  Just like opposing teams used to be enamored with the crimson and cream of the Husker uniforms, so apparently are the media.  But Coach Bo Pelini has to actually show me that he has the horses to compete before I can accept they are anything more than a pest on the way to the north title.

My picks in the North for 2009

1. KU
2. MU
3. NU
4. CU
5. KSU
6. ISU

Two Tigers Sign Pro Contracts

Two former Mizzou Tigers have signed contracts with their drafting teams this week:  Ziggy Hood with the Steelers and William Moore with the Falcons.

A Difference Between College and Pro Ball

Jeremy Maclin, the former Mizzou WR and two-time All American and first round draft pick of the Philadelphia Eagles, is prepping for his first pro season.  In this article from the KC Star, he notes a difference in the relationship between players in the NFL vs. college ball.

Maclin also realizes the pro camaraderie is not the same as college camaraderie.

Losing a receiving spot or a return spot to Maclin may not simply lead to a spot on the bench for another Eagle. It may wind up as a loss of livelihood.

“They’re very accepting,” Maclin said of his new pro teammates. “But obviously you’ve got guys who’ve got families, who need the money, who will do anything they can to get the money.

“It’s just a little different.”

The loss of a starting spot in college can also make a difference in after-school livelihood.  But it's not so clear-cut that a player will even have a chance to play in the pros.

Traditional Stout Recipe - Partial Mash

This is the recipe for a partial mash traditional stout.  It's from a kit I bought at Midwest Homebrewing Supplies.

• 3.3# Dark DME
• 4# American 2-row malt
• 4 oz chocolate malt
• 4 oz roasted barley
• 2 oz black patent
• 1 oz Northern Brewer Hops - bittering hops (60")
• 1t Irish moss (added with 15" left in the boil)
• 3/4 c Corn sugar (priming)
• White Labs Irish ale yeast #004

I had the grains cracked at the store.  I mashed the grains at 152 degrees F for 60" and sparged them with 170 degree F water.  I used a batch sparge method for this recipe.

I boiled the wort for 60" and cooled it after the boil to approximately 75 degrees with a copper wort chiller (this takes me about 10-15").  I poured the wort into my primary fermenter (a 7-gallon glass carboy), shook the fermenter vigorously to aerate, and pitched the yeast.

After 1 week I transfered the beer to a secondary fermenter.  1 week after that I bottled the beer.

I do not have a record of my original gravity reading, but Midwest's spec sheet calls for an original gravity in the 1.042 - 1.046 range.

Chevy Camaro? Not Yours!

And you thought we were in a recession.  Apparently General Motors is doing OK because they were unwilling (unable?) to get somebody into a Chevy Camaro. 

I'd never really liked American sports cars before. But the 2010 Camaro -- a revival Chevrolet has been talking up since 2006 -- is so much more sleek than your typical muscle car. And since my BMW 330 started showing its age (nine) around the same time that the death of the U.S. auto industry hit the headlines, I thought: Why not do a little something to help?

So, after seeing a newspaper ad promoting Camaros at a local Chevy dealer, I called and left a voicemail saying I was interested in a test drive. I never heard back.

There are no spoilers here, but read the whole thing.  My advice:  buy a Nissan, a Toyota, or a Honda.  You'll probably get the same slimy runaround as at other dealers, but at least you won't have to return for a decade (assuming normal driving habits, yada yada yada).

As the driver of a car hauler once told me:  "you can really tell which cars are Japanese and which are American just by looking at their undersides," and he wasn't being complimentary of the American car companies.

HT Alex Nunez via Glenn Reynolds

Private vs. Public Health Care - Human Nature Still Rules

Adam Smith wrote of how we get our dinners:

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest."

You could say the same of how we get our health care:

It is not from the benevolence of the doctor, the nurse, or the researchers at the pharmacuetical companies, that we expect our health care, but from their regard to their own self-interest."

With Obamacare, if it goes through, we could say:

It is not from the benevolence of the president, congressmen, and health care bureaucrats, that we expect our health care, but from their regard to their own self-interests.

Just because we call someone a "public servant" does not make them immune to pursuing his own self interest.  He continues to be a rational, self-interested human being who will do things to further his self interest (i.e. he will be greedy).  It's in his nature.

Keeping that in mind, why would anyone think that a private good, like health care, will be better administered by government bureaucrats with little to no knowledge of particular situations than private people?