Politics Roundtable
Political blogs of interest to economists.
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Social Policy Bond Blog
January 30, 2012, 8:20 am, 947162
It's a familiar story: in so many policy areas - health, education, the environment, for instance - adherence to process is more highly rewarded than socially desirable outcomes. So we have a blizzard of micro-targets combined with a disintegrating physical and social environment and a disengaged electorate. Policymaking ...
January 27, 2012, 10:20 am, 946604
But the LDP [of Japan] shows the same intransigence that has been its stock-in-trade since it lost power in 2009. It vows to block the tax bill, even though raising the consumption tax has long been a plank in its own policies. Generational Warfare, 'The Economist', ...
January 19, 2012, 12:19 am, 943239
Cancer patients who need chemotherapy should receive it within four weeks of being assessed, under new [New Zealand] government health targets. The cancer target at present requires hospitals to provide radiation therapy within four weeks of assessment. From July 1, hospitals would also have to ensure that patients needing chemotherapy ...
January 12, 2012, 12:19 am, 940807
Numerical targets, though they can never accurately measure everything of importance, are going to have to play a role in determining the efficiency and effectiveness of policy instruments. Many of our social and environmental problems can be attributed to (1) the private sector's use of accountancy measures, to the exclusion ...
January 11, 2012, 8:20 am, 940433
David Brooks asks
Where are the liberals?:
Americans...don't trust the federal government. A few decades ago they did, but now they don't. Why don't Americans trust their government? It's not because they dislike individual programs like Medicare. It's more likely because they think the whole system is rigged. ...
January 8, 2012, 8:19 pm, 939395
From
The Great Derangement, by Matt Taibbi:
[US] national politics was doomed because voters were no longer debating one another using a commonly accepted set of facts.
Life and society are so rich and complex that we can easily extract evidence that supports (or appears to support) virtually ...
December 20, 2011, 2:20 pm, 933711
It's nearly the end of the year, so time to sum up my view of where policymaking in general and Social Policy Bonds in particular are headed. The latter is easy to summarise: I have had a few expressions of intellectual interest in Social Policy Bonds, but the ...
November 30, 2011, 12:19 pm, 926161
Who benefits from the Common Agricultural Policy, which consumes 43 percent of the European Union's budget and costs households $296 per annum? Well:
The Duke of Devonshire gets £390,000, the Duke of Buccleuch £405,000, the Earl of Plymouth £560,000, the Earl of Moray £770,000, ...
November 17, 2011, 6:20 am, 921677
When it comes to climate change, the uselessness of the current policy approach is plain. The way we do things now is: get the government or some bureaucracy to identify some activity that has an effect, then try to encourage or discourage that activity. In our complex society, ...
November 12, 2011, 4:19 pm, 919908
From a letter to the editor of the London Times:
Sir, Your endorsement of the Greek referendum so that the Greek people can determine their own future surprised me. Personally, I will endorse referendums on economic policy once ...
