Free Lunch

A discussion on anti-trust laws and the Federal Trade Commission.

Show Notes:

Trip Gabriel's Thread on McAuilffe's polling: https://twitter.com/tripgabriel/status/1458227755250765827

Vox article with plot of McAuliffe v Northam vote share: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/11/4/22761168/virginia-governor-glenn-youngkin-critical-race-theory

The NJ election we mentioned - Durr over Sweeney: https://www.nj.com/politics/2021/11/how-a-truck-driver-spent-153-on-his-nj-election-campaign-to-likely-dethrone-a-political-kingpin.html

SALT is a giveaway to the rich: https://www.yahoo.com/news/second-biggest-program-democrats-spending-202418744.html (It's a Washington Post article but this version via Yahoo is ungated now)

Randomizing Media Strategy study "How Large and Long-lasting Are the Persuasive Effects of Televised Campaign Ads? Results from a Randomized Field Experiment": https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/how-large-and-longlasting-are-the-persuasive-effects-of-televised-campaign-ads-results-from-a-randomized-field-experiment/DA29FE8A5581C772006A1DEBB21CFC4C

Little difference in outcomes between Democratic and Republican governors: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/noisy-retrospection-the-effect-of-party-control-on-policy-outcomes/A87D42DD1778755E71DC65B1825B64D5

Literature review about how much political campaigns matter: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisci-072012-113556

Thermostatic Voting: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2111666?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

John Cochrane on a progressive VAT: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/04/a-progressive-vat.html

Judge Glock, the Chief Policy Officer of the Cicero Institute joins Salem Center Scholars Greg Salmieri and Dima Shamoun and Executive Director Carlos Carvalho to discuss Judge Glock's article "The Mismeasurement of Polarization" (link: https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-mismeasurement-of-polarization)

Show Notes:

The Pew survey on American exceptionalism: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/30/most-americans-say-the-u-s-is-among-the-greatest-countries-in-the-world/

The USS Cole was attacked on October 12, 2000.

The shoe bomber was caught on December 22, 2001.

The authorization of force in Iraq: https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-joint-resolution/114

This episode we had the pleasure of being joined by Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics from George Mason University. Bryan gamely answered questions from Carlos, Greg, and Steve (who may have been a tad tooexcited and dominated the early question asking).

Show Notes

Welcome to the second episode of Free Lunch! This week featured Carlos, Greg, Scott, and Steve talking about poverty, homelessness, the minimum wage, and measurement issues. As Greg notes at the end, if you think we’ve missed something please email us at [email protected].

Free Lunch is part of the Texas Podcast Network -the conversations changing the world -brought to you by the University of Texas at Austin. The opinions expressed in this podcast represent the views of the hosts, and not of the University of Texas at Austin.

Salem Center Events Referenced

Valentin Bolotnyy and Natalia Emanuel’s excellent paper “Why Do Women Earn Less Than Men? Evidence from Bus and Train Operators” and Bolotnyy’s Salem Center presentation David Neumark’s talk on poverty and the minimum wageBruce Meyer’s talk on measuring poverty and the interagency reportJudge Glock’s talk on street homelessness in Texas

Poverty/Minimum Wage

President Biden signed an executive order that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15/hour; in signing the order, he stated “I believe no one should work full time and still live in poverty. That’s why today, I raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour for people working on federal contracts.” Given this background, our conversation is organized around the question: suppose you were Joe Manchin and had the power to basically set the minimum wage anywhere between $7.25 and $15.

Minimum Wage Literature

David Neumark’s latest paper “Myth or Measurement: What Does the New Minimum Wage Research Say about Minimum Wages and Job Loss in the United States?*”Arin Dube’s literature review for the UK government on the effects of raising the minimum wage Table 2 from Joseph Sabia’s paper “Minimum Wages: An Antiquated and Ineffective Antipoverty Tool” is the source of the claim that raising the minimum wage would primarily benefit families with earnings three times the poverty line The poverty line for a household with three people is $21,960 https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-thresholds.htmlA cool paper that none of us mentioned is Orly Ashenfelter et al’s new piece “Wages, Minimum Wages, and Price Pass-Through: The Case of McDonald’s Restaurants”

Minimum Wage Additional Context/Stats

David Neumark notes that helping low-wage workers is not conceptually the same as helping those in poverty This distinction is important because the benefits of an increase in the minimum wage alone (i.e. without any other interventions) will mostly accrue to households above the poverty line The above is not to say that many below the poverty line won’t benefit or that policymakers should or should not raise the minimum wage it’s to point out that there are tradeoffs that politicians and voters need to considerThe highest minimum wage is in Geneva, Switzerland, where the minimum wage is $25/hour as of September 2020Highest national minimum wages are equivalent to $13.40 USD / hour in Australia and Luxembourg (based on 2019 prices and converted into US dollars)Countries with minimum wages close to the US include Israel at $8/hour and Korea at $7.20 an hour. Denmark, which has been in the national debate recently for their relatively cheap big macs and relatively generous wages paid to McDonald's workers, does not have a minimum wage but has an entirely different labor system called “flexicurity”. The system is basically the combination of a right to work state with strong unions, generous social insurance, and universal healthcare. The highest minimum wage is in Geneva, Switzerland, where the minimum wage is $25/hour as of September 2020Highest national minimum wages are equivalent to $13.40 USD / hour in Australia and Luxembourg (based on 2019 prices and converted into US dollars)Working a full time (40 hours/week) job 50 weeks a year at $15/hour would make you $30,000. At $7.25 the comparable figure is $14,500.Median household inc

Show Notes 

On the first episode of “Free Lunch” we discussed two main issues: the influence of big tech and the fallout from the February 2021 blackouts in Texas. The notes below contain links to relevant Salem Center events, academic studies, and newspaper articles. 

We would love to hear your feedback about the podcast.  My email is [email protected]. 

Big Tech 

Salem Center events on the Big Tech: 

Is Big Tech Too Big? https://salemcenter.org/event/is-big-tech-too-big/  

Additional notes/context/links: 

Steve mentioned Facebook’s role in violence in Myanmar.  Here’s more detail on Facebook’s role in inciting the violence (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html) One of Greg’s talks on free speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKPwQKfMbVQ&ab_channel=SalemCenterforPolicy)  

Electricity Crisis 

Salem Center events on the Texas Electricity crisis: 

Does Texas Value Reliable Energy https://salemcenter.org/event/does-texas-value-reliable-energy/ Forget About What Broke:  Why Poor Policies Made Texas Blackouts Inevitable https://salemcenter.org/event/forget-about-what-broke-why-poor-policies-made-texas-blackouts-inevitable/  Exploring Tradeoffs in the Texas Engergy System https://salemcenter.org/event/exploring-tradeoffs-in-the-texas-energy-system/  

Additional notes/context/links: 

A Wall Street Journal article about the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) raising electricity prices to $9,000 a megawatt hour.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-power-regulators-decision-to-raise-prices-in-freeze-generates-criticism-11614268158.  Typically, prices are quoted per kilowatt hour (1/1000th of a megawatt hour).  In Texas the average price of electricity before the crisis was $0.1139 per kilowatt hour (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a) – which is $113.9 per megawatt hour.  Reuters notes that “[o]ne megawatt typically provides enough power for 200 homes on a hot summer day.” (https://www.reuters.com/article/texas-power-summer/update-1-after-winter-crisis-texas-power-grid-assures-will-meet-record-summer-demand-idUSL1N2LN27Q) Carlos mentioned a paper that shows that the cost of natural disasters hasn’t increased.  In Bjorn Lornberg’s piece “Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies,” (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119981) he cites John McAneney et al.’s 2019 paper “Normalised insurance losses from Australian natural disasters: 1966-2017”  (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2019.1609406)