Freakanomics

I think Freakanomics was an appropriate last seminar reading for our Econ class, as the author takes economic reasoning and brings it to bear on other situations in ways not normally used by economists. This is an excellent lesson for us, as going forward, as PPE majors, I think most of us hope to do exactly this in our lives. Good choice Blomberg!

Anyway, the book has a lot of interesting cases. I think we all know the abortion one from Elliott's class. I found myself particularly interested this time by the chapter on cheating, with Sumo wrestlers and teachers. I thought that it actually connected well with Elliott's class of all things. Basically, one of the things that I have learned is that individuals will act on incentives presented towards. I guess this would be obvious... so maybe college was a waste of time...

Just kidding. Anyway, combining this idea of how incentives lead sumo wrestlers and teachers to cheat with some of the stuff we learned in Elliott's class, I think the fundamental problem of humanity comes into play. Individuals act on individual incentives presented towards them, but individual action (driven by individual incentives) is often not good for a population as a whole. I suppose this is a Nash Equilibrium of sorts. For example, teachers have an incentive to change their students scores because it is beneficial to each individual teacher. However, as a group it hurts them in a variety of ways. All of them cheating makes it more likely they will get caught (15 of them got fired), it makes it so the kids will still be behind the next year, and society overall is worse off from this practice. This is the same when it comes to population growth. It might be individually beneficial to have more children in developing countries, as they will make more money for the family and support the parents in old age. But for the society as a whole this hurts with overpopulation.

Conclusion: the essential challenge of society is to mold individual incentives such that they lead to outcomes that are collectively (not just individually) beneficial.

Eugenics at its finest

By far the most interesting chapter to me in Freakonomics, is the chapter on abortion. Abortion, no matter how you stand on it religously or politically is eugenics at its finest. I am a strong believer that a childs future success, well being, and integrity have a lot to do with how the child is raised. With that being said, the ideal parent for raising a successful child with a high self esteem, are parents that really want a child, want to start a family, have thought about all the obligations of having a child, and then intentionally get pregnant then raise their kid. On that same note, the people who wouldn't be the ideal parents are the people who got black out drunk at a party and forgot to use a condom, people who are not going to stay together after the woman gets pregnant, and people who have not thought about all the obligations a child entails and are not financially prepared to bring such an expensive thing into this world (a child).

What does abortion do? Abortion allows many of the would be parents who are not the "ideal parents" get rid of their baby, before it becomes a baby. Abortion leaves a higher percentage of "ideal parents" having children then if abortion is illegal. While this does not affect the crime rate today, it does eliminate that child who will car jack you 22 years down the road. Abortions today lower crime rates 15-25 years in the future as the children who would be growing up in the broken home with their life trajectory looking at being a crack selling foot soldier, are not being born. I don't think any woman should ever be told that she does not have the choice to do what she wants with her body. It's her child, it should be her decision, and propositions like the one in California making woman under 18 get parents consent for an abortion are dangerous as if that prop were to pass then many more teenagers would be having kids and those kids would be the one's who are going to key my Maserati 15 years down the road.

2008 Election: White vote consistent with polls

Although there were a lot of things that interested me in Freakonomics that I would like to mention here, I was extremely curious to see how the white vote faired on November 4 for President-elect Obama compared to the Gallup polls leading up to the election. This interests me because of Levitt and Dubner's assertion that voters lie too, stating that "Might white voters lie to pollsters, claiming they will vote for the black candidate in order to appear more color-blind than they actually are?" (77). That being said, I took a look at the polls. According to CBSnews that referenced a Gallup Poll, Obama was projected to win 44% of the non-Hispanic white vote (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/24/politics/politico/main4544827.shtml). On November 4, 2008 exit polls showed Obama winning 43% of the non-Hispanic white vote, showing that perhaps the white people did not lie when asked by the pollsters prior to the election. There are many other amazing things about the closeness of the projected verses actual numbers, showing that our nation really believes in President-Elect Obama, despite his race. (thank goodness it is about time!!!!) I think this election, given the great margin by which Obama won, would also confirm Levitt and Dubner's argument that "the amount of money spent by the candidates hardly matters at all"(9).

The study of economics is everywhere!!! :-D