911 response times

A quicker response from the city could have stopped this man and his partner in the act of filling up my dumpster with their old tires:

As it happened, when the cops finally arrived, they arrived nonchalantly, evidently with no idea of the nature of the emergency.  Somewhere between the 911 dispatcher and the cops, precious time and information was lost.

The problem of 911 response times has received considerable attention previously.   USA Today reported investigations that seemed to suggest that the first step in correcting the problem is for cities to use "honest" measures of response times when evaluating their own performance.  Some cities response times focus on how long certain components of the emergency system require, rather than looking at the sum total time that a 911-caller must wait for the intended response.  Such "dishonest" cities tend to perform worse on emergency response.

Without thinking too hard about it, the 911-cop interface should be reorganized as follows.

1. A caller dials 911.
2. The 911 dispatcher asks first for the exact location of the problem, and starts by entering this location on a computer.
3. While the dispatcher continues to gather more information from the caller, a computer automatically determines which currently available cop is located most closely to the crime scene based on live GPS signals from all cop cars.
4. A computerized system automatically dials to the selected cop, and suddenly that cop is connected to the 911 conversation in three-way call while his cruizer computer screen pops up a map with the crime location.
5. The cop begins speeding toward the crime, while listening in on the call and helping to ask clarifying questions.

In a city, with cops spread out at most a mile apart, I bet that response time could be reduced to an average of 90 seconds and a maximum of 3 minutes.

Thoughts four, a sequester

Part 1, Spending and collapse: The following claims currently drive the debate over government spending:

a. Excessive government debts cause economic collapse.
b. Government spending promotes economic growth, leading to increases in tax revenue.

These claims together form a vicious cycle: To fix excessive government debt (a) we can increase tax revenues by increasing governmental spending (b) which in turn may cause excessive debt (a) -- and this completes the cycle.

As any technocrat worth his techno will point out, some kinds of government spending are more likely to lead to economic growth than others. In particular, the "vicious" cycle is not very vicious if the governmental spending choices in (b) are wise enough so that the tax revenues are commensurate with the spending. Here is the point in the discussion in which each participant gets to interject a list of ways to reduce wasteful spending, and increase spending on good investments.


Part 2, Jobs and production: All government spending creates jobs. Social security payouts might not appear to create jobs, but even here, people are being paid simply to stay alive, which is at least a part-time job. So, shouldn't we increase government spending to create more jobs? The answer must often be no, considering Part 1.

To get to the bottom of this, we go to the bottom of the economy, in the basement, where all the good stuff is hiding: food, shelter, security, comfort, therapy, freedom, etc. The free market creates all of these things, at least in some form. Thus, a basic criterion for justifying X dollars on a particular government line item is that this spending must result in more of the good stuff compared to simply reducing taxes by X, allowing you to spend those dollars however you see fit.


Part 3, Theft and welfare: One reason for government spending is to provide for people that can't help themselves. This urge must be held in tension with the concerns raised in Part 1 and Part 2.

In addition, many governmental functions must be acknowledged as necessary evils. War is murder. policing is assault (at least, I felt that I was being assaulted last time I got a speeding ticket). Similarly, taxation is theft. The only differences between theft and taxation are (a) that more people think that taxation should be done, for many good reasons, and (b) the thief is so big that there is no point in trying to resist. This is a moral argument that any budget line item should meet not only the criterion provided in Part 2, but also something a bit stronger (I fail to be more specific).


Part 4, Stimulus culture: Smart people have rightly observed that the government can stimulate the economy through deficit spending. There are lots equations and complex mechanisms, all of which rest on important assumptions. Being a simple man, I prefer to understand the world in terms of how much I like Pepsi. If I'm worn out, drinking some sugar water with caffeine gives me energy. Having a drink once every few days might even make me a happier person, less prone to depression, over the course of my life. However, if I drink Pepsi every hour, I'll get fat and tired. Even worse would be using Pepsi to self-medicate in the early stages of a more serious illness, delaying my first visit to the doctor.

Similarly, an economic stimulus make sense only if it comes in modest doses, is not used too often, and is not used to delay addressing more serious problems. I suspect that stimulus spending in most of the world's leading economies is failing on all three points.

The modern culture of stimulus spending as rooted in Keynes began around WWII. The 70-year trajectory of its effects is interesting: rapid economic growth for 30 years, moderate growth for 20 years, 10 year of "malaise", and recently a slight shrinkage.

Why doctors fail us

I considered more inflammatory headlines for this post, such as "Why are so many doctors complete jerks?" or "Why Your Doctor Is Such an Insensitive Jerk" but these headlines were already taken.  These pages make excellent points, including how doctors' employers don't allot much time with each patient.  But most of the web commentary does not focus on what I consider to be the real culprit.

I have always been annoyed by doctors, with few exceptions.  It's mostly a basic respect/control issue.  My stereotypical visit to the doctor goes like this:

ME: High doctor, I have this health issue.
DOC:  [A few questions]
ME:  [A few answers]
DOC:  You need treatment X.
ME: What if I need treatment Y?
DOC:  OK/Maybe/Not sure; regardless, you need treatment X.  Do it.

It is easy for such irritable bossiness to seem normal and OK, because we've become accustomed to it.  And it's also easy to take the doctor's side on this; the doctor is the expert, after all, so they probably know what's best.  Indeed, I typically take my doctors' advice.

However, I still find it odd that doctors get away with ordering patients around, given that the patient is the paying client.  In most any other area of the economy, the paying client gets to be the boss.  If you are obese and you walk into a restaurant and order a cheeseburger, but the waiter responds "we only serve salads to people like you," you would be understandably upset.  Even though such a rule could be intended for your benefit, the psychological cost is substantial.

Yesterday I spend a couple hours in a room full of people that had been traumatized by doctors and were looking for a better option.  The venue was a tour of a midwife center, a special place where for humans to have babies.  The special thing about a midwife center it that it is run primarily by midwives instead of doctors.  A woman without complications can make it into an out of the hospital without ever having to tolerate the bossiness or insensitivity of a doctor.

At a midwife center, a woman gets to choose how to give birth.  For example, a woman is relatively free to walk around and take a shower while she is in labor instead of being constrained to a bed with lots of IV's and monitoring devices.  Similarly, if a midwife deems that a mother may benefit from some non-emergency intervention, the mother is consulted thoroughly and essentially asked whether she would like to have the intervention done.

There is something to be said for liberty, for its intrinsic ability to promote happiness.  I suspect that the problem with doctors, at the root, is not that they are bad people, but that there are not enough of them to go round.  And the reasons for this are many, including extremely high barriers to entry (many years of medical school and a mountain of debt) and, in general, a legally restrictive working environment.

Action alert

Dear Congressman Doyle,

I am an American citizen and voter residing in Pittsburgh.  As a student at [the best school ever], I am surrounded many amazingly talented international students.  These students often obtain Masters or Ph.D. degrees after several years of study in the U.S., and yet, upon graduation, these fantastic individuals often find themselves facing the possibility that they must leave the U.S. due to difficulty in obtaining a green card.  We stand to gain enormous benefits by encouraging these students to stay and make their careers in the U.S. instead of forcing them to take all that expertise back home.  I hope you will support any immigration reform measure that makes it easier for international students with advanced degrees to obtain green cards and citizenship.

Sincerely,
[The Freakwenter]

Federal Deficits: The Blame Game

Assigning blame for the national deficits is an excellent intellectual past-time for those not occupied by watching sports or filling out crossword puzzles.  Many explanations exist for rising federal deficits, including the bad economic "weather" (which even most economists failed to forecast), the rise of socialism, global warming, or even the End of the World.  While all of these explanations may contain elements of truth, a far simpler explanation lurks just outside the realm of direct cause:  The President.

The figure below illustrates the federal deficit in each of the years 2000 to 2012.  The source of this data is none other than Obama's minions:  See Table 1.  (Technical note:  As of today, Table 1 contained only an estimate for 2012.  I substituted a lower figure from the liberal media.)

At face value, considering the years he was in office (2001-2008), Bush's average deficit was about 250 billion.  Obama's (2009-2012) was about 1300 billion.  But this is probably not a fair comparison.  When a president takes office, spending for the coming year has already largely been determined by Congress and the previous president.  Supposing that it takes one full year before a new President deserves significant responsibility for spending levels, we must give Bush credit for the whopper 2009 deficit, and take away his little 2001 surplus.  This little adjustment would put Bush's average at about 450 billion and reduce Obama's average to about 1250 billion.  The remaining difference shrinks a bit if we also take into account inflation, or consider the deficit as a fraction of GDP, which has continued to rise overall despite the brief recession.

For those who are particularly concerned with wars and military spending, it seems that defense spending has shifted in focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, but the overall level of spending has remained quite stable in the transition from the Bush years to the Obama years.

Notes from the Dead

This horrible bit of news at the top of the Google feed brought me to tears.  I'm not sure why; maybe because it reminds me of my times of sadness.

Looking back in my files, I received a grand total of three short emails from Mr. Swartz last summer, after I applied for a job/consulting gig on his team.  Evidently I didn't make the cut, being a relatively ordinary person, which has its advantages.

The Greatest Economic Writers of Our Time

Hayek is dead.  Milton Friedman is dead.  Paul Krugman is riddled with populist partisanship.  Who from the dismal science of economics remains to guide the intellectually impoverished, inform the semi-rational agents, and herd the sheep of modern democracy?

Herein the Freakwenter announces the winners of the never-before-announced Greatest Economic Writers of Our Time Award.  This is a prestigious and rare award, appearing only once every generation or so on this blog.

The first award goes to Steven E. Landsburg, whose concise analysis of Ebenezer Scrooge includes every economic insight that ever passed through the pen of the Freakwenter, even before the Freakwenter's birth.  Unfortunately, like the old Scrooge, Landsburg is a purely rational thinker, having no heart.  Thus it seems appropriate to name a second, relatively human, award winner.

The second award goes to Gregory N. Mankiw, author of this recent eat-this-truth-or-we-will-all-die column in the NYT.  Unfortunately, Mankiw has yet to gain 501c3 status for spending so much of his time in public service, running a blog on economics.  I urge his followers to send him cash in the mail.