Hypothetical Bias

Krugman on inflation-adjusted earnings

From Coming down to earth ($):

On May 10 the White House issued a press release titled "Setting the Record Straight: The New York Times Continues to Ignore America's Economic Progress." The release attacked The Times for asserting that paychecks weren't keeping up with fixed costs like medical care and gasoline. The White House declared, "But average hourly earnings have risen 3.8 percent over the past 12 months, their largest increase in nearly five years."

On Wednesday Treasury Secretary John Snow repeated that boast before a House committee. However, Representative Barney Frank was ready. He asked whether the number was adjusted for inflation; after flailing about, Mr. Snow admitted, sheepishly, that it wasn't. In fact, nearly all of the wage increase was negated by higher prices.

Jeez, the SecTreas doesn't like to adjust for inflation?

much apu about nothing

matt groening, the creator of the simpsons, says his third favourite episode is much apu about nothing.  the episode begins with a bear wandering into springfield.  homer and an angry mob visit mayor quimby who grealy expands the springfield defense budget (including purchasing a stealth bomber).  homer faces a "$5 bear patrol tax" in his next paycheck, and when he complains, quimby thinks for a moment and blames the illegal immigrants.  a piece on morality sums it up as

"Your taxes are high because of illegal immigrants," Quimby erroneously accuses, to the agreeing grumble of the gathered mob. "That's right—illegal immigrants."

i don't know how anyone can watch the simpsons.  it is so over the top -- something like that would never happen in real life.

jose, can you? si.

the "senator in plaid" lamar alexander (not to be confused with the man in black -- but there is little risk of confusing these tennesseans) has introduced a resolution to require the national anthem to be sung in english. his press release states

And that’s why today I am introducing a resolution that affirms that statements of national unity, especially the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem, ought to be recited or sung in English.

although e pluribus unum is no longer the national motto (and so might not be a "statement of national unity"), how about a phrase on the great seal of the united states?

The Flying Cheetah

More shenanigans at Wikipedia (Lawmakers find facts are fluid ...):

For the record, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr says he was never nicknamed "The Flying Cheetah" by his high school classmates in Winston-Salem.

But that's not what Wikipedia, the Internet site that bills itself as "the world's largest encyclopedia," says in Burr's thumbnail biography.

"He has no idea where that nickname came from in the bio," said Doug Heye, spokesman for the Republican politician. "He hadn't even heard of Wikipedia until the other day."

Heye wasn't the only staff member from North Carolina's congressional delegation scrambling to check the accuracy of their bosses' Wikipedia entries.

Since June, Wikipedia's Webmasters have had to repeatedly slap a temporary block on access to the site by congressional staff members, who apparently have made more than 1,000 changes to their bosses' biographies. In many cases, staffers deleted information that was critical of a politician and substituted more favorable passages.

...

But the rogue revisions undercut the guiding principle of Wikipedia, which features 3.1 million articles published in 200 languages and was ranked the 14th busiest Internet site Thursday by alexa.com, an Amazon.com subsidiary that tracks Web traffic. Wikipedia depends on an honor system among its users.

Derogatory phrases inserted into some biographies also have been traced to congressional computers, dubbed "vandalism" by Wikipedia users.

Heye said he wasn't sure whether the bogus "Flying Cheetah" nickname hung on his boss was the work of a cyber-vandal.

I love Wikipedia, but what do you expect when anyone can edit the entries. Especially, what can you expect from politicos, er, Flying Cheetahs.

Economic costs of the Iraq war on the Colbert Report

The Colbert Report picks up on the Bilmes and Stiglitz $1 trillion Iraq war estimate tonight. From Bilmes and Stiglitz:

These estimates, however, underestimate the War’s true costs to America by a wide margin.  In this paper, we attempt to provide a range of estimates for what those costs have been, and are likely to be.  Even taking a conservative approach, we have been surprised at how large they are.  We can state, with some degree of confidence, that they exceed a trillion dollars.  *

When Colbert has the story, you know it has legs (is that the correct journalist jargon). He suggests that $1 trillion is a large number. Here and here are the posts to the original research and a Boston Globe article at Angry Bear.

Update: *The paper says please do not quote, etc. And, the paper has been removed from the Columbia Unnie website. What's the big secret?