Former Canadian politician Ed Broadbent:

Why is it that Finland, Sweden and Denmark have almost wiped out child poverty, and we have not? Why do more than 600,000 Canadian kids wake up hungry and go to school trying to read, write and think on an empty stomach?

He goes on to present a solution:

In the next budget, let's impose a six-point increase in income tax on those earning more than $250,000 a year (whose average taxable income is $600,000). While leaving them with very high incomes, this would provide $3.7-billion in additional revenue.

Stephen Gordon responds in a much more generous way than I would.

If you are going to ask how Finland, Denmark and Sweden are solving the problem, shouldn't you, say, actually look at how they're doing it? The problem is, if you do, you do not come up with the policy response that Mr. Broadbent has been pushing for 3 decades. Here is how they are financing it:

Sales Tax Rates
Finland - 22%
Sweden - 25%
Denmark - 25%
Canada - 5-15% (depending on the province)
EU Source (PDF)

You would think that Mr. Broadbent's party would support higher sales taxes. Think again.

We should be concerned about high levels of poverty. We should also be concerned with: How Good Intentions Lead to Crushing Marginal Tax Rates on the Working Poor.

This line from Arnold Kling on the climate research e-mail scandal:

In my days as a macroeconometric model jockey, I often used "add factors" to make the equations fit the data better. But I never used them to distort the data. I disagree with those who think that "climategate" is a typical scientific brouhaha. This is at least one standard deviation away from normal academic behavior.

If this is one standard deviation away (and I do recognize that Prof. Kling used the modifier 'at least') from 'normal' academic behavior, then 16% of academic behavior, or one academic action in 6 is worse than this. And I thought I had a negative opinion of academic culture!

Tim Haab on power consumption:

One of the problems with energy consumption is that consumers often don't know exactly how much energy they are consuming at a given moment, or how much that consumption is costing. Typical consumers get a bill at the end of the month reporting total consumption and the total bill...

Lynne Kiesling adds:

Tim is correct that electricity regulation has led to a world in which consumers pay a fixed, averaged price and only know how much they have consumed when they receive their bills at the end of the month. Given how much communication technology is prevalent in our lives, and how inexpensive it has become, that lack of information is appalling.

I would agree with that. I believe there are two ways that we can give consumers more information about the cost of power each device is consuming:

1. Wiring set-ups that could track not just the power used by the house, but the power used by each individual outlet and light fixture - and have this itemized on a power bill. This does not provide marginal cost information, but what it does is allows consumers to determine where the bulk of power is being used.
   
   
2. Food products require nutrition labels, that describe the number of calories in a product. Why not require products that use electricity to contain a label that describes the amount of power the product uses in a month under 'normal operating conditions' and the cost of that power under average power prices?

Either of these ideas would go a long way in giving consumers the information they need to make power consumption decisions.

I agree with both Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong here:

Brad DeLong says that the loss of public trust due to the kid-gloves treatment of bankers has raised the probability of another Great Depression, because the public won't support another round of bailouts even if it becomes desperately necessary. I agree -- but I think the bigger cost is that we've greatly increased the chance of a Japanese-style lost decade, with I would now give roughly even odds of happening. Why? Because bank-friendly policies have squandered public trust in all government action: try talking to the general public about stimulus, and it's all confounded in their minds with the deeply unpopular bailouts.

It is not the general public that is confounded here, Prof. Krugman. Small concentrated interests, whether they be the farm lobby or Wall Street, will always use governments to exploit large-scale diverse interests. Particularly when the line between Wall Street and the Treasury Department are blurred.

I believe it is time for all economists to re-read The Logic of Collective Action.