What’s New with Wu

Left to Right: Barack Obama “Get Out the Vote,” precinct workers Michael Harrison, St. Petersburg, and Tim Wu, New York City, order free “Chick-fil-A,” sandwiches at the Chick-fil-A Restaurant at 4241 4th Street North, St. Petersburg, on election day. The restaurant chain was offering a free “Chick-fil-A,” sandwich to each customer that voted. “It’s been a great promotion for the restaurant,” said owner David Neely. “We’ve been swamped since this morning,” he said. “Everyone has been joining in, in the great feeling of the election.” The promotion continues until 9pm Tuesday night when the business closes, said Neely. [Scott Keeler, Times]

“Both individuals stated they would dress in all white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt.”

That’s not a white tuxedo, but close.

Economist Greg Mankiw has a post that fascinates me.  As a professor who makes over $250,000 a year, he notices that under Obama’s tax plan he may make less money, and pass on less to his children.  Since he’s pretty happy with the amount of money he has, as he should be, he says he has very little reason to do any more work.

Here’s what fascinates me about his post:

1.  It assumes that his only incentive to do any work outside of his regular teaching and research is to make money.  This seems so counter to what the idea of academia is for, and is passed over so easily.

Tenured academics like Greg M. have an incredible luxury: the time, freedom to work on what he wants, and a guaranteed paycheck (in his case, a large one).  To say in that position you’ll only do “more work” if paid seems an offense to the idea of academia itself.   Academics aren’t supposed to be on sale or work only on commission.

Greg M. himself is disproof of his own ideas.  He spends alot of time blogging, and writing advice for junior professors and so on, all for free.  If Obama wins, it looks like he’ll be doing more of that in the future.   Obama, if his blog post is right, will alter the balance of commercial and non-commercial work he does. The irony is that that result might be better for society than Greg M. doing a bunch of consulting or paid-speaking.

2.  The implication, taken by other writers like “Beldar” though not by Greg himself, is that Greg working less is proof that Obama’s tax cut will hurt the country.  But hold on - Greg represents 5% of the country.  The rest — the 95% percent who get a tax cut, will presumably have reasons to want to work harder, because their taxes are going down.

It’s a simple calculation.  The tradeoff is those who make more than $250,000 doing less commercial and more non-commerical work, versus 95% percent of the population who have reasons to do more.

Its at least ambiguous.  And since the money is worth more, on the margin, to people who make less than $250,000, they have more reason to want to work for it.  $1000 means more to someone who makes $60,000 than to Greg M.

The upshot:  Obama’s tax plan will encourage a rich man like Greg M. to devote more time to the public and his children instead of paid speaking gigs, and gives a lot more other people more incentives to earn more money.  Sounds pretty good to me.

on Friday, in New York city, at the borough office.  Call me a cultist, but in my voting life I think this ballot was the most satisfying.

From canvassing in Iowa onwards through our big Obama fundraising party, and Texas and the Convention and Florida next week, this is the election I’ve done the most work for.  And it is the first time, maybe, that I’ve felt like part of a truly mass movement.

That being defined as something where your own effort doesn’t real make a difference, in the grand scheme of things - Obama would have won or lost whether I’d done anything or not, but collectively everyone whose supported Obama from the beginning has done a pretty good job, whether we win or lose in the end.

Truth is always better than fiction.  Governor Palin is in a dispute for trying to fire Safety Bear. (Actually, the man inside).

Okay this is a very california thing to say, but there is definitely a feeling that McCain / Obama is with every day a contest of

power and aggression against inner peace and the focused mind

my bets are on the Buddha, go Obama go!

Well perhaps this is nit-picky but I’ve spent a week reading articles saying “Hillary won Texas” –
but if you lose the caucus and the delegate count and win the primary, why is that a win?

I spent the weekend in Texas trying to convince Asian-Americans to vote for Obama. While Obama may win this thing anyway, it may be despite the opposition of most of California’s Asian-American democrats, and the interesting question is why, and whether Texas will be the same.
There’s probably not a single good explanation — maybe many Asians just think Hilary Clinton is a better candidate. But there’s no shortage of theories out there. One is that Asian-Americans don’t tend to vote in large numbers; those that are active in primary politics are close to the political establishment. A popular theory in the media is that Asian-Americans are racist. A milder version suggests that the Clintons are an established brand, and the stereotype is that Asian-Americans stick to brand names whether its Harvard for school, Goldman Sachs for work, and Coach for handbags, and so on.

My own feeling is that some of it may just come down to exposure, or lack thereof, and the related issue of risk.  Political junkies know more about Obama by now than they do about their own cousins.  But that’s unusual, and for various reasons, older, first generation immigrants in Asian communities may just get information a little later.

If you don’t know much about the Obama candidacy - it seems risky.  And pardon me the stereotype, but much though surely not all of the Asian-American population is risk adverse.  Good schools, safe jobs, and so on.
That may now change. With Obama ahead in delegates, Texas may turn out differently.  Obama is moving as fast as is possible from risky to routine.

Well the word is out, so let’s hear it for Lessig for Congress!

Yes he’d be facing tough competition in the primary, but this happens to be a good year for hope and inspiration against experience.

I use Paul Krugman’s international economics textbook, and I generally liked some of his criticisms of the Bush adminstration during the first term. But he’s gone, as far as I can tell, completely bonkers.

In his latest column, his theory is that Obama’s supporters are bringing the politics of Richard Nixon into the Democratic primary. His main example is that they made a big deal out of Hilary Clinton’s lionization of LBJ. His other examples are all about media bias against Clinton.

The media may like Obama - hey, he’s likable. But to accuse Obama supporters of Nixon-like tactics is so off base it reaches the level of crazy. So far in this campaign, the only really scary manuvers have come from Bill Clinton — even the Republicans have been running relatively clean. The best he has is that Obama’s supporters harped too much on the LJB comparison. That’s dirty politics?

As an academic or at least a former academic, Krugman has at least some vague duty to try to be analytically coherent. But he has fallen into the habit of creating categories (fine) and then desperately trying to shoehorn available data into them. Trying to fit Obama’s supporters into the categories of Nixonities may be his worst effort yet.