Market Power

Anthrax and Zombie - American Witch Tour

The local paper's review of last night's Rob Zombie/Anthrax "American Witch Tour" gig was extremely lame.  Rather than write a short review of the Mankato show, I'll point you to the local Evansville (In). newspaper which has a review of the show from a few nights earlier.

The classic Anthrax line-up performed a tight and blistering 1 hour show with the following songs to a very appreciative and energetic crowd:

1. Be All End All
2. Got the Time
3. Caught in a Mosh
4. Antisocial
5. Indians
6. I Am the Law
7. Skeleton in the Closet
8. Bring the Noise

We stood near the back by the sound and light boards during Anthrax and the mixing was a bit off, but that was the only down side of their set.  The playing was tight, the band was no-frills and energetic (as the PowerGuy likes it), and they were seemingly surprised at the rousing welcome they got from the locals.  We'll forgive Scott Ian's mispronounciation of Mankato ("Thank you, Mancotto").

The PowerWife and I moved to the arena's seats for Zombie's set.  The theatrics were Spinal Tappish.  Zombie was seemingly over the flu that plagued him in Evansville although his voice was a bit raspier when he spoke.  He seemed a bit disinterested in being in Mankato, saying a couple of times that it was boring (from a younger person's point of view, I don't disagree.  But it's nothing to dwell on) and the breaks between songs got rather long at times.  A video board behind the band showed various bits of horror flicks, lots of video of Charles Manson and the Manson Family, and videos of nude women prancing around.  Sex and Death:  if you brought your young children to watch these metal icons, which a couple patrons did, you did so at your own risk.

All in all, a good show.

Addendum:  upon further reflection, I've concluded that I haven't seen a band's members collectively enjoy playing on stage more than the members of Anthrax.  The Foo Fighters is the only band I can recollect whose members seemed to truly enjoy playing live (at least on the day I saw them several years back).  My guess is that Anthrax would put on a great show doing a soundcheck at the local hospital's morgue.

Big Box Living Wage - The Chicago Edition

Living wages are minimum wages on steroids.  City officials in Chicago have proposed an ordinance requiring stores of 90,000 square feet and larger and gross annual sales of $1 billion or more to pay their employees a living wage:

She's on the front lines of a fight to make Chicago the first major city to require retailers like Sam's Club owner Wal-Mart to pay a "living wage" of at least $10 per hour with $3 in benefits by 2010. For her, the struggle comes down to a simple equation: All workers are threatened unless communities hold big corporations accountable for paying better-than-poverty-level wages.

Big Labor is in the middle of the fight of this ordinance targeted at non-union retailers like Target and Wal Mart.  Are union leaders getting involved for solidarity reasons?  No.  Union leaders are in business to serve their customers:  union members.  Their tactics include attempts to make potential competitors less attractive to customers.

The votes were a wake-up call. When Wal-Mart's West Side store opens, some entry-level workers will earn $7.25 per hour, or about $1 less than entry-level wages for Jewel and Dominick's workers represented by UFCW Local 881 in Chicago.

In terms of what it targets, this ordinance is similar to a Maryland law requiring large employers to contribute a proportion of their payroll to employee health care costs, a law recently overturned by a district judge.  The proposed Chicago ordinace, essentially, punishes success.

Here, here, here, and here are a few formal discussions on the effect of minimum wages on employment and long-term choices made by minimum-wage workers.  Here and here are two papers on the effects of living wages.

Bottled Water

A common criticism thrown out by those who think buying bottled water is a waste of money is that bottled water tastes no different from ordinary tap water.  But, as Doc Palmer points out, flavor is only one criteria:

Nowadays we see people preferring bottled, purified water in just about every country. I still drink tap water in Canada, the U.S., and England much of the time, but I guess I had better stick to bottled water on airplanes from now on [h/t to BenS]:

Recent random testing of water on aircraft showed 15.1% of aircraft tested positive for Total Coliform bacteria and 1.2% tested positive for E.Coli bacteria. Most contamination was found in water from lavatory faucets. These results are consistent with those found by the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States in 2004.

Let's see: the cost to me of buying or bringing on board a bottle of water is at most a couple of bucks. The probability of becoming seriously ill from drinking tap water (or using it to brush my teeth during long flights) might be as high as 1 - 2 percent. I think the expected costs of drinking airplane tapwater outweigh the expected benefits.

Some of the softball fields around Mankato have water fountains either right outside each field or nearby.  Still, while I expect parks and rec people have cleaned out the fountains on a regular and relatively frequent basis (daily), lord knows what has been spit and drooled on the fountains during the day.  In a pinch, I'll drink from them.  But I'm more likely to either bring tap water from home or bottled water from the store.

The Fast and The Furious

I'm heading out to see these guys.  Of the many reasons I adore the PowerWife, she's agreed to go with me.  The poor thing.

Die Katz

Professor Mankiw writes:

"The average blogger is a 14-year-old girl writing about her cat," said Alexander Halavais, an assistant professor of interactive communications at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.

Have I told you about Tobin? Oh, yes, I have.

Since we're getting into pets, here's the PowerCat, Sam: Slammin' Sammy Sosa.

He adopted us around the time that Sammy Sosa was hitting the big time for the Cubs in the late 1990's.  Thus the name.  His special talent is getting wet:  Sam likes me to pet him and get him soaked when I'm showering/bathing.

The PowerKids are hounding us to get a dog.  I've used up acceptable Rush names for pets.  I'll ask the PowerWife about naming the pup Hayek, Stigler, Becker, Milton, Von Mises, Bastiat, or, perhaps, Carlos.

Skip?  Sparky?  Eclectecon?  The PowerDog?????

Double the Costs

Recently, I wrote the following on Title IX in this space:

College officials can use one of three ways to show that the athletic department is in compliance with Title IX.  From Gerald Reynolds:

In its 1979 Policy Interpretation, the Department established a three-prong test for compliance with Title IX, which it later amplified and clarified in its 1996 Clarification. The test provides that an institution is in compliance if 1) the intercollegiate- level participation opportunities for male and female students at the institution are "substantially proportionate" to their respective full- time undergraduate enrollments, 2) the institution has a "history and continuing practice of program expansion" for the underrepresented sex, or 3) the institution is "fully and effectively" accommodating the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.

Because 2) is a long-run compliance test (that should be used more frequently as time goes on) and 3) requires colleges to determine what the interests and abilities of the genders are, a costly endeavor, many colleges have determined that the proportionality test is the easiest way to comply.  If a particular college chooses this as its compliance test, then one must include the costs associated with starting another program when doing so is needed to become compliant with Title IX.

This in essence seems to be happening at Rutgers.

Rutgers will eliminate six intercollegiate sports at the end of the 2006-07 school year as part of university-wide cost-cutting resulting from a projected $80.4 million budget shortfall, the university said Friday.          

Five of the six sports to be phased out are men's programs: heavyweight crew, lightweight crew, fencing, swimming and diving, and tennis. Women's fencing also will be eliminated.

...(Rutgers AD Robert) Mulcahy said that Rutgers' commitment to follow Title IX guidelines forced it to eliminate more men's programs. The current female-to-male ratio at the university is 51 to 49 percent, Mulcahy said, adding that the opportunities for women in sports must be within 2 percent of that ratio to comply with Title IX.          

"That means almost all the cuts have to be in men's programs,'' Mulcahy said.

Why?

Q: (Interviewer) Can any of these sports be saved through private fundraising?

A: (Mulchay) It's very difficult because if you raise the money to bring back a men's sport, then because of Title IX we would also have to raise the money to bring back another women's sport to keep the scholarships even.

Watch Out for Flying Trash Cans

Just before the 7:10 pm central start of Wednesday's game between the Cards and Braves, the skies darkened and a hard rain fell. The storm generated winds with gusts up to 84 mph. During the two hour and 12 minute rain delay, 30 people suffered injuries at Busch Stadium, and five had to be taken to a local hospital.

Tornado warnings were issued in three metropolitan counties in the St. Louis area. 300,000 homes lost electricity in the area.

The storm also did damage throughout the new park, tearing up parts of the field tarp and destroying the plastic sheeting in the press box. The FOX studio was flipped over and demolished.

That's a description of the nasty storm that tore through St. Louis on July 19th.  Here's a video that shows one Busch Stadium patron being roughed up by a garbage can. 

Here's another account of the storm.

HT to Dan Scher.

Update:  Bernie Miklasz describes the storm with plenty of baseball metaphors:

It was as if a vacuum cleaner sucked up all the debris from the pit where the old Busch Stadium once stood, then released it on the unsuspecting crowd. The wind mixed it up. We were expecting the fastball (a thunderstorm). Instead we got a nasty changeup (a windstorm).

It happened so quickly. One minute, there was sunshine. A few minutes later, there was a darkness on the edge of town. And then, inexplicably, we had landed on the wrong side of the rainbow. In other words, it was sort of like Jason Isringhausen in the ninth inning.

...The wind scooped up some portable concession stands and threw them around. The wind lobbed trash cans around as if they were footballs. And the wind invaded the press box, easily shredding hard-plastic window covers installed to keep the rain out. Put it this way: Those flimsy weather guards were to the elements what Jason Marquis was to Andruw Jones and Chipper Jones.

Not Just for the Disabled Anymore

Scooters "normally" reserved for the disabled and elderly patrons at places like theme parks and stores are useful for others as well:  the able-bodied:

The power scooter is an increasingly ubiquitous sight, with an estimated 1.2 million in use nationwide. But while the $1,000-plus vehicles have been hailed as a boon for the infirm and the elderly, they are now finding a new constituency: able-bodied people who simply don't feel like walking. In addition to theme parks like Dollywood and Minnesota's giant Mall of America, the scooters are popping up everywhere from Las Vegas casinos to grocery stores. When scooter demand outstrips supply at Wal-Mart, greeters "evaluate the situation" and make sure that people using the scooters can demonstrate a legitimate need, according to a company spokesman.

"It's kind of bad for the cause," says Janna Starr, director of disability rights and technology policy for United Cerebral Palsy, a nonprofit group. Stores and tourist attractions need to set guidelines and "not just let people come up and take off in the scooters just because they want one," she says.

In a market in the long term, such shortages create opportunities for entrepreneurs - with the end result being plenty of scooters for those who want them (conveniently assuming away government rationing) - for whatever reason .

Cavernous stores, which tend to offer scooters for free, and big theme parks, which tend to rent them, see these scooters not only as a tool for the disabled but also as a lure for visitors who might not otherwise want to spend the day walking around. At the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., where all the scooters are rented out by noon most weekends, the fleet is being expanded from 30 to 45 later this year. Over the past year, Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., boosted its fleet from 55 to 70. People often bring their own scooters, but the park's rentals are a convenience for occasional users. "Our park is quite hilly," says Dollywood spokesman Pete Owens. "It's quite a handy vehicle to have."

Moreover, to address the complaints that they are a nuisance to others...

Scooters are now being designed for specific uses. The SmartKart by Dane Technologies, for example, maxes out at three miles per hour, instead of the standard five, because it is meant to be used in grocery stores and other crowded indoor spaces.

That's rather Coasian, no?

HT to Fark where the link to the article was accompanied by a "sad" tag.  No doubt the linker's belief that the able-bodied, through sheer laziness, are taking something reserved for the disabled and the elderly that won't be replaced.  That's a short run view because, left to act in their self-interest, folks in the marketplace cooperate - disconnected as that cooperation is - and ensure there will be enough to go around in the long run.

Becoming an Academic Economist

JC Bradbury has this post on becoming a sports economist and points to reason #2 from Tyler Cowen's advice to "would-be economists:"

2. You could be happy as an academic without much of a research career.  Working at a teaching school is a rewarding life, albeit a poor one relative to your investment in human capital.

JC writes:

The second reason seems attractive, but the real life at a teaching institution is a little less glamorous and enjoyable than you think. I always imagined it as something like Hal Hobrook’s school in Creepshow…without the monster under the stairs, of course. Yes, working with undergraduates who are eager to learn and love the subject is very rewarding. But, teaching the same courses over and over can get a little unchallenging. And then there’s academic politics. I know it’s bad everywhere, but imagine what academics do with their time when it’s not devoted to research. The rent seeking is disgusting and endless. Unless you have some sort of research agenda to motivate you, you probably won’t be happy as just a teacher. I planned to be a two, but it wasn’t enough.

Dave Berri is more upbeat about #2

Of course there is more to life than respect of people at top institutions.  First of all, the life of a teacher beats the hell out of 99% of jobs out there.  So Cowen appears to underestimate option #2.    

Let me add that I find teaching to be a terrifically rewarding occupation.  As teachers we are trying to move information from our heads into somebody else’s head.  That is not simple or easy.  But it is definitely rewarding. And if people in typical 9 to 5 jobs saw how college professors worked and lived, I think they would be more than a bit envious.

I had my eyes set on being a #2 - against the advice of some of my undergraduate mentors.  But I knew I had a talent for teaching.  Once in grad school, I chose my dissertation committee members wisely (I chose the toughest committe I could) and I got a good dissertation for my (and their) efforts.  As a result, my outlook on the teaching side of the academy is more Dave-like:  I now enjoy doing research and I enjoy writing as part of my job.  I also still enjoy teaching. 

The things that keep me fresh when it comes to teaching are two-fold.  One is that there are many things that interest me.  I find that I incorporate many non-sports interests in my principles courses.  And while sports economics is becoming well-established as a field, teaching sports economics for me is still a novelty - I'm still playing with its format.  Plus, I'm still learning about sports economics and economics in general (an expert who thinks he's/she's done learning is not really an expert).  The result is that no two classes covering the same general material are exactly alike.  That keeps the teaching side of the ledger interesting.

Secondly, as Dave mentions, there's the satisfaction that comes every semester when you see that lightbulb come on in a student's heads.  Don't expect that light to come on in each student's head.  It probably won't.  But if you look for it, it's there... every semester... and that's a cool thing to see.

Gas Price Gouging - A Rare Occurence in Oregon

Myers said his office has found that, in most cases, the price of gas in Oregon is the result of external factors, such as high global crude oil prices, the state's restricted access to pipeline capacity and international political instability.

No evidence of widespread unlawful price fixing, conspiracies in restraint of trade, or other illegal tactics have yet been detected, Myers said.

But he said his office will keep monitoring prices.

"We have worked hard to detect unlawful conduct in this important market, and to take aggressive enforcement action whenever the law and the facts allow," Myers said.

That is Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers on gas price gouging claims in Oregon.  What would we do if government officials weren't there to protect us from Big Oil?  Oh, yeah:  drive to another station.