That was the proposition being debated on the Intelligence Squared podcast.

Moderated by ABC News’ John Donvan, the debate featured Daniel Ellsberg (former U.S. Military Analyst and Pentagon Papers Whistleblower) and Ben Wizner (Legal Adviser to Edward Snowden and ACLU Attorney) who argued for the motion; and Andrew C. McCarthy (former Assistant US Attorney and Contributing Editor, National Review) and Ambassador R. James Woolsey (former CIA Director and Chairman of Foundation for Defense of Democracies), who argued against the motion.

Here is description of the debate:

Has Edward Snowden done the U.S. a great service? There is no doubt that his release of highly classified stolen documents has sparked an important public debate, even forcing what could be a major presidential overhaul of the NSA’s surveillance programs. But have his actions-which include the downloading of an estimated 1.7 million files-tipped off our enemies and endangered national security? Is Snowden a whistleblower, or is he a criminal?

Was Edward Snowden Justified?

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The Economics of the Minimum Wage

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If you’ve been following the news beyond what’s happening in Sochi, Kiev, and Syria, you’ve almost certainly noticed the recent debate about raising the minimum wage, sparked by President Obama’s State of the Union speech in January. The debate sharped with a report by the Congressional Budget Office this week predicting that a minimum wage hike would raise 900,000 families out of poverty but would cost 500,000 individuals their jobs.

So what effect, exactly, does raising the minimum wage have on unemployment? The traditional analysis is that a minimum wage is just another type of price control. Specifically, it’s a price floor: the government requires that the price of good not drop below a certain number. If the price floor is set above the current market price (what’s referred to as a binding price floor), the price will be so high that demand will drop, supply will increase, and we have an artificially created surplus. So the idea here is that a suitably high minimum wage might attract more people into the labor force than there are now, but employers who have to pay the higher wage are going to cut back on workers to keep their payrolls low, resulting in greater unemployment and fewer people employed overall.

However, things are not so simple when it comes to the labor market. For starters, there aren’t a lot of substitutes for labor, as least in the short term. Thus, a fast food restaurant can’t really buy a machine that will take your orders, prepare and wrap burgers, pull fries and nuggets out of the frier, etc. Right now, developing and purchasing such a machine will cost more than the human labor that does it now. If the fast food place reduces it’s work force, then it will suffer from being slower in food delivery. Believe it or not, it’s speed, not quality of food, that fast food markets really sell. Therefore, there is only so much a fast food restaurant can do to cut it’s work force before it starts losing more money than if it just kept its workforce the same and paid the higher wage.

Another complication is that the minimum wage workers of the world don’t save much of the income, which is a combination of the facts that most are younger workers (who rarely save) and that minimum wage puts you below the poverty line (so you can’t afford to save because you have to use all of your income to live). This means that any increase in the minimum wage translates into more money being spent directly, effectively translating was previously profit for the employer, which was being partially saved, into income for the worker, which is being spent at or near the rate of 100%. At that point, the multiplier effect (which I talked about in this SLACE post) kicks in, and the overall economy grows.

So how do these competing economic forces shake out when the minimum wage is actually raised? In a now famous study by David Card and Alan Krueger, the found that a minimum wage increase in New Jersey in 1992 actually increased employment at New Jersey restaurants. Economists have argued back and forth about the effects of a minimum wage ever since, without a true consensus about what the effect is. However, what is certain is the effect is definitely not one of simply increasing unemployment without any beneficial economic effects.

In a raw, moving speech to the Human Rights Campaign, actress Ellen Page, star of Juno and Inception, spoke about her sexuality, revealing her homosexuality.

Here are some of the most notable passages from Page’s speech:

I know there are people in this room who go to school every day and get treated like shit for no reason. Or you go home and you feel like you can’t tell your parents the whole truth about yourself. Beyond putting yourself in one box or another, you worry about the future. About college or work or even your physical safety. Trying to create that mental picture of your life—of what on earth is going to happen to you—can crush you a little bit every day. It is toxic and painful and deeply unfair. . . .

[T]his world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another. If we took just 5 minutes to recognize each other’s beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That’s not hard. It’s really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives.

Then again, it’s not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves. I know many of you have struggled with this. I draw upon your strength and your support, and have, in ways you will never know.

I’m here today because I am gay. And because… maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.

Maybe I can make a difference to help others have an easier and more hopeful time. … I also do it selfishly because I’m tired of hiding and I’m tired of lying by omission. I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered. My mental health suffered. My relationships suffered. I’m standing here today with all of you on the other side of that pain. . I am young, yes, but what I have learned is that love, the beauty of it, the joy of it and yes, even the pain of it, is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being. And we deserve to experience love fully, equally, without shame and without compromise.

The excepts from the speech are taken from Upworthy.com, where it can be read in its entirety.

Feel Good Friday: Ellen Page Speaks, Comes Out

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Freakonomics on Marriage Part I

/ Matthew Clemente / 1 Comment

Freakonomics on Marriage Part I

Recently, the Freakonomics podcast release the first part of a two part episode about the economics of marriage. One of the fascinating features of the show is how much of the common wisdom about marriage is false.  For instance, the divorce rate is actually at an all time low since it peaked in the 1960s/1970s.  

Here is a description of the show: 

This episode is about all the ways that marriage has changed over the last 50 years. We begin by challenging some of the myths of modern marriage. For instance:does marriage make you happier? Is divorce as common as we think? The discussion then moves on to how the institution of marriage is perceived these days, and to what degree it has outlived its original purpose.

We begin by hearing the voices of people all around the country, talking about why they got married or want to. As you might imagine, their reasoning runs from pure romance (love!) to hardcore pragmatic (a visa, a pregnancy, to conform).

Stephen Dubner spends a lot of time talking with Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan and the Brookings Institution. Along with his partner/co-economistBetsey Stevenson, Wolfers has done significant research on marriage, divorce, and family. He explains one dramatic change to marriage over the past half-century — from a factory-style model of “production complementarities,” where the mister went off to work and the missus ran the household, to something very different:

WOLFERS: We’ve moved to what economists would call consumption complementarities. We have more time, more money, and so you want to spend it with someone that you’ll enjoy. So, similar interests and passions. We call this the model of hedonic marriage. But really it’s a lot more familiar than that. This is just economists giving a jargon name to love. So you want someone who’s actually remarkably similar to you or has similar passions that you do. So it fundamentally changes who marries who.

But this new model hasn’t just changed the way marriage looks; it has also changed the numbers. In 1960, two-thirds of all Americans aged 15 and older were married. By 1990, that number had fallen to 58.7 percent. Now? It’s dropped to around 50 percent. Harvard economistClaudia Goldin, who has done extensive research on women’s career and family attainments, tells us what accounts for this drop:

GOLDIN: In the U.S., one group of individuals who eventually marry, marry late. And one group is not marrying — the lower-educated, lower-income Americans are not marrying for lots of different reasons. So I wouldn’t say that marriage is still the institution that it once was.

 

Freakonomics on Marriage Part I

/ Matthew Clemente / 1 Comment

Freakonomics on Marriage Part I

Recently, the Freakonomics podcast release the first part of a two part episode about the economics of marriage. One of the fascinating features of the show is how much of the common wisdom about marriage is false.  For instance, the divorce rate is actually at an all time low since it peaked in the 1960s/1970s.  

Here is a description of the show: 

This episode is about all the ways that marriage has changed over the last 50 years. We begin by challenging some of the myths of modern marriage. For instance:does marriage make you happier? Is divorce as common as we think? The discussion then moves on to how the institution of marriage is perceived these days, and to what degree it has outlived its original purpose.

We begin by hearing the voices of people all around the country, talking about why they got married or want to. As you might imagine, their reasoning runs from pure romance (love!) to hardcore pragmatic (a visa, a pregnancy, to conform).

Stephen Dubner spends a lot of time talking with Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan and the Brookings Institution. Along with his partner/co-economistBetsey Stevenson, Wolfers has done significant research on marriage, divorce, and family. He explains one dramatic change to marriage over the past half-century — from a factory-style model of “production complementarities,” where the mister went off to work and the missus ran the household, to something very different:

WOLFERS: We’ve moved to what economists would call consumption complementarities. We have more time, more money, and so you want to spend it with someone that you’ll enjoy. So, similar interests and passions. We call this the model of hedonic marriage. But really it’s a lot more familiar than that. This is just economists giving a jargon name to love. So you want someone who’s actually remarkably similar to you or has similar passions that you do. So it fundamentally changes who marries who.

But this new model hasn’t just changed the way marriage looks; it has also changed the numbers. In 1960, two-thirds of all Americans aged 15 and older were married. By 1990, that number had fallen to 58.7 percent. Now? It’s dropped to around 50 percent. Harvard economistClaudia Goldin, who has done extensive research on women’s career and family attainments, tells us what accounts for this drop:

GOLDIN: In the U.S., one group of individuals who eventually marry, marry late. And one group is not marrying — the lower-educated, lower-income Americans are not marrying for lots of different reasons. So I wouldn’t say that marriage is still the institution that it once was.