Take a random group of social outcasts, and thrust them into an extremely wealthy suburb and you’ve got yourself a hit TV series.
Supporting points of data:
1. The Sopranos: The mafia in the suburbs.
2. The Riches: Gypsies in the suburbs.
3. Weeds: Potheads and dealers in the suburbs.
4. Desperate Housewives: Horny middle aged women in the suburbs.
5. Six Feet Under: Undertakers in the suburbs.
6. Big Love: Polygamists in the suburbs.
What’s going on here?

This comes from McCloskey’s Bourgeois Virtues:

…if you adopt an Aristotelian criterion, then most people after capitalism are more fulfilled as humans. They have more lives available. The anthropologist Grant McCracken has written of the “plentitude” that the modern world has brought. He half-seriously instances fifteen ways of being a teenager in North America in 1990: rocker, surfer-skater, b-girls, Goths, punk, hippies, student government, jocks, and on and on. By now the options are even wider. “In the 1950s,” he notes, there were only two categories. “You could be mainstream or James Dean. That was it.” I was there in the 1950, and agree–though in places like California, richer and fresher than Ontario or Massachusetts in the 1950s, the options were richer, too. The plentitude has come from free people sifting through the cornucopia, making themselves in their music and their clothing (ibid., p. 26).

I remember getting scolded in my high school religion class for asking the same question. Now, David Veksler stirs the pot.

So you’ve heard what The View, and Bill Maher have had to say about Ron Paul running for president. But what about The President of Hip Hop? I love the thick vein of skepticism that radical African American activists possess for politicians. We need more people second guessing the state.

I have a theory about music something akin to Hillary Clinton’s view of child education (I promise never to make a positive reference to Hillary Clinton again): it takes a village. In other words for every super group like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, there’s several dozens of other bands back in the UK who form an entire cultural community that built the genre.

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If you enjoyed these oldies but goodies, you’ll love these two new gems (hat tip to Adam Martin for recording them in last years special topics of Public Choice class).
“I’m sure most of you don’t read the newspaper. If you did, you would know that Ecuador just elected a new president. He has a PhD from the University of Illinois, and the main plank of his campaign was a high protective tariff, which shows what they teach at the University of Illinois.”
“There don’t seem to be any effects of global warming except making it harder to kill seals, and since I’m pro-seal I don’t really care.”

The latest episode of Penn and Teller’s Bull Shit is a gem (here’s the YouTube preview). This episode reminded me of the Free to Choose episode 8, when Walter Williams takes American union leaders to task on the minimum wage. Williams pointed out that union leaders are only looking out for the interests of African American’s who happen to be members in their union. At the time, blacks were under represented as union members by the way. The remaining African American population is negatively effected by minimum wage laws. They get pushed out of the labor market all together because they can’t find low paying jobs that suit their low level skill sets.

Penn and Teller do a great job at showing the hypocrisies of wealthy liberal elites and their favorite Wal-Mart bashing trend. They claim to be standing up in the name of small town values and the working man, all the while, real hardworking folks are happy to take Wal-Mart’s salaries and low prices and increase the qualities of their lives.
But what about the fact that Wal-Mart sells clothes made in sweatshops? Who would ever defend sweatshops? Ben Powell (recent GMU grad) to the rescue. If I had to make the choice between third world children working in sweatshops or being prostitutes, I’m with Powell, and I’ll take sweatshops.
If you look closely you can see Nick Curott (a San Jose grad student and friend of mine, in the background). Unfortunately no mention of Powell’s hardworking and well deserving co-author David Skarbek (GMU grad student) in this episode.

My first few years of graduate school were a constant struggle. I quickly discovered that just writing down my ideas was not enough. To succeed as an economist, I had to write clearly. In paper workshops I would repeatedly hear comments that the readers did not understand the argument or how the sections of my writing related to one another. The work would have flavor but they couldn’t tell what it was. Recently I’ve been told that my writing and clarity has improved. I attribute this to two factors. First, writing and revising more often. Second, reading material on the topic of writing. For the second, I recommend the following:
Books:
On Writing Well by William Zinsser
The Elements of Style by Strunk, White, and Angell
On Writing by Stephen King
Articles:
How to Write with Style by Kurt Vonnegut
12 writing tips by George Orwell

Here’s the thesis; I think that there is probably a correlation between the time that state alcohol consumption ages rose from 18 to 21 with the rise in American divorce rates. Here’s why, couples don’t dance anymore. Think of it this way, dance clubs are now just one stagae of longer production line to get into bed. On the other hand, as recently as the 1980s, dancing and sex were complements or even substitutes. Young people danced to determine and express their compatibilities with one another. When states rose the drinking age from 18 to 21 night clubs couldn’t afford to stay in business. Where they used to service customers between 18 and 21 their customer base radically shrank. These clubs shut down, the content of music changed, etc. Now no one dances and everyone gets divorced.
Hat tip to Geoff Lea for the fun discussion.