Beard Of Wisdom.com

Via Drudge. In short, there’s a guy who ordered a couple of Quarter Pounders at McDonald’s and asked them to hold the cheese. They didn’t, and he had a “severe allergic reaction.” Hence MickeyD’s should fork over $10 million. Not just for his personally benefit, of course, he’s doing it for anyone who will ever eat at McDonald’s again.

“We’re interested in seeing McDonald’s take responsibility and change a systemic quality control problem that endangers the lives of up to 12 million Americans with allergies,” said Timothy Houston, the Morgantown lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

Having worked at MickeyD’s I’m pretty sure the only way to solve this ’systemic quality control problem’ would be to stop taking special orders. McDonald’s employees are human; most are teenages; mistakes will be made.
My favorite part of the story is this though,

“By my count, he took at least five independent steps to make sure that thing had no cheese on it,” Houston said. “And it did and almost cost him his life.”

Except for the step where after he gets the burger he lifts the top bun and looks to see if there is cheese on it. But you couldn’t get $10 million if you did that.

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This is one of the most interesting articles I’ve read in a long time, continuing Nicholas Wade’s streak of finding fascinating and unexpected theories. The theory seems overly broad and sweeping, like something Jared “I’m a Geographic Determinist” Diamond would write, but it seems a bit more historically grounded, it’s thought-provoking, and it makes an entry in several debates that are important not only for world history, but also for current affairs:

1. It breaks down a simplistic Marxist view of Europe entering a new stage of History first and therefore being able to push everyone else around.
2. Coupled with findings that a) even pre-industrial home manufacturing in England was being transformed in the early 1700s by “capitalist” production methods (systematization; an emphasis on efficiency, etc), and b) that forms of capitalism were emerging in the Middle East and Southeast Asia before European contact, this theory moves us back from a materialist emphasis on technology to a view that ideas DO matter. (But only sort of, since Clark argues the ideas come from evolution.)
3. This is in turn awesome because it brings us back to the old question, “why didn’t the Middle East industrialize?” You could answer this by saying “well, of course they couldn’t, because they didn’t have the same resources of iron ore, coal, and hydropower that Europe did, and this answer does get us somewhere. BUT, if capitalism and industrialization are more about applying new ideas to the methods and resources you already have, then isn’t the question still open? And the article, at least, doesn’t satisfactorily explain why Clark’s theory proves that England in the 18th century, of all places, had this evolutionary epiphany.

This is not meant to be a post that’s only interesting to me, so I hope other people will weigh in with their thoughts–especially Wayne and Kyle, what’s an economist’s perspective on this?

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From the Club for Growth:

In 1930, Congress passed and President Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. At the time, this protectionist measure was vigorously opposed by 1,028 of the nation’s top economists. They rightly predicted the tariffs would devastate the economy. And, in fact, the country subsequently plunged into the Great Depression.

Now some in Congress are considering ways to enact similar protectionist policies against China. Once again, 1,028 of America’s top economists, from all 50 states and top universities, have signed the following petition sponsored by the Club for Growth in opposition to protectionist policies against China. In addition to many other prominent and well-respected economists, signatories include Nobel Laureates Finn Kydland, Edward Prescott, Thomas Schelling, and Vernon Smith.

Club president Pat Toomey explains the petition in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal here.  Read the petition and see who signed it here.  The list of signatories includes Hillsdale’s Gary Wolfram and six professors from SJSU (Brendt, Hummel, Lopez, Means, Ortega, and Stringham).

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Bulgaria is about to join the ranks of the League of Countries With A Tax Code Better Than the United States. In January they’ll implement a 10% flat tax and cause me to finally utter the phrase, “if only our tax code was advanced as Bulgaria’s.”

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The last time you got a great deal at the store, or low balled someone on EBay and came away with HUGE amounts of consumer surplus, did you stop to think about how “fair” the exchange was? Typically, people reason that if the seller is willing to let it go at a certain price, that is a “fair price”. Sadly, that reasoning breaks down when applied in the reverse direction.

Mark Steckbeck wrote up a very entertaining opening paragraph introducing a piece on consumer protection laws.  Please read it.

The piece itself was written by Skip Oliva and is an excellent read. Here’s the first part of the post:

It’s difficult to reconcile the American concept of “equal justice under law” with the Federal Trade Commission’s motto, “Protecting America’s Consumers.” The implication is that there is one set of laws for consumers and another set—affording lesser protection—for producers and sellers. This conflict presents itself in all “consumer protection” laws, and it stems from an awkward premise: That in any given economic exchange, the party trading cash holds the legal and moral high ground over the party trading a good or service.

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At least according to this article from the Associated Press.

But just as it has in so many other arenas, America’s predominance in height has faded. Americans reached a height plateau after World War II, gradually falling behind as the rest of the world continued growing taller.

By the time the baby boomers reached adulthood in the 1960s, most northern and western European countries had caught up with and surpassed the United States. Young adults in Japan and other prosperous Asian countries now stand nearly as tall as Americans do.

Height matters to economists, because all the things that are correlated to tall people are also correlated to good economies.

It’s that the same things that make people tall — a nutritious diet, good prenatal care and a healthy childhood — also benefit them in those other ways.

That makes height a good indicator for economists who are interested in measuring how well a nation provides for its citizens during their prime growing years. With one simple, easily collected statistic, economists can essentially measure how well a society prepares its children for life.

John Komlos, an economic historian at the University of Munich, blames it (partially) on American’s limited government.

“American children might consume more meals prepared outside of the home, more fast food rich in fat, high in energy density and low in essential micronutrients,” wrote Komlos and co-author Benjamin Lauderdale of Princeton University. “Furthermore, the European welfare states provide a more comprehensive social safety net including universal health-care coverage.”

But look a little deeper and it looks like large American cities (which tend to have larger government programs) are the cause of the problem.

In another recent paper, Komlos and Lauderdale also found height inequality between American urbanites and residents of suburbs and rural areas. In Kansas, for example, white males are about as tall as their European peers; it’s big cities like New York, where men are about 1.75 inches shorter than that, that drag America’s average down.

Looks like policy discussions won’t be the only times conservatives are towering over liberals.

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