All My Economics Jokes

I mentioned, here and on FaceBook, a new addition to my very small collection of economics jokes, not jokes about economics but jokes that teach economics. Enough people were interested so I decided to post all six of them:

1. Two economists walked past a Porsche showroom with an elegant sports car visible through the window:

First Economist: "I really want that car."

Second Economist: "Obviously not."

2. An economist and a businessman were walking in the wood when they encountered a large and hungry bear. The economist turned to run.

Businessman: "You don't think you can outrun a bear, do you?"

Economist: "No. But I might be able to outrun you."

(Contributed by Dennis Hanseman, editor of my Price Theory)

3. What is sweeter than honey?

Free vinegar.

(From a Middle Eastern cookbook by Claudia Roden)

4. An economics professor is in a car driven by one of his students; she asks him to put on his seat belt.

"Why do you want me to put on my seat belt?"

"To make it less likely that you will be injured in an accident."

"Then why don't you take yours off?"

(From Allen Sanderson)

5. Jose had robbed a bank in Texas and fled south across the Rio Grande with the Texas Rangers in hot pursuit. They caught up with him in a town in Old Mexico, only to discover that Jose spoke no English and none of the pursuers spoke any Spanish. They drafted one of the locals – the school teacher – to act as a translator.

“Tell Jose that he must tell us where he has hidden the loot from the bank robbery.”

“The gringos say to ask where you have hidden the loot.”

“Tell the gringos I will never tell them.”

“Jose says he will never tell you.”

The Rangers pull out their six-guns, cock them, and point them at Jose.

“Tell Jose if he does not tell us where he has hidden the loot, we will kill him.”

“The gringos say if you do not tell them where you have hidden the loot they will kill you.”

Jose begins to tremble with fear.

“I buried it by the old oak tree on the other side of the bridge.”

“Jose says he is not afraid to die.”

(my favorite—I don't remember where I got it)

6. The zoo director noticed that one of the elephants was coughing. So he decided to add vodka to this elephant's bucket of water. The next morning that elephant was completely healthy, but the other three elephants began to cough.

(Russian joke, contributed by Anna Krupitsky on FB a few days ago)

Explanations are left as an exercise for the reader.

Looking for a Cover Artist

I am nearly finished with Legal Systems Very Different From Ours and am in search of a cover. There seems to be general agreement that my ideas for what to put on the cover, discussed in a previous post don't work, so I am looking for something better.

The book consists of thirteen system chapters, each of which looks at some legal system, past or present, plus additional thread chapters, each of which looks at some issue that runs through multiple systems. A late draft is webbed for comments and probably worth looking at for anyone who might consider designing a cover.

Another Economics Joke

I have a very small collection of economics jokes, not jokes about economics but jokes that teach economics. It just occurred to me that there is another I should add:

An economics professor is in a car driven by one of his students; she asks him to put on his seat belt.

"Why do you want me to put on my seat belt?"

"To make it less likely that you will be injured in an accident."

"Then why don't you take yours off?"

I got this one from Allen Sanderson, who teaches introductory economics at Chicago. It may, for all I know, be a true story.

The Eugenic Bogeyman

It looks as though some scientists in China have produced two infants from ova edited using Crispr. The objective was to disable a gene associated with vulnerability to AIDS. A good deal of the commentary on the report is negative, with talk of eugenics and risking the human gene pool and such. I find it hard to see much basis for such concern. There are obviously risks which the parents should have been, it is claimed were, informed of, but then there are risks to producing a child by the usual technology as well. 

I am particularly unsympathetic with the way in which “eugenics” is used as a bogey word, since it confuses two quite different things. Eugenics in the sense of some people deciding what children other people will have is a bad thing, especially when it involves some people deciding that other people will not be permitted to have children. Eugenics in the sense of couples trying to improve the quality of the children they have seems like a reasonable and unobjectionable activity. At the individual level it happens every time someone includes, in the choice of whom to marry, the consideration of what sort of children the proposed spouse will produce.

My favorite version of eugenics is the one described in an early Heinlein novel (Beyond This Horizon). It was a technology that let a couple select on both egg and sperm, thus choosing, among the children they could have, which ones they did have.

Comments? Any readers inclined to defend the arguments against this sort of technology?

Pope Francis: A Conjecture

The central facts of the current Catholic crisis appear clear. By the time Francis became Pope, it was well known in Vatican circles that Cardinal McCarrick had engaged in extensive homosexual activity with young adult seminarians. The previous Pope had, on that account, restricted McCarrick's activities in a variety of ways, details of which are still controversial. When Francis became Pope whatever restrictions had been imposed were lifted and McCarrick became one of the Pope's chief advisers. Then ...

On July 19, The New York Times published an article based on the story of a man named James, whose last name was withheld. A New Jersey man whose uncle had known McCarrick since high school, James alleged that McCarrick had sexually abused him beginning at age 11. ... On July 27, 2018, Pope Francis ordered McCarrick to observe 'a life of prayer and penance in seclusion' and accepted his resignation from the College of Cardinals.

 (Wikipedia)

The obvious puzzle is how to explain this pattern of events. I offer the following conjectures:

1. Pope Francis, like many moderns, does not regard homosexual activity as morally different from heterosexual activity. His view is in that respect inconsistent with current Catholic doctrine and he has prudently concealed it.

2. Pope Francis believes that requiring clerical celibacy is a mistake. This view is inconsistent with current policy but not, as I understand the matter, with theological doctrine.

 

3. Pope Francis strongly disapproves of adult men having sex with children.

All three of these positions fit modern progressive attitudes, which which Francis seems largely in sympathy. They also explain his behavior. So long as McCarrick's offenses were limited to consensual sex with adults they appeared to Francis as insufficiently serious to justify restricting the activities of a talented priest with views on the church close to those of the Pope. Only when evidence of sex with a minor appeared did that change.

I am not a Catholic, am evaluating the situation from the outside. Readers with more information or insight are invited to comment.

 

Win One, Lose One

My prediction of the election outcome was wrong—it turned out about as the polls predicted. On the other hand, I got my preferred outcome, with the House controlled by one party, the Senate by the other, making it less likely that Congress would do things.

The one negative outcome was the defeat of Dana Rohrabacher. Fifty years ago he was a young libertarian troubador and babe magnet and a friend of mine. I have a verse from one of his songs at the beginning of my first book.

But he's seventy-one, so perhaps due for a rest.

Who Do I Expect To Win?

I expect that the polls will turn out to be wrong—but I do not know in which direction. Politics has changed enough in the past two years so that rules for predicting outcomes based on past experience, such as those for identifying likely voters, can no longer be trusted. 

If the polls are wrong in one direction, the Republicans hold the House and increase their majority in the Senate. If they are wrong in the other direction, they lose the house by a substantial margin, probably lose the Senate as well. We will have to wait and see.