Why everyone hates high gas prices

A hypothesis from Duke econ prof Dan Ariely:

if I stood next to the yogurt case in the supermarket for five minutes every week with nothing to do but stare at the price, I would also know how much it has gone up — and I might become outraged when yogurt passed the $2 mark.

The Biggest Issue

David Brooks channels Goldin, Katz, and Heckman.

LHS, vindicated

Alex Tabarrok is on the case.

What's interesting is not only that Larry was fundamentally right about the facts (no surprise there), but that much of the mainstream media are still reporting otherwise. Here is the one source that got the story right.

The GSE Rescue Bill

Larry Summers and Dick Armey weigh in.

Save My Iced Grande Latte!

News from Scrappleface:

Congress to Halt Closing of Unprofitable Starbucks

Democrats in Congress today plan to introduce a bill to halt the recently-announced closing of some 600 Starbucks coffee stores, noting that the displacement of 12,000 Starbucks baristas would overwhelm government aid offices not prepared to handle so many clients for whom English is a second language....

“These people can’t just walk out of Starbucks and get a job at a grocery store or a factory,” said House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. “They would need ESL classes and cultural training to learn how to relate to ordinary Americans and function in society.”...

“This is just another one of our heroic Democrat efforts to protect Americans from the impact of the Bush economic policies,” said Rep. Pelosi. “Under this president, America has become a cold and desolate place where corporations cut unprofitable activities to focus on increasing the bottom line, and returning value to shareholders. When Democrats retake the White House next year, we will reverse that trend.”

Resilience

Robert Samuelson writes:

The paradoxical thing about today's economy is its strength. No kidding. Consider all the hand grenades lobbed at it. Higher oil prices. The housing implosion. Large layoffs in affected industries: autos, airlines, construction, mortgage banking. The "credit squeeze" triggered by losses on "subprime" mortgages. Despite all that, the economy hasn't collapsed. It's merely weakened. Output in the first quarter of 2008 was actually 2.5 percent higher than a year earlier.

The View from Chicago

The New Republic looks at what the right-leaning scholars at the University of Chicago think about Barack Obama. Unlike the profs at Chicago, where Obama taught, I have never met the Democratic candidate personally. But this quotation from legal scholar Daniel Fischel captures well my own ambivalence:

"He's much more intellectual, much more thoughtful, much more interested in discussion, debate, and dialogue than the typical politician. And that gives me some confidence about him, even though from my perspective he's much too liberal. I've never voted for a Democrat in my entire life. He's the first one I might vote for."