Treme Recap

Treme season 1 over. Read some reviews:
one
two
three

Compared similarly to The Wire. I hope they get a few more seasons - the music is great and like The Wire did for Baltimore, Treme makes New Orleans a central character.

Book Report: 9, 10, and 11

Reading my 9th book of 2010, Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, was a taxing ordeal. It's a satire of American culture in the early 20th century but with everything happening now (hello income gap!) it was basically super depressing and made me read magazines for a couple months.

Fortunately I borrowed the hot novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson from my mom and tore through it in a couple days. Very cool noirish story set in Sweden. It's the first in a trilogy so hopefully I can get to the other two pretty quickly. Unfortunately Steig died unexpectedly a couple years ago. (Also he was a socialist so watch out!)

To round out my latest trilogy I pulled The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger from my bookshelf which I probably 'borrowed' from my mom as well. Great piece of reporting/writing and of course the movie starts George Clooney so I'll probably watch that too.

Treme!

Well Treme has started and it does not disappoint. Start watching.....

Book Report: The Undercover Economist

The 8th book I've read this year was The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. I initially read Tim somewhere on the internet and liked his writing style enough to buy his book.

The Undercover Economist was thoroughly enjoyable although I wanted to understand it so I took my time reading it. In addition, some of it I had to take with a grain of salt. I don't know that any book will convince me that markets are inherently free and that taxes are simply inefficiencies in markets. Experience would dictate that markets are under constant flux because of both government and market participants and taxes can be ways of either correcting for inefficiencies of market structure, forcing participants to address externalities, and (yes) inefficient in and of themselves. He glosses over the example of how Singapore provides health care to its citizens but that seems to me the crux of the type of question his book can help to answer: requirements by governments that in effect create a market. How can this market be created so that consumers win and no monopoly rents can be generated?

That being said, this book was excellent at pointing out ways in which economics can be useful in explaining why prices are what they are (scarcity power driving up rents, barriers to entry, extracting information, and even auctions to name a few) and other such interesting economic phenomena (like congestion pricing - which is good!). It really gave me a lot to think about in how to think about a lot if that makes sense.

Book Report: The House of Mirth

Financial advice from Edith Wharton that Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko would be proud of:

"You asked me just now if I could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I understand-he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live on the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense-but it's a privilege we have to pay for! We eat their dinners, and drink their wine, and smoke their cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes and their private cars-yes, bu there's a tax to pay on every one of those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents-and-and-lots of other things that cost; the girl pays it by tips and cards too-oh, yes, I've had to take up bridge again-and by going to the best dress-makers, and having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!"