Link Farm

• Gender and Income -- Insty has links. 110% of the difference between male and female income is choices. Women get the better deal on income/hour worked. More from DiA. UPDATE: The Slate article linked is good too.
• Economics of sex -- Those with market power win, those without market power lose.
• Incentives win -- TSA explained.
• California is extra-broken. Privatization is illegal?
• Public employees overpaid? How does an economist understand the problem?
• Who likes liberty? No one political. Neither conservatives nor liberals.
• Reverse Causation? how about a brilliant better explanation?
• I once suggested that the health of an economy can be measured adequately by comparing the Expected Value (EV) of a dollar spent buying government favors vs. a dollar spent making a better product. Here's an answer.
• Great line by Sonic Charmer:

  I’ve come to realize that the reason I do not share their concerns is not so much that I think someone like Palin would too make a ‘good President’ as that for the most part I find the concept of ‘good President’ to be near-oxymoronic in the first place. I think of a ‘President’ as someone whom we strap into the driver’s seat of a giant-sized steamroller (=the U.S. government) that is running loose in the middle of a beautiful, Edenic paradise, with the gearshift permanently stuck in ‘drive’ – and we tell him/her to steer. This can’t be done in a ‘good’ way because no matter which direction the President drives, things will get trampled, beautiful things. So there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ President. Presidents can only minimize the damage the steamroller causes. And that’s all I want.

• Innovation is amazing. Bacteria to fix concrete cracks?
• Wilkinson has a great discussion of Robert Frank on inequality and a solution (Progressive Consumption Tax to replace income tax).
• Robin Hanson and then Adam Ozimek discuss sophistication versus obsessiveness. I am naturally an obsessive who tries also to be sophisticated. Note: Sophistication is a social strategy, while obsession is a problem-solving strategy. Sophisticates are particularly useful so that the obsessives have someone to talk to about their obsessions. Obliquely relevant here is Seth on evolution of education.