Innovation and Jobs Destroyed by Tax

(p. 7A) I was humbled to receive in November the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at the White House for the development of life-changing medical devices. Traveling to our nation’s capital, I couldn’t help but think: There is no way I could have had the same impact if the tax on medical devices was in place when I got started over 50 years ago.
Simply put, the medical device tax is destroying job creation and innovation, and as a result, patient care is suffering.
. . .
Every day, I see firsthand the difficult choices innovators must make as a result of this ill-conceived tax. Perhaps worst of all, the medical device tax is helping cause a steep drop of investments in promising therapies.
. . .
It’s time to put an end to this disastrous policy so that medical device entrepreneurs can do what America does best — innovate.

For the full commentary, see:
Tom Fogarty. “Opposing View: Tax Destroys Jobs and Innovation.” USA Today (Mon., January 5, 2015): 7A.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 4, 2015, and has the title “Tax Destroys Jobs and Innovation: Opposing View.”)

A Federal “Building Whose Banality Is Exceeded Only by Its Expense”

(p. A3) WASHINGTON–They span 75 feet, weigh 4,300 pounds and can’t move.
The four, black aluminum clouds comprising the once-mobile component of “Mountains and Clouds”–one of the final works of sculptor Alexander Calder, which dominates the Hart Senate office building’s 90-foot-high atrium–haven’t drifted for more than a decade. They once rotated at a gentle speed, but have been frozen in place for years after a bearing failed.
. . .
, , , , mirroring the mixed feelings toward Mr. Calder’s sculpture, many in Washington didn’t appreciate the contemporary Hart building’s break with traditional architecture. In 1981, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D., N.Y.) suggested in a “sense of the Senate” resolution that the plastic covering that had protected the building from wintry elements was preferable to the exterior itself.
“Whereas the plastic cover has now been removed revealing, as feared, a building whose banality is exceeded only by its expense,” said the resolution, which never came to a vote. “Therefore, be it resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that the plastic cover be put back.”

For the full story, see:
KRISTINA PETERSON. “A Nebulous Debate in Washington.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Dec. 26, 2014): A3.
(Note: ellipses are added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 25, 2014, and has the title “Calder Sculpture Triggers Heavenly Debate in Washington.”)

Hamilton Was an Autodidact

Others who might be considered autodidacts include Andrew Carnegie, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Guglielomo Marconi. When the self-taught can achieve so much, it raises the question of whether we over-emphasize formal education? (Chernow also mentions Hamilton being an autodidact on pages 110, 206, and 682.)

(p. 42) Hamilton’s early itinerary in America closely mirrored the connections of Hugh Knox. Through Knox, he came to know two of New York’s most eminent Presbyterian clergymen: Knox’s old mentor, Dr. John Rodgers– an imposing figure who strutted grandly down Wall Street en route to church, grasping a gold-headed cane and nodding to well-wishers–and the Reverend John M. Mason, whose son would end up attempting an authorized biography of Hamilton. Through another batch of Knox introductory letters, Hamilton ended up studying at a well-regarded preparatory school across the Hudson River, the Elizabethtown Academy. Like all autodidacts, Hamilton had some glaring deficiencies to correct and required cram courses in Latin, Greek, and advanced math to qualify for college.

Source:
Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

Depression of 1920-21 Ended Quickly, Without Government Stimulus or Bailouts

(p. C3) Beginning in January 1920, something much worse than a recession blighted the world. The U.S. suffered the steepest plunge in wholesale prices in its history (not even eclipsed by the Great Depression), as well as a 31.6% drop in industrial production and a 46.6% fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Unemployment spiked, and corporate profits plunged.
. . .
In the absence of anything resembling government stimulus, a modern economist may wonder how the depression of 1920-21 ever ended. Oddly enough, deflation turned out to be a tonic. Prices–and, critically, wages too–were allowed to fall, and they fell far enough to entice consumers, employers and investors to part with their money. Europeans, noticing that America was on the bargain counter, shipped their gold across the Atlantic, where it swelled the depression-shrunken U.S. money supply. Shares of profitable and well-financed American companies changed hands at giveaway valuations.
Of course, the year-and-a-half depression must have seemed interminable for all who were jobless or destitute. It was, however, a great deal shorter than the 43 months of the Great Depression of 1929-33. Then too, the 1922 recovery would bring tears of envy to today’s central bankers and policy makers: Passenger-car production shot up by 63%, for instance, and the Dow jumped by 21.5%. “From practically all angles,” this newspaper judged in a New Year’s Day 1923 retrospective, “1922 can be recorded as the renaissance of prosperity.”
In 2008, as Lehman Brothers toppled, the Great Depression monopolized the market on historical analogies. To avoid a recurrence of the 1930s, officials declared, the U.S. had to knock down interest rates, manipulate stock prices to go higher, repave the highways and trade in the clunkers.
The forgotten depression teaches a very different lesson. Sometimes the best stimulus is none at all.

For the full commentary, see:
JAMES GRANT. “The Depression Fixed by Doing Nothing; The agonizing but often forgotten 1920-21 economic crisis suggests that sometimes the best stimulus is none at all.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Jan. 3, 2015): C3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Jan. 2, 2015, and has the title “The Depression That Was Fixed by Doing Nothing; The often forgotten 1920-21 economic crisis suggests that sometimes the best stimulus is none at all.”)

Grant’s commentary is elaborated on in his book:
Grant, James. The Forgotten Depression: 1921, the Crash That Cured Itself. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Conscientiousness and Openness Matter More than Intelligence

(p. 2) In a 2014 paper, the Australian psychology professor Arthur E. Poropat cites research showing that both conscientiousness (which he defines as a tendency to be “diligent, dutiful and hardworking”) and openness (characterized by qualities like creativity and curiosity) are more highly correlated with student performance than intelligence is. And, he notes, ratings of students’ personalities by outside observers — teachers, for instance — are even more strongly linked with academic success than the way students rate themselves. The strength of the personality-performance link is good news, he writes, because “personality has been demonstrated to change over time to a far greater extent than intelligence.”

For the full commentary, see:
ANNA NORTH. “Should Schools Teach Personality?” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., JANUARY 11, 2015): 2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JANUARY 10, 2015.)

Relevant articles by Poropat are:
Poropat, Arthur E. “A Meta-Analysis of the Five-Factor Model of Personality and Academic Performance.” Psychological Bulletin 135, no. 2 (March 2009): 322-38.
Poropat, Arthur E. “Other-Rated Personality and Academic Performance: Evidence and Implications.” Learning and Individual Differences 34 (August 2014): 24-32.

“It’s My Life, and I Want the Chance to Save It”

(p. 18) LYONS, Colo. — Since May [2014], a string of states have passed laws that give critically ill patients the right to try medications that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Deemed “Right to Try” laws, they have passed quickly and often unanimously in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Louisiana and Arizona, bringing hope to patients like Larry Kutt, who lives in this small town at the edge of the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Kutt, 65, has an advanced blood cancer and says his state’s law could help him gain access to a therapy that several pharmaceutical companies are testing. “It’s my life,” he said, “and I want the chance to save it.”
The laws do not seem to have helped anyone obtain experimental medicine, as the drug companies are not interested in supplying unapproved medications outside the supervision of the F.D.A. But that seems almost beside the point to the Goldwater Institute, the libertarian group behind legislative efforts to pass Right to Try laws. “The goal is for terminally ill patients to have choice when it comes to end-stage disease,” said Craig Handzlik, state policy coordinator for the Goldwater Institute, based in Arizona. “Right to Try is something that will help terminally ill people all over the country.”

For the full story, see:
JULIE TURKEWITZ. “Patients Seek ‘Right to Try’ New Drugs.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., JAN. 11, 2015): 18.
(Note: the bracketed year is added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 10, 2015.)

Stalin Showed that a Single Individual’s Decisions Can Matter

(p. C29) . . . , [Stephen Kotkin] is not shy about assailing what he regards as false interpretations by other historians. His Stalin is not a disciple who deviates from Lenin; he is Lenin’s true disciple, in pitiless class warfare, in the inability to compromise, and, above all, in unshakable ideological conviction.
. . .
There is little equivocation in Mr. Kotkin’s judgments. Scholars who argue collectivization was necessary to force Russian peasants into a modern state are “dead wrong.” The conclusion by the British historian E. H. Carr that Stalin was a product of circumstances, and not the other way around, is “utterly, eternally wrong.” On the contrary, it is one of Mr. Kotkin’s major theses that Stalin “reveals how, on extremely rare occasions, a single individual’s decisions can radically transform an entire country’s political and socioeconomic structures, with global repercussions.” Or, as he puts it in a more graphic passage: “The Bolshevik putsch could have been prevented by a pair of bullets” — one for Lenin and one for Stalin.
. . .
This reader, for one, still hopes for more evidence that Stalin was indeed singular, a historical malignancy, and not a product of circumstances of the kind that might already be shaping the next chapter of Russian history. And that only whets the appetite for the next installment, in which Stalin decides to starve Russia almost to death to bring peasants under state control. That, Mr. Kotkin has already declared, was an assault on the peasantry for which there was no political or social logic, and that only Stalin could have done. It is a testament to Mr. Kotkin’s skill that even after almost a thousand pages, one wants more.

For the full review, see:
SERGE SCHMEMANN. “From Czarist Rubble, a Russian Autocrat Rises.” The New York Times (Sat., JAN. 8, 2015): C29.
(Note: ellipses, and book author’s name in brackets, added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date JAN. 8, 2015.)

The book under review is:
Kotkin, Stephen. Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928. New York: Penguin Press, 2014.

“How You Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm”

Wikipedia tells us that the song “How Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree?)” was popular after the end of World War I.

(p. C6) Dick Cavett, a son of Nebraska, used to ask (quoting Abe Burrows), “How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen the farm?”

For the full review, see:
A. O. SCOTT. “Off to the Stars, With Dread and Regret.” The New York Times (Weds., NOV. 5, 2014): C1 & C6.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date NOV. 4, 2014, and has the title “Off to the Stars, With Grief, Dread and Regret.”)

The Case that Hamilton Was Better than Jefferson

One of my entrenched beliefs has been that Thomas Jefferson was one of the great heroes of human history, and Alexander Hamilton was not. It is rare that I read something that changes my entrenched beliefs. But Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton did that. He makes a strong (and long) case that Alexander Hamilton was mainly a decent, brilliant, courageous, hard-working, self-made man, who not only talked the talk on liberty, but walked the walk (taking fire in the revolution, and strongly opposing slavery). He wasn’t perfect in either his personal life or his beliefs. But he now has my vote as one of the great heroes of human history (and Jefferson does not).
In the next few weeks, I will quote several of the most revealing or thought-provoking passages of Chernow’s book.
PS: I also previously learned a lot from Chernow’s Titan, a big book about a big entrepreneur.

Main book discussed:
Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

Other book, briefly mentioned:
Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York: Random House, 1998.

Wall Street Democrats Question Hillary Clinton’s Views on Job Creation

(p. B1) “Hillary said what?”
That was the question whispered among some of Wall Street’s most prominent Democratic supporters over the weekend after Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke on the campaign trail for Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts.
“Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs,” Mrs. Clinton said on Friday in Boston.

For the full commentary, see:
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN. “Wall St. Wonders About Hillary Clinton.” The New York Times (Tues., OCTOBER 28, 2014): B1 & B6.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date OCTOBER 27, 2014, and has the title “Hillary Clinton’s Comment on Jobs Raises Eyebrows on Wall St.”)