Inflation at Siena

Time to start a price index for Siena faculty and staff.

Last year:
dining hall meals -- $4
basketball season tix -- $114

This year:
dining hall meals -- $5
basketball season tix -- $148

Let's do 20 meals and 1 ticket, giving the price of the market basket

Last year: $194
This year: $248

Normalizing last year to a price level of 100, this year's level is 128.

Ouch.

NY Times Toxic water discharge violoations

I'll be interested to learn more about the database put together by the NY Times on violations of wastewater discharge permits.

On using space

From Yglesisas:

Green space and public space are good things, but they’re really only good if the spaces are usable and used in practice by the people who live and work in the area.

OK. Green space, public space are not synonymous with open space. Clearly I'm an advocate for green public spaces.

Propaganda and Farmers Markets

Want some arguments for avoiding Farmers Markets and settling for the grocery store?

A handy list appeared yesterday in a blog from the local paper, all guaranteed to push the right buttons. Too bad there was no information or thought involved:

10 things your farmer’s market won’t tell you
July 15, 2009 at 11:48 am by
Sarah Diodato


I’ve only been blogging about the topic of saving money for a few months, but I’ve already learned a great deal about how important it is to many consumers that they have access to fresh, locally grown food. Most of what I hear is very positive about local farmer’s markets.
However, Smart Money has list of 10 things you should know:

It comes out of your taxes. Many are supported by your tax dollars, even if you don’t shop there.

It’ll cost more. However, because it’s fresh, hasn’t been transported thousands of miles, and has been allowed to ripen on the vine, it will probably taste better.

Even though they say it’s local, it may not be after all. Some farmers buy produce wholesale and tell the consumer it’s from their land.
....

Check out the comments, including mine:

It would be helpful if the article provided information rather than simply playing on emotions.

To take the first point: “It comes out of your taxes. Many are supported by your tax dollars, even if you don’t shop there.”

What information would actually be helpful here? One might ask:

* How much of my “big box” purchase is subsidized, compared to my farmers market purchase? (We do know that the majority of farm subsidies are received by the very largest growers, hence we might suspect that farmers markets receive LESS assistance when everything is added up.)

* What tax dollars and income are created when I shop at a farmers market rather than a chain? (That is, how does your spending “multiply” in additional spending around the community? The answer depends on where you shop, and, not surprisingly a small local grower will reuse your dollars within the community more than just about anyone else.) I’ll leave alone the remaining nine talking points.

A discussion of the Waxman-Markley cap and trade bill.

Check out this commentary on the House passed climate change bill.

A tutorial is here.

More on health care

Mankiw once again finds an interesting story, but gets it all wrong:

This chart from Andrew Biggs "shows spending on veterinary care, which I pulled from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, and national health expenditures (for people) from the National Income and Product Accounts.... the rate of growth of spending from 1984 to 2006 wasn’t all that different—and in both cases, spending
grew faster than the rate of economic growth. As new technologies are developed for humans, we adopt them for Bowser and Fifi—because we can afford to and we think it’s worth it."

So, veterinary care (I feel OK about markets working well here) sees rapidly increasing spending --- starting from a very low level. No doubt marginal benefits are very high because we didn't do much beyond vaccinations and palliative care in the past.

Human health care sees the same spending escalation. But here marginal benefits (normalized for spending) have to be much lower because we started (1984!) from a relatively high standard of care already.

So either we're spending too little on pets, or too much on people. And messed up markets somewhere would be the explanation. Care to guess where?

Oh yes ... the Mankiw thinks an explanation for the 250% increase is "growing incomes." Except median household incomes haven't grown.

Student engagement and campus design

It's the season to add dorm space. Maybe it can be done in a way which enhances engagment and connections. We'll see.

Here's my contribution.