EconomistMom.com

I was signed up to attend this New America event this morning, called “Are Today’s Teens Better Off Than Their Parents?”  In fact, I had arranged to bring my 16-year-old daughter with me who sounded mildly interested when I invited her.  But my best laid plans fell through when I had to adjust to the last-minute changes in my daughter’s social calendar (I won’t elaborate).  So I ended up missing the event as well.  Oh, the irony!

I hope they’ll post a transcript so I can see what the consensus answer of the experts is.  I only know the answer to that question as it applies in my own family!

Just wanted to point out two new features on this website:

1. A search box, at bottom of left sidebar;
2. A “recent comments” log, around middle of left sidebar.

On those recent comments, please avoid the temptation to treat this blogsite like an IM board!  (This is a little (friendly) hint to some of those deeply engrossed in conversations about Social Security…. I feel as if I’m being baited into the conversation!  Maybe I should point out that at home I try to ignore my dogs at the backdoor if they’re pawing madly at the door, as I insist that they sit quietly and patiently before I’ll let them in…)

Oh, also, over the weekend my photographer (and “allowance trust fund”) daughter took a new photo of me, and developed it herself, and it’s now on the “about” page.  She is so darn talented! 

No deep philosophical discussion; just wanted to point out that in my print copy of the Washington Post, I’m looking at this column by Amity Shlaes in defense of Phil Gramm’s “mental recession” comment, which segues into this praise for Senator McCain’s fiscal responsibility (my emphasis added):

Social Security and Medicare also need rewriting — and Gramm put forth one of the better proposals on Social Security in the 1990s.

In short, to fix it all, we need a frank conversation about the economy. McCain, in fact, inaugurated one back in 2006 when he gave a speech that was downright Gramm-like at the Economic Club of New York.

In that speech, McCain said that on entitlements, hard choices were necessary. He concluded: “Any politician who tells you otherwise, Democrat or Republican, is lying.”

This was McCain at his best. Many voters knew it, too.

The way to strengthen the economy right now is to elect leaders who dare to talk about problems in precise and even technical terms — and then act on them. McCain has that capacity, but only if he can transcend Campaign Econ.

And just to the left, on the same page of my print edition, this cartoon by Boston Globe cartoonist Dan Wasserman appears:

Sneak it into an ad for prescription drugs.  And make reference to the presidential election, too!  Here’s what I found in this week’s Time magazine, in an ad for prostate medicine…

Pretty clever…   (Here’s a link to the pdf version if you want to get a clearer look.)

At least it’s not promoted via an ad for male “performance” drugs.  You know, those awful radio ads that say “we might not have a cure for the sagging economy, but…”

Thanks to that NYTimes op-ed that Brooks had pointed out to me (mentioned in this post), I ordered the authors’ book from Amazon a few days ago, along with a couple other books, all focusing on various perspectives on how our brain works–the good, the bad, and the quirky.  The books arrived yesterday, and just skimming through them, they look like they’re so interesting and fun that I might actually have a prayer of reading them (unlike this one), and I’m sure they’ll inspire many new posts here at EconomistMom.com, as I try to relate their lessons to my everyday life as well as to fiscal policy.

Have any of you out there read any of these books, and if so, would you care to share your thoughts on them?

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions [Roughcut] [Hardcover]
By: Dan Ariely (Author)

Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain [Hardcover]
By: John J. Ratey (Author), Eric Hagerman (Contributor) 

Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life [Hardcover]
By: Sandra Aamodt (Author), Sam Wang (Author)

That last one is the book mentioned in the NYTimes op-ed–the reason I went looking on Amazon.com in the first place (it was the subtitle about losing ones car keys that sold me).  The first one (”Predictably Irrational”) I was drawn to buy because it seems to more specifically focus on economic decisions through the perspective of “behavioral economics”–a field I was first drawn to many years ago in graduate school as a small part of a financial economics course (“prospect theory”).  The “Spark” book says physical exercise is great not just for your physical health but for your psychological health as well–yet another reason why we should make physical fitness, as a form of preventative health care, a larger component of our overall national health care strategy.

Fun, fun, fun!!!

Last week during our vacation to NV and AZ, my family experienced life with an SUV for the first time.  (You might find that amazing, given our 20-year-old human infrastructure project.)

We rented a Ford Expedition, so I was being good to my Ford engineer sister.  (Our household owns three Ford vehicles–two minivans and a compact car.  We’re soon to get a new compact and will donate the older minivan to charity.)

My husband says we filled up the gas tank three times, each time about $80 worth–so $240 in gas for the week.  Per person, that’s not bad ($40).  I just looked up the approximate mileage we drove in traveling from Las Vegas to Sedona, AZ, to the Grand Canyon and back, and back to Las Vegas.  I think that’s around 820 miles.  (We did a little bit of driving around each destination though, so adding maybe 20 miles to that gets us to 840 miles.)  With gas about $4 per gallon (it was actually cheaper in Sedona than Las Vegas, which surprised me), that’s 60 gallons of gas.  So that works out to 14 miles/gallon.  Ford says the Expedition is supposed to get 12-18 miles/gallon, so that’s right in there.

All in all, I think it was a good opportunity to experience the SUV and made financial sense for us–at least for the one week.  And it was a very comfortable ride.  I have to admit I’ve had this aversion to SUVs because of their reputation as gas guzzlers, and we won’t be buying one in the future (at least not until more hybrid, not-so-gigantic versions become available), but when I got home and looked at a few photos I had snapped of our vacation SUV, I realized that framing/context really matters.  (This psychology stuff is fascinating to me.  See yesterday’s post which mentioned “cognitive dissonance”.)

Here’s a photo of our vacation SUV filling up at the gas station:

…And here’s a photo of our vacation SUV near the red rocks of Sedona:

Kind of gives you a totally different impression of the SUV, doesn’t it?  I think I need to apply this lesson to the way I talk about the long-term budget outlook and the need for reforms. 

Today my husband and I celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, while out in Nevada and Arizona with our four kids.  So here’s the latest photo of this 20-year-old “human infrastructure” project I’ve been working on–with a lot of help from my husband, of course.  (That’s Lake Mead in the background, taken right before we saw the Hoover Dam.)  Note that I am the 3rd-shortest person in the family, with only my 9-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter still shorter than me, so I’ve managed to construct pretty tall projects just like the Hoover Dam area’s been doing.

Gee, I never thought I’d need a topic category on Dams…  Here’s a family vacation shot from a couple days ago, of my family walking in the oppressive desert heat around the Hoover Dam.  Boy, that’s one impressive piece of infrastructure.  (I’m sparing you the photo of the dam itself.)  Seeing it for only the second time in my life (the last time, when I was a child), this time it fascinated me to think that Herbert Hoover could have such a ”big government” project named after him.  (After all, in the Annie song “We’d Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover,” the folks singing weren’t exactly singing his praises for job creating government projects, and in a previous post I likened Hoover’s popularity to that of George W. Bush.)  So I did some googling and was surprised to find out (from this PBS resource) that Hoover was very much responsible for the very successful Hoover Dam (”big government”) project, and that his success in promoting and managing the project as first Harding’s and then Coolidge’s Commerce secretary helped win him the presidency in 1928. 

Obviously, whatever “success” Hoover achieved in seeing the Hoover Dam project through, it did not carry through to his presidency once the country fell into the Great Depression.  Apparently the dam was renamed several times, starting out as the “Boulder Dam” then named the “Hoover Dam” in 1930, then renamed back to the “Boulder Dam” after Hoover lost to FDR in 1932.  It became the “Hoover Dam” again in 1947.

What’s obvious today is that the Hoover Dam area still stands for “big government” infrastructure projects.  My family was totally amazed to see the huge project going on now:  the Hoover Dam Bypass Project.  Here are a couple shots showing the bridge they’re starting to build from both sides of the huge gorge–a feat that already seems to defy the laws of physics.

From the traffic that passes through there at a snail’s pace now (especially with the new very heightened security at the Dam since 9/11), I have no doubt that this “bypass” will pass the cost-benefit test.  (Curious about how the bypass project is being funded?  Go here.)

My family leaves for a week in Arizona tomorrow.  A few weeks ago I brought up the issue of what I was going to do with my three dogs–whether I might actually put them up in a doggie resort of sorts, such as a place nearby called “Dogtopia.”  A Dogtopia publicity guy even commented on that post, thanking me for putting in a plug for them–and even a link.  (Did he offer me a discount in return, though?…So this time, no easy link…)  One of my (human-childless) budget-expert friends even revealed to me that he brings his doggie children to Dogtopia regularly.

Well, our doggies are not going to Dogtopia, because when I looked into the cost, I realized that if we brought the dogs there, we’d be spending more on lodging on a per capita basis per dog, than per human.   Yes, I’m serious.  I mean, I love my dogs, but I’m not that crazy about them.  I actually think they’ll be happier to stay in our home and our backyard anyway, with our home-from-college neighbor looking after them.  (The other weird thing about these big “dog resort” places is that they’re almost all completely inside big hanger-type, warehouse-style buildings that the dogs must get used to as their indoor and outdoor world… They have fake grass and fake trees so that the dogs will still feel “at home” when they have to pee underneath a roof instead of under the sky…. I mean, how could I pay more per dog for that kind of “scenary” than what we’re paying per human to stay near the red rocks of Sedona?)

Will be writing from the road this coming week, laptop in hand, kids and hubby beside me.

DC-area EconomistMom.com readers:  You’ve got to check out this week’s Silverdocs Film Festival (in Silver Spring, MD), where on Sunday the 22nd the documentary I.O.U.S.A., featuring the Concord Coalition’s ”Fiscal Wake-Up Tour” and starring Concord’s Bob Bixby (on left, above) and former Comptroller General David Walker (on right), will be showing on Sunday.  (I’ve wrote about it before, on the “about” page of this blog.)  Out of 108 movies that will be showing there over the next 8 days, the “Going Out Gurus” of the Washington Post’s blog recommended just 5 documentaries–and I.O.U.S.A. is one of them:

“I.O.U.S.A.”: Most of us are not fiscally-minded. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the national debt or trade deficits. But “I.O.U.S.A.” makes a convincing argument that we should. Featuring commentary from such financial authorities as former Comptroller General David Walker (who embarks with a few colleagues on a Fiscal Wake-Up Tour of America), this documentary raises significant questions about the economy at a time when they couldn’t be more relevant. (Screens Sunday, June 22 at 3 p.m.)

Check it out if you’re in town, because it won’t hit wide distribution in the theatres until late summer.  If you’re someone who enjoys this blog, you’ll enjoy the movie, for sure.  Unfortunately, I’ll be in Arizona with the family next week, so again I’ll have to miss a screening event.  (I’ve already seen the movie but never on the big screen.)