Second Order Effects, or, The need to estimate the Death Toll of the Bush-Pelosi Bailout (EESA-2008)
by tdaxp ~ September 29th, 2008
The Bush-Pelosi Bailout, or the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, is as expensive as several major wars. Wars are conventionally measured in relative death toll. It may be wise ot measure the Bush-Pelosi bailout the same way.
CNBC this morning informs us the government “does not want to” pay market prices for the subprime properties, that there is “no way” the government will recoup its losses, and so on. If true, this means that the Bush-Pelosi Bailout will be an ‘investment’ in the way that Head Start, welfare, and other government giveaways are ‘investments’ — the plan is foolish, but at least it’s somewhat better than simply burning piles of cash to heat the Congress.
What are the second order effects of this bailout. If Wall Street crashes, and ambitious young people give up on a career in Wall Street and instead focus on engineering, computer science, nursing, research, lives may be saved. On the other hand, if ambitious young people seek to maximize their profits by working in highly-profitable but risk-protected Wall Street firms, the cleverness will flow away from those fields.
How much money is going to be lost? What else can be bought with that amount of money?
Which alternative keeps more people alive?
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2 008/06/19/the-foreign-polic...
October 1st, 2008 at 9:06 am
“Wall Street crashes, and ambitious young people give up on a career in Wall Street and instead focus on engineering, computer science, nursing, research, lives may be saved. ”
This would be nice.
Honestly, I would not recommend that a smart persons goes into computer science (unless they are going the entrepreneurial route).
IT professionals are treated pretty badly in the workplace, have bad hours, and are never fully accepted by their other professional peers. Outsourcing pressures are limiting compensation. Furthermore, society for the most part has a bad view of IT people.
The same skills that make you successful in computer science, can be used in engineering, statistics, microbiology, nursing|PA (getting more technical), pharmacy, etc.
October 1st, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Pure-play computer science is pretty limited, and tech-support can be a ghetto [1]
In ‘The Post-American World’ [2,3], Fareed Zakaria contrasts the law-and-humanities heavy late British Empire with the science-and-industry heavy German Empire. The result was not pretty for Britain, and perhaps should scare us more wrt China than any combination of ships and planes.
[1] http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/29/1926216&from=rss
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/07/09/review-of-the-post-american-world-by-fareed-zakaria.html
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Post-American-World-Fareed-Zakaria/dp/039306235X