Two NYT pieces on immigration

Today one article covers Turkish and other immigrant groups in Dayton, OH, that community's efforts to attract immigrants in order to restore economic vitality, and some of the controversies. Also today, an editorial recounts California Gov. Jerry Brown's signing a bill to grant driver licenses to undocumented immigrants and describes it as a grassroots fix to challenges posed by immigration.

It certainly is striking how, as the editorial points out, the California Republican Party (i.e., consisting of the state office holders) appears either to have no Tea Party contingent or one that is differently focused than the national group. Left unsaid here is how another arguably grassroots immigration reform in neighboring Arizona led to a very different kind of legislation there, one that was partially struck down by the Supreme Court.

Mulligan on trends in implicit tax rates

Here's an op-ed by Casey Mulligan in the Wall St. Journal with a startling graphic (thank to Greg Mankiw's blog for the cite). It also appears as Figure 2 in Mulligan's recent NBER working paper. It shows increases of about 8 percentage points in the marginal tax rate on earnings by median earners associated with the Recovery and Reinvestment Act policies, and increases of about 4.5 percentage points associated with the Affordable Care Act, around a base rate of 40% before the recession.

It would appear the marginal tax rate is strongly affected by unemployment insurance.

(geo)Graphical look at the uninsured in America

Today the NY Times reports about Americans without health insurance, and they've provided a very helpful set of graphics showing where they live and who they are, which is here. The failure to convince states with large poor populations to acquiesce to the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare looms large.

New book on NFL and concussions

ESPN's Outside the Lines reports on a new book relaying the sad history of brain trauma studies and the NFL and mentions stuff that sounds like pretty clear conflicts of interest in publishing, along with some patterns of complete denial by league officials, in 20/20 hindsight. Notable also was a brief recounting of a meeting attended by NFL officials and a representative from the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.

The book, League of Denial, appears to be associated (or is the same as) the PBS Frontline project that originally was a collaboration with ESPN.

WSJ on how Obamacare affects people

Here's a helpful article from the Wall St. Journal on how tomorrow's rollout of Obamacare's insurance exchanges and other aspects will affect people. I admit I was dazzled when I tried picking through the White House's website for details. Frankly, the Wikipedia page was more clear, and there's also a PDF from July 2012 from the Kaiser Family Foundation that explains things in plain language.

I think a big surprise is going to be felt in 2018, when "Cadillac" plans with high premiums begin to be taxed.

Sachs on poverty and public/private

Jeffrey Sachs argues global poverty is in decline, as measured by shares with less than $1.25 per day, and he highlights contributions by private and public sectors to achieve growth. In particular, he writes about cellphones and malaria eradication as using both types of inputs.

Lomborg on climate change and variability

Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (the book has its own Wikipedia page!), provided a very nice op-ed recently in the Washingon Post that debunks the often-heard claim that global warming is associated with increased weather volatility. In his recounting, higher average temperatures have occurred alongside no clear trend in the variability of temperatures. And in some cases, the outcomes triggered by weather extremes, deaths due to cold snaps or heat waves for example, may have actually been dampened by the increase in average temperatures.

I know part of my own perception of this has stemmed from discussions about hurricane intensity and (average) temperature, such as on this NOVA page. And Tom Friedman's use of "global weirding," which sounds like it's referring to variance but might not be after a closer look.