Yglesias is representative of a new generation of blogger-journalists, such as Megan McArdle, Ezra Klein, and Felix Salmon, who express bold, confident opinions on all issues under the sun, without much substantive knowledge or understanding of any. These writers don’t do a lot of reporting, or investigating, but specialize in editorializing, even in what are ostensibly “news” items. Yglesias, in particular, excels in relationship reporting — which group is connected to which, who dislikes whom, what this person said about that person — but can’t take the time to learn the actual arguments under consideration.

There are plenty of technically unqualified bloggers (yours truly, in particular) hurling amateur propaganda into the blogosphere, touching on all mainstream social sciences.  But what came to mind while reading Klein’s piece was who we would be left with if these guys were somehow marginalized. For economics, we’d turn to Paul Krugman or Bryan Caplan; Jared Bernstein or Russ Roberts.  For law, maybe Jack Balkin or Eugene Volokh.  Though qualified, these guys are hardly in total agreement on the things on which they’re qualified to speak.  So how is it that so many really smart people disagree on, essentially, how to do their jobs?

It’s worth it to compare constitutional law and macroeconomics in this sense. Constitutional law is, in theory, about what the Constitution does and does not permit.  A few vague words provide ample room for scholars and judges to color their meaning with a particular ideology and cherry-picked historical “evidence”.  Economics, too, and macroeconomics in particular, is, as I understand it, the attempt to make cause-and-effect sense of large scale exchange of goods and services.  Unfortunately for us, there is historical evidence supporting the likes of both Mankiw and Krugman.  I suspect, in both law and economics, we use preferred aspects of each social science to argue for or against a particular ideology-based policy preference.

This isn’t so much a response to Klein (himself a Ron Paulian, by the way) as it is an expansion upon his point, I think.  Amateur, non-”qualified” bloggers may make mistakes that professionals in the particular field would not.  But even if they didn’t, I suspect we wouldn’t have that much more clarity on the issues…at least insofar as appealing to authority goes.

First, even the leading capitalist economies have failed to price public goods such as clean air and water effectively. The failure of efforts to conclude a new global climate-change agreement is symptomatic of the paralysis.

Second, along with great wealth, capitalism has produced extraordinary levels of inequality. The growing gap is partly a simple byproduct of innovation and entrepreneurship. People do not complain about Steve Jobs’s success; his contributions are obvious. But this is not always the case: great wealth enables groups and individuals to buy political power and influence, which in turn helps to generate even more wealth. Only a few countries – Sweden, for example – have been able to curtail this vicious circle without causing growth to collapse.

A third problem is the provision and distribution of medical care, a market that fails to satisfy several of the basic requirements necessary for the price mechanism to produce economic efficiency, beginning with the difficulty that consumers have in assessing the quality of their treatment.

The problem will only get worse: health-care costs as a proportion of income are sure to rise as societies get richer and older, possibly exceeding 30% of GDP within a few decades. In health care, perhaps more than in any other market, many countries are struggling with the moral dilemma of how to maintain incentives to produce and consume efficiently without producing unacceptably large disparities in access to care.

It is ironic that modern capitalist societies engage in public campaigns to urge individuals to be more attentive to their health, while fostering an economic ecosystem that seduces many consumers into an extremely unhealthy diet. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, 34% of Americans are obese. Clearly, conventionally measured economic growth – which implies higher consumption – cannot be an end in itself.

Fourth, today’s capitalist systems vastly undervalue the welfare of unborn generations. For most of the era since the Industrial Revolution, this has not mattered, as the continuing boon of technological advance has trumped short-sighted policies. By and large, each generation has found itself significantly better off than the last. But, with the world’s population surging above seven billion, and harbingers of resource constraints becoming ever more apparent, there is no guarantee that this trajectory can be maintained.

Financial crises are of course a fifth problem, perhaps the one that has provoked the most soul-searching of late. In the world of finance, continual technological innovation has not conspicuously reduced risks, and might well have magnified them.

This is certainly a good supplement to the concerns I laid out a few days ago.  I think number four — the idea that future generations might not see the sort of welfare gains that characterized the 20th century’s massive leap into modernity — is particularly underappreciated.  I wonder if this leap has been completed and we’re now at the point where societal advance will be significantly overshadowed by our flaws becoming more and more prominent.  After all, every individual concern can be lumped into a very basic one: the sustainability of our system.  There’s no doubt that letting our basic flaws go unaddressed — or simply insufficiently addressed — may call this seemingly taken-for-granted assumption into doubt.

The main employers’ lobby Confindustria on Thursday slashed its 2012 growth forecast for Italy to -1.6 percent from +0.2 percent, warning that even that estimate was optimistic and based on a gradual easing of the euro zone debt crisis.

Italy is already in recession, began shrinking on a quarter-on-quarter basis in the third quarter of this year, and will emerge only in the third quarter of 2013, the employers’ federation said. The country will grow slowly in 2013, by 0.6 percent, Confindustria predicted.

Growth forecasts for both 2012 and 2013 are “optimistic” and based on Italian bond yields falling below 5 percent by April, according to the group’s latest revision of its forecasts. Yields on benchmark 10-year bonds are currently over 7 percent.

I wonder whether there’s an underlying ethic to the trade that requires forecasters to curb their fears and project slightly more rosy outcomes in order to avoid rubbing markets the wrong way and accelerating what they may see as inevitable.  Otherwise, it’d be somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophesy, or one would think.  Any comments that would shed some light on this would be appreciated.

The abundance of shale gas resources may spark a U.S. manufacturing renaissance with economic benefits that include cost savings, greater investments to expand U.S. manufacturing facilities and increased levels of employment, according to a new report released today by PwC titled, Shale Gas: A renaissance in US manufacturing?. To achieve these results, however, PwC says that manufacturers must help manage the environmental, regulatory and tax concerns created by shale gas resources.

PwC expects an estimated $11.6 billion in cost savings by 2025 by combining recent natural gas consumption levels with potential natural gas prices under high shale recovery scenarios. Additionally, manufacturing employment could increase by approximately one million workers by 2025 in high shale recovery scenarios.

“An underappreciated part of the shale gas story is the substantial cost benefits that could become available to manufacturers based upon estimates of future natural gas prices as more shale gas is recovered,” said Bob McCutcheon, U.S. industrial products leader, PwC. He continued, “In fact, the number of U.S. chemicals, metals and industrial manufacturing companies that disclosed shale gas potential and its impact so far in 2011 easily surpassed that of the last three years combined, indicating this is of growing importance in the outlook of U.S. manufacturers. The significant uptick in shale gas commentary among the manufacturing community reflects the positive influence that shale gas is having from investment, operational and demand standpoints.”

Mark Perry, citing the chart above, says “drill, drill, drill…”:

My position was that an estate tax is immoral, not from the perspective of those who benefit from inheritance, but from the perspective of the decedent, as it impedes his ability to spend the already-income-taxed fruits of his labor as he wishes.  As an additional factor, the well-being of one’s family is a major incentivizing force in our economy, so rewarding labor with added security for one’s heirs is something that, in my mind, promotes economic growth.

My friends responded with the contrary moral argument that it is unfair for children to receive a massive financial head start in life as compared to others less fortunately situated.  In addition to doubting whether not having an estate tax provides any additional incentive for labor, they also flipped the entire argument on its head, asserting instead that added financial security for one’s heirs disincentivizes work from the heir’s perspective, and thus, potentially, negatively affects the economy at the other end.  And rather than disincentivizing labor, they argue, it incentivizes spending, so as to ensure one has less that the government can take.

Tough call, I suppose.  Taxing an inheritance as income seems fair, but it constitutes a double tax (though not from the heir’s perspective, of course).   For me, the starting point is people keep and do with the money they earn as they wish.  You have to have a pretty strong argument to disturb that basic rule, in my mind.