If DC were a state

The rankings for 2010 are per capita income and is extracted from BEA Table 1. Highlights are mine.

State Dollars Rank in the US Percent of the US average Alabama $33,945 42 83.6% Alaska $44,174 8 108.8% Arizona $34,999 40 86.2% Arkansas $33,150 46 81.7% California $43,104 12 106.2% Colorado $42,802 14 105.5% Connecticut $56,001 1 13.8% Delaware $39,962 20 98.5% District of Columbia $71,044 ** 175.1% Florida $39,272 24 96.8% Georgia $35,490 37 87.4% Hawaii $41,021 17 101.1% Idaho $32,257 49 79.5% Illinois $43,159 11 106.3% Indiana $34,943 41 86.1% Iowa $38,281 28 94.3% Kansas $39,737 21 97.9% Kentucky $33,348 44 82.2% Louisiana $38,446 26 94.7%

Maine $37,300 29 91.9% Maryland $49,025 4 120.8% Massachusetts $51,552 2 12.7% Michigan $35,597 36 87.7% Minnesota $42,843 13 105.6% Mississippi $31,186 50 76.8% Missouri $36,979 32 91.1% Montana $35,317 38 8.7% Nebraska $39,557 22 97.5% Nevada $36,997 31 91.2% New Hampshire $44,084 9 108.6% New Jersey $50,781 3 125.1% New Mexico $33,837 43 83.4% New York $48,821 5 120.3% North Carolina $35,638 35 87.8% North Dakota $40,596 18 10% Ohio $36,395 34 89.7% Oklahoma $36,421 33 89.7% Oregon $37,095 30 91.4% Pennsylvania $41,152 16 101.4%

Rhode Island $42,579 15 104.9% South Carolina $33,163 45 81.7% South Dakota $38,865 25 95.8% Tennessee $35,307 39 8.7% Texas $39,493 23 97.3% Utah $32,595 48 80.3% Vermont $40,283 19 99.3% Virginia $44,762 7 110.3% Washington $43,564 10 107.3% West Virginia $32,641 47 80.4% Wisconsin $38,432 27 94.7% Wyoming $47,851 6 117.9% United States $40,584 -- --

Per capita income would be higher than Connecticut's and is 75 percent higher than the US average.

Nimby

The neighborhood of Burleith is up in arms against neighboring Georgetown University’s campus plan. The main concern appears to be the fact that GU students are using the homes in the neighborhood as housing and the university isn’t doing enough to expand housing options on campus. Meanwhile, nearby American University’s plan to build additional housing on its parking lot isn’t sitting well with its neighbors:

Many neighbors are worried about possible traffic and safety problems on Nebraska and New Mexico Avenues, as well as the proposed East Campus on the current Nebraska Parking Lot, which borders the Westover Place townhouses.

“I don’t think you’d have as many people here tonight if you didn’t plan to build dorms on the East Campus,” ANC 3D01 Commissioner Kent Slowinski said ...

These issues are familiar ones to urban universities and they all have its own flavors. George Washington University faced a similar issue with its Foggy Bottom and West End neighbors and ended up buying the (in)famous Watergate Howard Johnson and converting it into a dorm. It’s current expansion includes merging with the former Mount Vernon College and while its relationships with the neighbors in the tony Foxhall Road area have not been acrimonious so far, its hard to say what the future holds as private universities continue expanding enrollment to attract students.

It is interesting that Burleith neighbors chose to oppose GU rather than to use moral suasion to prevent landlords from renting to GU students. It seems like private interests would regulate the behavior of landlords in that renting short-term to students would lower overall property values and that they would be better off living in the homes or renting to more ‘stable’ types. Is this evidence of market failure in the sense that capital appreciation does not equal the rents accrued, or is this evidence of short-term view on the part of landlords who prefer income now than later?

Privacy vs security

K1’s grade had their first encounter with cyber-bullying which goes without saying that all the kids and some parents (including me) are in a tizzy about it. The incident happened as a name-calling post via Google Buzz. Privacy advocates have won in the sense that the cyber bully was able to get away with it since Gmail is as anonymous as you can get (without a court order at any rate). Since all the kids have one other as their contacts on their Gmail accounts, a single person (already with an account) can create an anonymous e-mail and reach all the kids in one post via Buzz.

There is a sense that with advances in technology privacy advocates are fighting a losing battle - but as this case shows, this ain’t so. And the trade off that is depicted here is perhaps a false dichotomy between privacy and security, but what if everyone knew more about you. Would you feel safer? If e-mails could not be anonymous we would all worry less about cyber-bullies.

If my credit card company could somehow track my whereabouts and link the location with some physical characteristic about me then I would worry less about fraudulent charges. If I were home alone and had not moved in more than 10 hours someone could be sent to check up on me at whatever location I happened to be. Yes, there is good privacy and bad privacy but perhaps we need to give up on the idea that having privacy is always good.

Reading the Blue Sweater

Jacqueline Novogratz’s The Blue Sweater was a moving memoir of her time in Rwanda and I enjoyed this book very much as such. Others seem to want to portray it as a testimony as to why aid does not work even though her reflections on what works and what doesn’t (in my reading) is not really central to her book. This is one of many observations (for instance, Bill Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden) that simply handing out money does not really put into place a mechanism for sustaining income generation by the people targeted by aid-heads. Yet, it is far from clear to me that giving them a stake in a project via lending versus grants is a better recipe for success and my sense is that the successes tend to be highlighted more often than the failures. The catchword of the day for these anti-aiders is of course, micro-lending.

My view is that if micro-lending were such a powerful tool for lifting the poor out of poverty, then life in Bangladesh should have improved by leaps and bounds. For instance, in 1980, Bangladesh was ranked in the bottom 11 percent in the Human Development Index (out of 95 countries), while in 2010, it had improved it’s position to 24 percent (out of 169 countries). It’s score went from 0.26 to 0.47. (11 and 24 percent of the countries in 1980 and 2010 had lower scores respectively.) Assuming that all of this change was a result of micro-lending, then one might be able to say that the quality of life in Bangladesh has almost doubled in 30 years as a result of micro-lending. This is close to a growth rate of 2 percent per year continuously compounded. (0.47/0.26 approx 1.02^30) When measuring the quality of life, starting from a low base has the advantage that there is more to gain (since a developed country with already a high HDI would not change by much).

How does this change compare to other countries where micro-lending might not have been as prevalent? (Prevalence in Bangladesh is assumed to be higher and is asserted rather than from any documented evidence only because it is considered the birthplace of micro-lending, Grameen bank, etc.) Nepal in 1980 moved from 0.21 to 0.43 in 2010, and Benin from 0.26 to 0.43. In light of this then the gains made in Bangladesh do not seem as impressive.

It is not clear to me that aid is dead, nor should it be. Novogratz points to all the aid projects like basket weaving where women are paid and trained to make baskets but no market exists for baskets. This is a dead aiders example of a project that does not sustain income generation. Once the project is completed, i.e. when the people are trained to make baskets, the aid agency chalks this up as a success and moves on to other projects. One of the quotes from the book that MR makes in the above link is the following:

Philanthropy can appeal to people who want to be loved more than they want to make a difference.

For MR, which champions markets in everything, it is noteworthy that the market in question here is not baskets (or pots, or whatever the project at hand is), but is love, or a more technical term, the warm of glow of giving. So perhaps Africa has a comparative advantage in not for “mercenaries, missionaries and misfits” (as Novogratz says) but as an outlet for “warm-glow” products. Aid is not aid if philantropists are buying “warm-glow” units. After all is this any different from monthly subscriptions that sponsor a child in a third world country?