What I am Reading / A Question

I've been reading a lot of different things these days -- not very focused on any one -- political coverage at realclearpolitics.com is hard to ignore with all the drama of the two major party conventions.

Meanwhile, I worked up a slide deck in powerpoint for an upcoming speech in Detroit, and have been doing some reading around that, mainly reviewing the Roadmap literature. I am tempted to post the slides up here this week, as I would love to get your feedback. My guess is that maybe 5 percent of the audience at best will see the slides here before the formal speech, so the odds of me trumping myself seem low.

The whole issue -- whether to pre-publish or not -- seems fascinating in its own right. People still flock to live concerts for $100 a ticket when they could alternatively use the same money to purchase 10 CDs on iTunes, right? Does it harm concert attendance that all the songs are available electronically months and years before the event?  Let me leave it at this: if I can get three comments expressing interest in seeing the slide deck, I will post the powerpoint. By the way, the topic is : What local policies can enhance and retain innovative companies?

Other reading:

• Gallup's World Poll (October 2007)
• VOX - a high power econ blog. Especially this essay by Heckman on soft skills (a.k.a. non-cognitive)
• Who Serves in the Military? An updated and deepended extension of my demographic research on U.S. troops. Better than the original! Kudos to James Sherk and Shanea Watkins.

Comments

[Charles Johnson]

I'm tempted to write all three comments!

In any event, the issue of local development is important. I'm of the opinion that it isn't so much what a local city government should do, but what it shouldn't do. A lot of economic growth is really a response to filling needs and when the local government, which is usually extremely self-selected, preempts those needs by listing its own, it can distort the local economy. I'm in the works right now with a piece about an Inland Empire mayor that is at work wrecking her town by creating "affordable housing," open spaces, and ordinances against new beauty shops being opened. She's worried that too many beauty shops will make the downtown less "diverse."

I think a great focus for your book should be on what NOT to do if you want to attract business. Chapter 1 -- Abolish the planning department.

[Scott Thompson]

Hey me and my two buddies want to see it too! That makes at least four.

[Bret Swanson]

Count me in!

[J. Larson]

I'd like to see them, too.

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