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John Quiggin 
More, and more surprising, good news on cost-benefit analysis
A while back I reported on a proposal by that notorious nest of lefties the American OMB to reform the way cost-benefit analysis is done across the sprawling US executive, by taking seriously the old truism that the marginal utility of income declines as it increases. My fears that this perfectly sound change would be derailed by right-wing lobbying were fortunately so far unfounded and the OMB is pressing ahead. Summary of Circular A-4 by Kevin Drum here https://jabberwocking.com/circular-a-4-is-the-most-important-rule-youve-never-heard-of/ , full text here https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/CircularA-4.pdf.
The OMB have even added a reduction in the social discount rate to 2%.
Are parallel agencies elsewhere like the EU Commission and the World Bank following this example? Let’s fervently hope so. Professional CBA isn’t a big world and the OMB has done the heavy lifting intellectually.
Why has the presumed counter-attack failed? One possibility is that as core conservatism gets dumber and dumber on its downhill road to fascism, it is increasingly shut out of debates that require a reasonable level of brainpower and knowledge to play in.
With so many houses left vacant there must be some way to get them
onto the rental market. One way might be capital gains tax exemptions if the properties are rented out. Another one may be to offer to lease the properties for the government to manage. These properties can be then capital guaranteed and still rented out. As John Maynard Keynes once said, there is no excuse for doing nothing when people are destitute.
The first Anonymous above is me – James Wimberley
I will add the OMB changes to my (idiosyncratic, partial, yadda yadda) list of good things that happened/are happening.
In case anyone is interested, here are some of them:
-the 4 kids who survived that crash in the Amazon
-people are trying to save Old Media (ie real actual news …)
-ancient Pompeii had pizza (not much of a surprise)
-South Carolina saved American democracy (temporarily??)
-they got the oil off that Yemen tanker that was drifting
-all GM electric cars will be back-ups (tho I still can’t afford one …)
-Financials of the NYT are better
-Brazil back in Amazon preservation mode
-haven for retired research chimps (I know … )
-Iran gave us back 5 Americans (shortly before world went to bleep (again))
-people are helping out in Morocco
I’m sure there were a lot of other good things too, that I just don’t remember.
“We are devoting huge amounts of energy to facilitate the excess consumption of the ruling class in the midst of a #ClimateEmergency and that is totally irrational.” JASON HICKEL – author of ‘Less is More’