I’ve just seen An American in Paris, whose supporting cast includes the pianist Oscar Levant, who also said:

My psychiatrist once said to me, “Maybe life isn’t for everyone.”

Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember.

I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.

The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.

Last night I watched (for the second time ever) The Man in the White Suit, one of the famous Ealing comedies – though perhaps it’s called that only by association. Like the crime farces Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Ladykillers, it was made by Ealing Studios and stars Alec Guinness, who here plays Sidney Stratton, the crank chemist whose indestructible polymer threatens to ruin the textile industry.

A super-fiber has uses beyond clothing and thus would in all likelihood increase the demand for fiber rather than ending it. (Never mind that no single fiber can replace all existing fibers, even if it does last forever.) This never occurs to any of the characters in TMitWS, and much unhappiness results. I call that a tragedy.

The hobo’s speech from Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941):

I seen guys like you go under before. Guys that never had a worry. Then they got a hold of some dough and went goofy. The first thing that happens to a guy like that, he starts wanting to go into restaurants, and sit down at a table, and eat salads, and cupcakes, and tea. Boy, what that kind of food does to your system! The next thing the dope wants is a room. Yes, sir, a room with steam heat, and curtains, and rugs. And before you know it he’s all softened up. He can’t sleep unless he has a bed.

I’ve seen plenty of fellows start out with fifty bucks and wind up with a bank account. And let me tell you, Long John, when you become a guy with a bank account, they got you. Yes, sir, they got you.

Listen, sucker, you ever been broke? All right. You’re walking along, not a nickel in your jeans, you’re free as the wind. Nobody bothers you. Hundreds of people pass you by in every line of business. Shoes, hats, automobiles, radios, furniture, everything! And they’re all nice lovable people. And they let you alone. Is that right? Then you get a hold of some dough and what happens? All those nice sweet lovable people become helots! A lot of heels! They begin creeping up on you, trying to sell you something. They get long claws. And they get a stranglehold on you. And you squirm and you duck and you holler and you try to push them away but you haven’t got a chance. They got you. First thing you know, you own things. A car, for instance. Now your whole life is messed up with a lot more stuff. You got license fees, and number plates, and gas, and oil, and taxes, and insurance, and identification cards, and letters, and bills, and flat tires, and dents, and traffic tickets, and motorcycle cops, and courtrooms, and lawyers, and fines, and – a million and one other things. And what happens? You’re not the free and happy guy you used to be. You got to have money to pay for all those things. So you go after what the other fellow’s got. And there you are. You’re a helot yourself.

Incidentally, I wonder what it is about Gary Cooper’s voice that sometimes makes me think I’m listening to Peter (Aurness) Graves. Pitch? Nasality?

No comment on the thesis of “The economic logic of executing computer hackers” (Slate; cited by ACB), but this caught my eye:

When we say that a human life is worth $10 million, we mean nothing more or less than this: A typical person, faced with a 1-in-10-million chance of death, seems to be willing to pay about a dollar to eliminate that risk. We know this not from theory but from observation – by looking, for example, at the size of the pay cuts people are willing to take to move into safer jobs. On this basis, Harvard professor Kip Viscusi estimates the value of a life at $4.5 million overall, $7 million for a blue-collar male and $8.5 million for a blue collar female. (Viscusi acknowledges that it’s puzzling for a blue-collar life to be worth more than a white-collar life, but that’s what the data show.)

Perhaps white-collar workers, unfamiliar with the concept of death on the job, underestimate its likelihood.

Will Wilkinson / The Fly Bottle

The generally negative-sum struggle for fascist state power is diametrically opposed to the positive-sum logic of cooperation that is the very heart of capitalism, and the justification of democracy.

Tyler Cowen:

The key thing that markets do is economize on the need for agreement.

Wisecrack of the day, from E B Rasmusen:

Europe is going through a birth rate collapse, a singularly odd and disquieting thing, I should think. . . . Maybe humans are like other organisms that don’t reproduce well in captivity.

Jonathan David Morris: Immigration and the Myth of Unwanted Jobs

So what are we talking about when we talk about “jobs that Americans aren’t willing to do?” Landscaping. Housekeeping. Things of that sort. Why aren’t Americans willing to do them? Because they’ve been taught to sit back, relax, and collect unemployment rather than take inglorious jobs.

Employers don’t deserve to be punished for this. They ought to be free from social engineering tactics like quotas and affirmative action, and they ought to be free to hire anyone willing to do the job — and that goes for people willing to answer customer service calls over in India, as well as people willing to transplant their families to come to America.

As always, however, the politicians won’t have it. Dick Gephardt, for one, says he’d work towards an international minimum wage if elected president. This would represent a greater victory in the worldwide workers’ revolution than any of the Soviet Union’s Cold War accomplishments.

Between this proposal and our [sic] efforts to shut down sweatshops, it seems America’s bent on inducing unemployment all over the globe.