Redistribution

This is the most universal argument for intelligent redistributive policies I've heard:

In a democracy if you don't attend to the interests of the poor in an efficient way you'll just end up attending to those same interests in a less efficient way.

It was made by Cornell economics professor Robert Frank on EconTalk, the flagship Hayek-tinged podcast hosted by Russ Roberts out of George Mason University's Library of Economics and Liberty, which is to say in a context that demanded of anyone making arguments for redistribution that they make them as universally attractive as possible. As someone who has longed believed in the moral and fiscal efficacy of attending to the interests of the poor, and who is personally and professionally obsessed with efficiency, it immediately struck a cord with me. Clearly it leaves open the general question of paternalism, but on the other hand it cuts very close to the quick of the immediate situation we face in America. If we must suffer these heated public policy debates, shouldn't we at least be able to count efficiency as common ground?

Idiom Watch

I can be a little peevish about my idioms, but I consider it to be a personal problem. If you are reading this, your problem is that you are about to read a list of words that I find pleasing or displeasing, but if I am known to you personally then at least you will be able to recognize the source of an occasional errant smile or grimace alighting my face during conversation.

• Wonk - This word has come to take the place of nerd in certain polite circles ("public policy wonk"), apparently popularized in the polite circle of the Clinton Administration of the 1990s. While its necessity is somewhat offensive to my sensibilities (what's wrong, after all, with calling someone a nerd in the year 20xx?), I'm always pleased when people feel comfortable describing enthusiasm or expertise in a non-pejorative fashion.
• A Taste For - There's a very specific usage of this phrase in discussing meal plans that I object to ("what do you have a taste for"), but it's a long standing visceral objection that I have had difficulty examining objectively. I can appreciate the usage of the phrase in other contexts ("a taste for the dramatic"), but perhaps it is that appreciation for it's idiomatic usage that makes me bristle when the metaphorical cuts to close to the literal. One should appreciate the taste of food, and have a taste for anything but food.

City Living

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, via Neal Town Stephenson, spoken by Holmes to Watson while discussing the dangers of the countryside:

The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which makes the danger.