Northwest is going to start charging extra for some seats:

Northwest Airlines is expected to announce today that it will begin charging customers more for seats with added legroom, including coveted emergency exit row and some aisle seats. The price: an extra $15 for each leg of the flight. Northwest calls them “Coach Choice” seats.

Airline experts believe such nickel-and-diming of air travelers is just beginning. By as early as the summer travel season, they say fliers could be paying for nonalcoholic beverages and the privilege of checking luggage.

Bundling all of these services is one of the last holdovers from the old days of the CAB and airline regulation, in which they used amenities to compete, because the ticket prices were regulated. But by doing so, they aren’t letting the market work, and they’re not getting any signals as to what passengers actually want. When I do carry-on, but pay the same ticket price as someone who is checking two pieces of luggage, I’m subsidizing them. It makes perfect sense to me to have a basic fare for people who just want to get from here to there, and have others who want more to pay for it.

Of course, it works great for me, because I don’t like aisle seats, and it may make it easier to get my preferred window (something I’d happily pay fifteen bucks for to be assured of it). Not all seats are created equal, and just as there is a separate first-class section (though those are disappearing from some airlines, like Delta’s Song, as well), it makes sense to price them separately rather than this nonsensical egalitarian notion of first-come first-served. I had the Worst.Seat.Ever on my red eye from LA Friday night–a center seat in an exit row that wouldn’t recline. I’d have paid quite a bit to swap for at least the window, if not one that would recline (I suppose I could have just asked if anyone wanted to sell me their seat…)

The best thing to me, though, is that if we separate out the services of delivering passengers and luggage, it will make it easier to transition to a regime in which the luggage flies on a separate plane. I don’t worry about hijackings since September 11 (not because of the idiotic, expensive and time-wasting security measures, but because the passengers will never allow it to happen again). But I do worry about bombs in luggage, something that we’re almost certainly not doing as good a job of screening as we could (again, because of the misallocation of resources attempting to disarm passengers). I’d feel a lot safer if I knew that the luggage was on a different, cargo airplane. And taking down a cargo aircraft with a two-man flight crew wouldn’t have anywhere near the emotional impact of killing hundreds of passengers, so the bomb-in-the-luggage would be a much less appealing activity to terrorists.

[Update a few minutes later]

It strikes me that it could also make sense to put in a few “wide load” seats, that they could charge more for. While people who are too large for standard seats would still feel put upon that they have to pay more (an unjustifiable grievance, to me) they wouldn’t have to pay twice as much, as they do now when they have to buy a second seat. It would also make happier the people who currently have to get squished sitting next to them. One size does not fit all, even (or especially) in airplane seats.

[Update at 11 AM EST]

Per one of my commenters, maybe I’m weird, but I find the phrase “comfy aisle seat” an oxymoron. I hate aisle seats. I almost prefer a center seat to an aisle.

Why?

Because if I’m in the aisle, I have to let people in and out when they (almost inevitably) decide they want to get in and out. In addition, my arm on the aisle-side armrest is always getting jostled by everyone wandering up and down the aisles, not to mention drink carts.

I just want to get into my window seat, where I can hunker down for the flight, relax, not have to let anyone in or out, and look out the window. I cannot fathom people who prefer aisles, but apparently many do.

Mugabe has a novel solution to Zimbabwe’s 600+% inflation–he’s going to print more money.

Mugabe has a novel solution to Zimbabwe’s 600+% inflation–he’s going to print more money.

Mugabe has a novel solution to Zimbabwe’s 600+% inflation–he’s going to print more money.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, the editors note (subscription required) that we care more about individual athletes than the US team:

Today, without a common political foe to concentrate our patriotism, personalities have come to dominate broadcasts. This is an explanation, not a complaint; no one’s hankering for those Cold War tensions of yore.

I think this direction should be encouraged. Rather than the Greek and modern version of national teams competing in sports instead of war, it should transcend nationalities. “Like the NBA,” an Olympic basketball team should have athletes from many countries. Relays and other team sports should be composed of Star-Trek style international members.

A good way to bleed the power out of nationalism is to attack its very definition as mobile citizenship and superstates like the EU have done.

This article is a few weeks old, but I missed it at the time–Max Borders writes about the Intelligent Design theories of the left.

In Shanghai:

Shanghai’s housing bust comes after a doubling of prices in the previous three years, a run-up fueled by massive speculation. With China’s economy booming and Shanghai at the center of worldwide attention, investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere were buying as fast as buildings were going up. At least 30% to 40% of homes sold were bought by speculators, says Zhang Zhijie, a real estate analyst at Soufun.com Academy, a research group in Shanghai.

This is bad news, because it could be the first stage of a collapse of the Chinese economy, with potentially very dire results for all of us.

No, Thomas, your experience is not atypical, at least going by me. I’ve never, ever received a rebate.

I no longer take them seriously, or even bother to send them in. If it worked once in a while, I might bother, but it’s gotten to the point that it’s not worth the time and hassle on an expected-value basis, even when it’s fifty bucks or so. If the price is worth it without the rebate, I buy it, if not, then I don’t. But I never factor in the rebate any more in the purchase decision, unless it’s instant in the store. I wish that they’d stop this fraud.

Ron Bailey has an interesting piece at Reason about why the US is wealthy, exploding many leftist myths about exploitation and overconsumption of resources, slavery, etc. One point that I think should be added is that, while rule of law is important, if many of the laws are dumb and economically counterproductive, it’s probably better to have less adherence to them than more.

I’d be interested to see a take on this from an Anglosphere perspective.

At 2.3% per capita real income growth, real income doubles every thirty years. That is, we can expect our kids to be roughly twice as rich as we are. In particular, we should stop worrying about them supporting twice as many retirees per capita. We should also stop worrying about their environmental legacy. They will have twice as many billions to devote to environmental cleanup and upgrade even if population remains constant.

One thing that would cause the social security crisis to come back in spades would be if, as is proposed in the UK, that social security is indexed to wages instead of prices. If wages are used, social security payments will double when wages double and longevity and early retirement will bear down on workers.

How much do we owe retirees? Is it the same absolute standard of living as they had when they were working? Their same relative position in the economy? These are expensive moral questions. But recognize a promise of a wage indexed gain for what it is: it is a heavy tax on the working to give more real dollars to the retirees than they gave to the retirees while they were working.

I am still in favor of privatizing government pensions, but that would in effect be a huge cut in subsidization of government borrowing. That is, without the whole social security trust fund invested in government bonds, it will be more expensive to finance government borrowing. That will either require higher taxes, increased borrowing or reduced spending to offset.

One thing I can say about that is that my daughter’s generation will be twice as able to deal with it as mine per capita.