From The Desk Of Tyler Cowen

Two posts I really liked today.

First:

“High intergenerational mobility” is sometimes a synonym for “lots of parental underachievers.”

Another way of putting this is that people with high general ability (which could just mean conscientious hard workers, mind) choose to either make their mark in the world or make their mark on their kids. The distinction between Steve Jobs (“I want a biography so my kids know who I was”) and Richard Feynman’s dad comes to mind.

Second, a link, from here:

This leads to a concept: A restaurant called Placebo. What do they sell? A 50% discount. Which is to say: The entire menu is framed with everything at about twice the price you’d otherwise expect to pay for it, but then your check gets a 50% discount. So say you have a steak roughly of the same quality as the $13 steaks at the Outback Steakhouse. The menu says $26, your bill when it arrives has a 50% discount. But everything you order feels expensive.

For extra credit, you could do interviews and arrange waiters to adopt personalities which suit the customers. Someone comes in who likes Good Wholesome Cooking? We can set you up with a waiter who thinks fancy food is ridiculous. Or, we can set you up with a waiter who is a total food snob, and you can have a wonderful meal knowing that the waiter is missing out on Good Wholesome Cooking. Your call.