Must read

• Evangelii Gaudium, Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, 2013 (No, I haven’t read all of it but Sections 52-60 got my attention. )
• NY Times, The Year the Monarch Didn’t Appear (Several months ago my father commented “The suburbs are at war with nature.”  I concur.  Unfortunately, it’s not just the suburbs.)

Should read

• Dan Drezner, Why Opponents to the Iran Deal Need a Keymaster (Follow this link if you don’t have a subscription to Foreign Policy)
• Dean Baker, Dead Filipinos and Housing Bubbles Are Not Good News
• Dean Baker, Long-Tern Unemployed Suffer from Discrimination, not Lack of Skills
• Daron Acemoglu on “Extractive” Politics and Us on Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon in April 2012

Economics

• Middle Class Political Economist, Median Wealth Increases, but U.S. Still Stuck at 27th in World  (We’re right behind Slovenia.  Yes, Slovenia.)
• Room for Debate (NY Times), What We’ve Learned From NAFTA
• Jared Bernstein, Why Labor’s Share of Income Is Falling

Politics

• Lawrence Jacobs, Right vs. Left in the Midwest
• Charlie Pierce, The Road Not Taken
• Ezra Klein, The falling deficit has been a disaster for the GOP
• Boston.com, Voter anger propels ballot questions to repeal casino law and automatic gas tax increases
• William Rivers Pitt, Decisions Are Made by Those Who Show Up

Health Care and the Politics Thereof

• CNN/ORC Poll: Are Obamacare’s flaws fixable?
• Brad DeLong, John Cassidy Explains That Those Parts of ObamaCare That Are “Liberal” Are Working Very Well  (Also read Kenneth Thomas’s comment below DeLong’s post.)
• Matthew O’Brien, The Singular Waste of America’s Healthcare System in 1 Remarkable Chart  (See also Note 1 below.)
• Dean Baker, Why Aren’t We Rushing to Import More Doctors and Why Isn’t the NYT Asking? 
• Occupy Democrats, Vermont Approves Single-Payer Health Care: ‘Everybody in, nobody out’

China

• NY Times, China Claims Air Rights Over Disputed Islands  (Repeat from last week’s Digest.)
• Bloomberg. com, U.S. Sent B-52s Into China Air Zone, Official Says
• NY Times, Airspace Claim Forces Obama to Flesh Out His China Strategy
• NY Times, Japan, South Korea Fly Military Planes in Zone Set by China
• NY Times, China Scrambles Jets for First Time in New Air Zone
• FRONTLINE, Dangerous Straights
• Roger Cohen, A Dangerous Interregnum

Science and Environment

• ExtremeTech, NASA resurrects planet-hunting Kepler, replaces broken parts with magical Sun power
• Directions Magazine, “GIS is not as simple as it used to be.”
• NY Times, Rake the Leaves? Some Towns Say Mow Them

Miscellany

• WBUR, In Boston’s Chinatown, Longtime Residents Face An Uncertain Future
• NY Times, The Power of a Daily Bout of Exercise
• NY Times, Pulling a More Diverse Group of Achievers Into the Advanced Placement Pool
• Dave Giles, Do You Have a Tattoo?
• Maine Beer Company (My father-in-law brought some Mo and Peeper to Thanksgiving dinner.  Both excellent.)

Notes

1. For what it’s worth, I’d fit the life expectancy vs spending data differently:  linear fit up to about $2500 per capita and then a constant for >$2500 per capita.  You could do something to homogenize the two fits but that seems a minor detail.  The bigger point appears to be that life expectancy saturates at 81-82 years.  Once spending brings you to that level then perhaps additional dollars will improve quality of life but the data indicates that additional funds won’t extend it.  According to the chart, the US spends about 4x as much per capita as nations with comparable life expectancy.