In: Economics
Which Economic Model best describes and analyzes this article?
‘NO EXCESSIVE BARKING’: A Chevy Chase dog park divides the rich
and powerful
A sign that reads “NO EXCESSIVE BARKING’ sits behind Chubbs, right,
and Louie, left, a French bulldog who is the unofficial mayor of
the dog park. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post) By Jessica
Contrera August 28, 2019 at 7:00 a.m. EDT Everyone knows there’s a
problem with Chubbs. Dirt is smeared across his face. His tongue is
rolling out of his mouth. He’s surrounded by signs that say “NO
EXCESSIVE BARKING.” But the 5-month-old golden retriever does not
know how to read. At a dog park in one of Maryland’s wealthiest
suburbs, he spends this sunny August morning rolling on his back.
He opens his mouth, and then, he does it. He woofs. Twice.
“CHUBBS!” four humans around him yell, trying to stop him from
doing what dogs do — just not in Chevy Chase Village this summer.
Here in this community of the rich and powerful, where the average
household income is $460,000, barking is the subject of a ferocious
(fur-ocious?) debate — one that has divided the two-legged
one-percenters for nearly a year. The drama began last fall when
the village spent $134,000 to turn a muddy triangle of land into a
park where pups could run off-leash in a fenced refuge. Chase
tennis balls. Sniff one another’s butts. But after about a month,
signs decrying the barking of those dogs began appearing around the
park. The village police started receiving almost daily calls about
the noise, mostly from one particular neighbor whose house backs up
to the park. By spring, the tension had escalated so much that the
Chevy Chase Village Board of Managers called a public hearing. Then
another in June. And another in July.
At the center of it all is Elissa Leonard, chair of the village
board and wife to Jerome H. Powell, who is also a chair — of the
Federal Reserve. In recent months, her husband has been under
attack from President Trump, who appointed him but blames him for
the tanking stock market. “My only question is, who is our bigger
enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” the president tweeted Friday.
Leonard, meanwhile, is on the receiving end of a different siege:
from village residents who say their peace and quiet has been
disturbed by barking dogs. “Around dinner time, I’d like to be able
to sit on my deck and maybe read a book and chat with a friend or
have a glass of wine, and the dogs are barking,” Joanie Edwards,
the neighbor who had been calling police, testified at the meeting
in May. “As residents of Chevy Chase, how many times is it
acceptable for you to be bothered in your house every day?” Tom
Bourke, a real estate developer whose house sits across the street
from the park, asked in June. “You’ve created a nuisance.” The park
regulars, he acknowledged, were trying to hush their hounds. He
heard that they were ostracizing the yappiest dogs, including, he
told the board, “a certain standard poodle whose name should be
withheld.” “But there are people,” chimed in Bourke’s wife, Dale,
“and I don’t mean to characterize the District, but I just notice
that they have District plates on their cars, and they have very
little regard for us or our property . . . there are dogs barking
and they’re just not doing anything.” “I hear you,” Leonard said
again and again, with the patience of a dog trainer. She explained
to the residents that no, they could not restrict access just to
dogs from the immediate neighborhood (where the houses for sale
currently range in price from $1.1 million to $22.5 million). The
village purchased this 15,000-square-foot parcel of land in the
1980s, in part, using state money, so it had to remain open to the
public. For years, it had been a favorite spot of local dog owners,
so when the village wanted to update its parks, a dog park just
made sense. Neighbors voiced their support. A unanimous vote
followed. But now the park was somehow both a wild canine circus
sabotaging property values and a beloved gathering space for only
the politest of pooches. Leonard, whose Norwich terrier, Pippa,
does not frequent the park, tried to make both sides happy. To
limit barking in the early hours, the board changed the opening
time from 7 to 8 a.m. To stop outsiders from driving to Chevy Chase
Village and parking on the Bourkes’ street — taking the spots where
the family liked their lawn maintenance service to park — the dog
park was wiped from the village website. To determine the extent of
the barking and the parking, the board paid $1,300 for a woman with
a graduate degree in epidemiology to spend weeks studying the
behavior of the dogs and their humans. During 54 visits, the
researcher witnessed seven dog owners who drove to the park instead
of walking. “One of these people,” she testified in June, “did
allow his dog to relieve himself on the green space next to the
street.” But on the barking, no conclusion was reached. What was
minimal to some was enough for Edwards to call the police,
exasperated that she had to turn on music inside her home so she
didn’t have to hear the dogs. She doesn’t want to be the bad guy,
she said in an interview. But as a retired elementary school
teacher, she now spends her days at home painting. She does
landscapes from her travels and portraits of people, vibrant
creations so popular in her circle that friends and strangers have
also commissioned her
to paint their most beloved companions: their pets. She and her
husband, a lawyer, used to have dogs of their own. Her last, a
black lab named Zoe, died four years ago. “People in the community
keep saying, ‘She should get another dog, if she had a dog, it
would be different,’ ” Edwards said. “Well, first of all, I am a
very considerate person, and if I had a dog, and he was barking in
my back yard, I would bring him in. If my children were in a
restaurant crying, I would take them out.” The fence, she says,
should come down, so the dog park is just a park. At a public
hearing on Sept. 9, Leonard and the board may decide to do just
that. The dog lovers are planning to crowd the hearing, have
organized a letter-writing campaign and started a Facebook group,
Save the Chevy Chase Dog Park, with more than 100 likes. “What are
they going to do next, ban dancing?” asked Pat Murphy, the group’s
moderator. Murphy, who lives in a nearby section of Chevy Chase,
says he literally does “not have a dog in this fight.” He does not
own a dog. He used to take his son’s miniature Australian shepherd
to the park, but his son moved away this summer. Now he sometimes
walks alone to the park, where every morning, the conversation
returns to the handful of complaining neighbors. “They should be
put in jail,” said Doug Gansler, a former Maryland attorney general
and an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate, while his King Charles
spaniel, Jack, searched for a new dog to hump. “Doug!” scolded
Patty Martin, mother to the park’s unofficial mayor, a French
bulldog named Louie, and wife to the head of gastroenterology at
Washington Hospital Center. She, too, thought the complainers were
being selfish. “Where’s the democratic process?” Martin asked in an
interview last week. “Why is the 1 percent deciding for the 99
percent?” “This is not verified,” she continued, “But we have heard
through reliable sources that this woman has threatened a lawsuit
against the village over the park. Well, many dog park users are
lawyers, too, so we’re wondering, should we get a lawyer? Do we
have grounds to sue?” While lawyers consulted lawyers, her husband
contacted media outlets. Eventually, the story made its way to this
reporter, and to her recently adopted mutt, who visited the park in
hopes of sniffing out what was really going on. Despite their
owners’ fretting, Chubbs, Jack, Louie and all the other dogs appear
unaware that their joyful morning romp has caused such a kerfuffle.
The aforementioned “standard poodle whose name should be withheld”
did not make an appearance. After this reporter’s dog spent some
time digging (for the truth, we presume), he was asked what he
thought of the park. He woofed. Twice. The police did not
arrive.
An economic model explains reality in a simplified version using hypothesis to yield economic benefits and trends of the society. Policies and decisions are made on the basis of these models . Economists make speculations about the economy accordingly. An important feature of economic model is that it is subjective in the design of the person making it. That means different economists will use different designs to show what their perception of reality is. There are two broad classes of economic models -
1) Theoretical Model
2) Empirical Model
Theoretical models try to conclude an implication through design using assumptions that agents maximise certian objectives subject to the variable constraints well defined in the model . It is a qualitative approach and economist use this approach to answer specific questions. In a nutshell it is based on theories and assumptions and on the qualitative approach and not on facts and numerical . It is not an accurate way of determining things but it gives emphasis on those aspects that are left out. Like the quality of life happines social satisfaction etc.
Empirical model is the most widely used model and in the world of economics. It is based on numerology i.e. numericals. It takes up to verify the predictions of the theoretical models in to mathematical variables and equations that can provide a precise answer or figure. For example a theoretical model will about an agents consumption and earnings will be comverted to an empirical model by assigning a numerical value to the consumption and earning and establishing a relationship between them using a mathematical equation.
Now the article mentioned above clearly resembles an empirical model of economics. From the very start of the article we are introduced with some big figures like the income of every household in the neighborhood . Then we are told about the expenditure that went in purchasing the land for Chevvy Park. Then their is the average income of the nearby household that is about one to two million annually. All these figures are precise numerical data that can be processed to give an accurate result using the theory of cost benefit analysis . If we assign certain values to the emotion and the social problems and the advantages we can actually figure out which side of the community should be favoured by law.
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