No.
Next question?
Category Archives: Economics
The F-35
The Pentagon’s $1.5T mistake?
NASA’s version of this mess is the Senate Launch System.
Paul Ehrlich
He says we’re still doomed.
Why anyone pays attention to this loon is beyond me.
The Green Movement
…is anti-human. Not news, but it’s always useful to remind people.
“Monopoly-Money Grades”
How universities have devalued their currency.
I had always thought that this kind of grade inflation started in the sixties, when many professors didn’t want to cost students their draft deferments by flunking them out, but a lot more has been driving it in recent decades. Time to rein it in.
[Update a few minutes later]
It’s not just grade inflation — it’s also degree inflation:
Of all the metropolitan areas in the United States, Atlanta has had one of the largest inflows of college graduates in the last five years, according to an analysis of census data by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. In 2012, 39 percent of job postings for secretaries and administrative assistants in the Atlanta metro area requested a bachelor’s degree, up from 28 percent in 2007, according to Burning Glass.
“When I started recruiting in ’06, you didn’t need a college degree, but there weren’t that many candidates,” Ms. Manzagol said.
Even if they are not exactly applying the knowledge they gained in their political science, finance and fashion marketing classes, the young graduates employed by Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh say they are grateful for even the rotest of rote office work they have been given.
“It sure beats washing cars,” said Landon Crider, 24, the firm’s soft-spoken runner.
He would know: he spent several years, while at Georgia State and in the months after graduation, scrubbing sedans at Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Before joining the law firm, he was turned down for a promotion to rental agent at Enterprise — a position that also required a bachelor’s degree — because the company said he didn’t have enough sales experience.
His college-educated colleagues had similarly limited opportunities, working at Ruby Tuesday or behind a retail counter while waiting for a better job to open up.
“I am over $100,000 in student loan debt right now,” said Megan Parker, who earns $37,000 as the firm’s receptionist. She graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 2011 with a degree in fashion and retail management, and spent months waiting on “bridezillas” at a couture boutique, among other stores, while churning out office-job applications.
“I will probably never see the end of that bill, but I’m not really thinking about it right now,” she said. “You know, this is a really great place to work.”
A lot of young people have sure gotten a lot of terrible advice over the past couple decades. Any other industry that committed this kind of massive, multi-billion-dollar fraud would rightly have its leaders in jail.
More “Surprises” In ObamaCare
Gee, it’s like they didn’t pay any attention whatsoever when we warned them:
Like most of the law’s most significant effects on economic incentives, this wasn’t actually done on purpose. It’s a function of the same attitude on display in the Times article: a view of economic actors as drones awaiting instructions rather than reasonable people considering their options. And so of course, the solution is to take away options. The Times’s description of the administration’s thinking is priceless:
The Obama administration is investigating the use of stop-loss insurance by employers with healthier employees, and officials said they were considering regulations to discourage small and midsize employers from using such arrangements to circumvent the new health care law. “This practice, if widespread, could worsen the risk pool and increase premiums in the fully insured small group market,” the administration said in a notice in the Federal Register.
How exactly the existence of a design flaw in the law somehow empowers the administration to fix it by “discouraging” self-insurance through regulation is so quaint and naïve a question as to not even merit mention—a vestige of our barbarous past.
Marxism is ever thus. We will build the New Soviet Man.
Income Inequality
[Update a few minutes later]
This sentence encapsulates why this president is such a disaster economically: “The President thinks he can redistribute income without stifling economic growth.”
A Degree In Fine Arts
Pro tip: Don’t borrow money to get one:
Among the 4,000 colleges and universities in the federal database, the Creative Center in Omaha, Neb., a for-profit school that offers a three-year bachelor’s in fine arts, had the highest average debt load, at $52,035. Median pay for graduates of the school with five or fewer years’ experience is $31,400, according to PayScale.com.
“Salaries can be pretty darn high or pretty low” for the school’s graduates, who typically get jobs in graphic arts or advertising, said Creative Center President Ray Dotzler.
You don’t say. Of course, if they could figure that out, they’d have probably majored in economics or business. Interestingly, the majors with the best prospects for paying off debt seem to borrow the least, and vice versa.
“Quote” Of The Day
Call me crazy, Kevin, but isn’t a “quote of the day” supposed to be an actual, you know, quote? That isn’t even a paraphrase.
The Conservative Critique Of ObamaCare
…was basically correct:
[“Liberal”] Kapur’s argument amounts to the following: Democrats passed a law that had and still has insufficient public support (points 1 and 4), that cannot achieve its goals without unconstitutional means (point 2), that did not allocate the necessary resources to accomplish its objectives (point 3), and that lacks and still lacks even minimal support across the political aisle (all four points).
That sounds very much like the conservative critique of ObamaCare. At this point it’s fair to say that ObamaCare opponents have won the argument. Of course, since supporters won the political battle three years ago (and Obama won re-election), this monstrosity is now the law of the land, ensuring that both sides’ victories will have been Pyrrhic.
And then there’s this:
It has become very clear to everyone involved who is analytical and not ideological that the rational strategy, for both large and small firms, is to cease providing health care insurance to employees.
No company wants to admit that they are considering eliminating health insurance as an option, or be the first one to drop their health insurance plan, but once a competitor does so, the preference cascade will begin. The clear sentiment is “We will not be the first one to drop our health insurance plan, but we would be a close second.”
The coming preference cascade for employer group health plans is what the Democrats fear the most, because Obamacare was sold to the masses as “if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.”
Which was always a lie, of course.
I think the Democrats will be reaping a whirlwind in the next two election cycles.