3/4/15 Today's Inquiries

Rain is surprisingly bad at melting snow but great at flooding the city.


The Links:

If you like Republicans, eat more Pizza. Also, best "pie" chart ever.

Hillary is in pretty big trouble over this whole email thing. It's not so much that they'll find anything. Chance are they won't. The impression of wrongdoing, however, is enough to cause serious harm. I mean, Jeb made all his email public. Plus, ya know, Benghazi. Also, didn't George Bush do this same thing in 2007?

Superintendent of Philadelphia schools: “I recommended the approval of more than 30 charter schools because I thought it would improve educational opportunity for our 215,000 students. The last 20 years make it clear I was wrong”

Digital Natives my ass!

U.S. millennials, defined as people 16 to 34 years old, were supposed to be different. They’re digital natives. They get it. High achievement is part of their makeup. But the ETS study found signs of trouble, with its authors warning that the nation was at a crossroads: “We can decide to accept the current levels of mediocrity and inequality or we can decide to address the skills challenge head on.”

My youngest cousin started college last August at Sweet Briar College, a 114 year old all female liberal arts college. On Monday it surprised everybody by announcing it would close at the end of this semester. What's really wild is the college has a $94 million endowment! Don't get me wrong, SBC was super expensive (like $47k a semester) and it's enrollment has been in decline for many years but apparently they even accepted students for next year. They're really messing with these students' futures. More here.

How higher education perpetuates income inequality.

Part of the mythology of US higher education is that it offers a meritocracy, along with a lot of second chances, so that smart and hard-working students of all background have a genuine chance to succeed--no matter their family income. But the data certainly seems to suggest that family income has a lot to do with whether a student will attend college in the first place, and even more to do with whether a student will obtain a four-year college degree.

Americans aren't saving enough for retirement but maybe restructuring the compensation of their advisers would improve things. Requiring people to invest in purely passive managed funds is fine but is no guarantee of profit. Look, I'm as big a Wall St. critic as you'll find but legislating that advisers and fund managers have to turn a profit is stupid. Nobody makes a profit all the time and even the smartest managers have bad years. It reminds me of NCLB.

See also: straightening the deck chairs during the retirement crisis. And: Passive management vs Saving more.

Moreover, it's the public pensions which are being looted by state official everywhere. Take a look at New Jersey under Christie.

Under Chris Christie, the New Jersey pension system paid more than $600 million in fees to financial firms in 2014 -- 50 percent more than a year ago, and a higher rate than almost any other state reports paying for pension management.

Where is the American manufacturing renaissance? Largely, cities.

INDIANA is a state of economic contrasts. Indianapolis, its biggest city, is dominated by thriving high-tech industries such as aerospace and chemical manufacturing. Its third Congressional district has the highest proportion of the workforce employed in manufacturing of any district in the country. A few hours’ drive away, though, lies Gary. Since the collapse of its steel industry in the 1980s, the city's economy has imploded. The poverty rate is extremely high. On a Sunday afternoon, Gary's main street was nearly deserted; most of the shops were boarded up.

So, after Justice Kennedy said some supportive things about Obamacare, hospital stocks surged. Why is that? I thought Obamacare was the worst thing since Super AIDS? How come investors think it is good for hospitals? Maybe because they won't be covering costs for quite so many uninsured people? Yep:

The Affordable Care Act will hand out $22 billion in credits to help people buy insurance this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. So far, 11.4 million Americans have signed up for 2015 coverage, giving insurers and hospitals more paying customers and cutting the number who show up in the emergency room to get care without paying.

The very puzzling political economy of King v Burwell.

It is from a political-economy standpoint very strange. "We bring home free money from the feds for our state" is not a losing argument for any state-level politician.

Maybe you could argue against accepting free money from the feds if it all went to "moochers". But insurance companies and doctors are not usually thought of as core Democratic Party constituencies.

Yet the fallout from King v. Burwell may well ultimately make them so...

Mother calls police to help get schizophrenic son to the hospital. They shoot him. To be fair, he was black and did have a broomstick handle. I'm sure they shouted "look out he's coming right for us" or something.

Another failed libertarian paradise: Honduras.

Does playing video games make you smarter?

Coffee linked to cleaner arteries. Wow, I must be the very picture of health.