3/9/15 Today's Inquiries

Watching Doctors teach medical students can be very difficult. Some of them just love to hear themselves talk. Got some good links today but mostly long reads.


The Links:

Jeb Bush championed and co-founded the Liberty Charter School in Miami. He's on the campaign trail saying it was a great success. The truth is, it went out of business and is now a ruin baking in the sun.

Some interesting thoughts on how online education is actually utilized.

There are two models of online education:

1. Preparatory knowledge, in the form of course-based video-delivered teachings: Coursera, Udacity, Thinkful, etc.
2. On demand knowledge: Wikipedia, StackOverflow, Genius, etc.

Of the two, the latter has been much more widely spread and far more influential.

David Brooks argues that we should be focusing on education funding rather than outright redistribution schemes. Similar arguments here but more of the "just give people money" route.

No redistributionist measure will have the same long-term effect as good early-childhood education and better community colleges, or increasing the share of men capable of joining the labor force.

Megan McArdle has a pretty good essay about the changes in standard of living. I reach a different conclusion, though, because a return to 1950s healthcare, although cheap, would hardly be effective for the problems facing Americans today. Still, the sheer volume of SoL improvements is staggering.

Some empirical analysis of Right to Work laws.

I find that raw differential in wages at the aggregate state level are 15.7% lower (log terms) in right to work states, as found in a cross section regression of log wage on a right to work dummy. Adding in a continuous variable for manufacturing share of GSP in 2014 makes the gap -13.7% (statistically significant at 1% MSL, using heteroskedastic robust standard errors).

America's prime working age population is growing again. That's a good thing, in case you were worried. A youthful and productive workforce means that our economy is more flexible and our welfare state more solvent. Assuming, of course, we continue adding jobs. Here's some graphs and stuff on unemployment. 

Elizabeth Warren; Let the NRLB do its job.

At every turn, organized labor has been there, fighting on behalf of the American people. 

Countering the prevailing notion that robots and technology are destroying our jobs. I suppose I am somewhat persuaded by the idea that any distortions in the labor force are attributable to the recession rather than technological change. That doesn't mean future challenges aren't goin to crop up as we automate more and more of our work.

There’s no evidence that we are having a technology renaissance right now, or that technology has contributed in a major way to the weak recovery, or that a skills gap or other educational factor is holding back employment, or that highly skilled workers are having a great time in the labor market. 

Alex Tabarrock has an excellent post about the DOJ's recent report on Ferguson. It's pretty much what I've be saying about the disturbing trends in police work nation wide. Once again, the libertarian right has a strong case to make for policing reform which would be widely embraced by minorities and "liberaltarians" yet I don't see much coming from the Rand Paul camp or anyone on the right wing election circuit. Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the report here.

You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant “low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay...

The worst abuses of government happen when an invading gang conquer people of a different race, religion and culture. What happened in Ferguson was similar only the rulers stayed the same and the population of the ruled changed. In 1990 Ferguson was 74% white and 25% black. Just 20 years later the percentages had nearly inverted, 29% white and 67% black. The population of rulers, however, changed more slowly so white rulers found themselves overlording a population that was foreign to them. As a result, democracy broke down and government as usual, banditry and abuse, broke out. 

Another dead black teen.

States with new voting restrictions since 2010.

Owning a home while black.

Your electric company (you know, the gov't permitted monopoly) is waging a war agains rooftop solar panels.

Operation Rent Seeking: How the War on Terror became a Business Model.

 His new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, is a chronicle of fascinating and heretofore secret stories in America’s war on terrorism. The book has a simple and arresting thesis: the longest war in America’s history is pure nirvana for the greedy and unscrupulous. Whatever the architects of the war on terrorism thought they were doing, the Iraq War’s purpose rapidly evolved within the iron cage of the Washington public-private ecology into a rent-seeking opportunity for contractors and bureaucratic empire building for government employees. Its real, as opposed to ostensible, purpose seems to be endless, low-level war. The rote appeals to patriotism are just another way of mau-mauing critics. With a theme that attacks the underlying bipartisan consensus on terrorism of the last dozen years, it is no wonder the Justice Department once contemplated heaving Risen into federal prison.

Were late medieval and early modern rates of execution responsible for declines in murder? The argument is actually that they were conducting a kind of eugenics and killing off those predisposed to killing others.

Through its monopoly on violence, the State tends to pacify social relations. 

Hillary is still in hot water over the emails she hid from the public and from congress. NYT runs stuff from Feinstein saying she needs to come out and address it directly.

Europe has figured out that hormone altering chemicals are bad for us.

Exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals is likely leading to an increased risk of serious health problems costing at least $175 billion (U.S.) per year in Europe alone, according to a study published Thursday.

A step-by-step guide for starting your own feminist back channel. A possible option for women with an online presence who are considering quitting social media. The sad thing is that this has to be considered at all.

If you’re a feminist with an online presence, you know how hard it is to have a public conversation with your friends without some rando sea-lioning in to the middle of your discussion with his very important man-sights.

Political scientists vs House of Cards.

What happens when you crack your knuckles.

Drinking doesn't make you fat. Cheers!

The Art of War Visualized.