5/5/15 Today's Inquiries

Get off at midnight, be back at work at 7. Sure, why not.


The Links:

I present this article as a microcosm of everything wrong with education reform in America. So TFA is getting into the online learning racket?

The San Francisco Bay area region of Teach For America will place its 120 new recruits in a training program run by the Summit Public Schools, a charter school network with a national reputation for its pioneering use of blended learning, which combines teacher-led instruction and self-paced student learning online.

No, the Laffer curve doesn't work at the state level.Okay you dummies, repeat after me, the Laffer curve was never about government finances. It was about developing a lie to cover the truth that the government needs to be a resource for the richest Americans to use to their benefit. It's the same thing in Kansas.

A case study of fast food workers in NJ who got a minimum wage bump.

Our empirical findings challenge the prediction that a rise in the minimum reduces employment.

New research on economic mobility and its relationship to social mobility. Lots of interesting information and interactive data/graphics.

Surveys of bank lending indicate loan standards are finally loosening. Hopefully the consumer credit squeeze is finally coming to an end.

Fewer homes are underwater and fewer are in foreclosure than in recent years. Turnaround? Reinflate the bubble?

The ongoing rise in Temp work. I also thought this was an ominous point:

There is, though, another possibility; that the recent hints of a wages bump are largely an artefact of unexpectedly low inflation, and that the underlying wage stagnation continues. 

Is former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke setting a bad example by going to work at a big financial firm? Setting the example? No. Par for the course is more like it. The revolving door continues evolving.

When science fiction authors were grounded in reality.

Unfortunately, John Ringo's statement about Baen seeing a continual increase in sales compared to other publishing houses — which implies that no one is reading science fiction from any publishing house not called Baen — doesn't stand up to the facts.

A kickass Q&A from the year 1690.

Q: Is it proper for women to be learned?
A: All grant that they may have some learning, but the question is of what sort, and to what degree?