6/23/15 Today's Inquiries

Computer problems are work have increased my focus on, umm, working.


The Links:

So, South Carolina. The latest is that the legislature there is planning to consider removal of the confederate battle flag from the state house. Here is +Jason Jones about the whole incident. I recommend reading his post because it touches on being a Southerner. Many of my Kentucky coworkers are a bit divorced from history and don't really get what Southern means. And the Ta-Nehisi Coates piece about the flag is, as always, worth a read. However, do read the rest of his writing on the subject because the flag is only a symbolic victory. The real focus needs to be on the radicalizing apparatus and on continued social injustice through the prison system, housing, education, and employment.

Birth of a Nation and the Charleston shooting.

A century ago, Birth of a Nation catalyzed an already emerging tendency on the part of both elite white Southerners and their allies in the Northern intellectual establishment to whitewash the sins of the Confederacy and create an alternative history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In more recent years, America has come a long way in righting its official understanding of that era. But clearly not far enough.

And, why gun control is doomed.

Since Scott Walker is going to officially announce his bid for the presidency, I thought I'd share yet another post or two about Wisconsin's economy. Guess what? It's bad. The Gross State Product (state GDP) lags behind the rest of the country. And, employment has been on a nice steady downward trend. So why is this guy polling first in the GOP field of contenders?

Inequality's Toll on Growth. Link goes to podcast. Worth a listen.

Why small booms can cause big busts.

In other words, a relatively small amount of overinvestment is responsible for some $1.8 trillion in lost production every year. Given that the gap shows no signs of closing, and accounting for expected growth rates and equity returns, I estimate that the present value of the total loss to production will eventually reach nearly $60 trillion unless we get a much stronger recovery than is currently in train and even if we put our thumb on the scale by raising the rate at which we discount the future far, far above current market interest rates. For each dollar of overinvestment in the housing market, the world economy will have suffered $120 in losses. How can this be?

The good and bad of online education. It's okay, now that we have VR goggles, every kid can sit at home all day and experience classrooms virtually.

Silicon Valley is a Lie. With a headline like that, I have to share it.

We're forever thankful to Silicon Valley for giving us the iPhone, omnipotent search engines, and swipe-simple hookups. But now that America's most vaunted industry has also become its most self-satisfied, Silicon Valley is veering toward fall-of-Rome territory. Which is why it needs to blow up these seven myths about itself before it's too late

Google's war on the homeless in LA. There's no room for the homeless in our future technological utopia.

How does Google, one of the most cash-rich and innovative companies in the world, propose to deal with the issue of homelessness in America? What's its 21st century, New Economy solution to disrupt and solve this difficult socio-economic problem once and for all?

In Los Angeles, the company's fix is brilliantly simple: Hire private security to harass and push the homeless out of sight, and then make sure that the smelly bastards and their tents and carts never come back.

A review of two Sci-fi books which explore "lifeboat ethics." And, the economics of Mad Max and Star Trek. 

1 in 3  couples married after 2005 met online.

Some genius decided to take the 1874 Statistical Atlas of the United States and "revive" it with data from 2010. The results are glorious. Go check out the whole thing.