The Unbroken Window

Spain’s unemployment rate just reached 20%. Again. The US unemployment rate at the peak of the Depression was just north of 24%. The highest since then was the 10.3% we just experienced. I guess Spain is suffering the fallout from that unfettered capitalism that it has been practicing for years. When the government starts making [...]

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My wife is in a class where they are learning about divorce and its effects. Their professor reported the data to them that divorce rates for second marriages and third marriages are much higher than for first marriages. He began a litany of explanations for why this is so, and of course not once used [...]

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My favorite quote of the day (actually for tomorrow): Meanwhile, contemplate this depressing change in America’s can-do spirit: The 6.6 million-ton Hoover Dam that tamed the mighty Colorado River was finished in 1936 after a mere five years. Yet 130 offshore wind turbines, a pioneering project of President Obama’s “new energy economy,” may take three [...]

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Here is a story about a Conn College student plagiarizing a Barbara Kingsolver speech. The article described the incident as particularly painful to many at the college who had deeply admired the idealistic, gutsy commencement talk and the student selected to give it, Peter St. John, who was described as the kind of person who [...]

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The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the Doe v. Reed case. The case boils down to whether or not a state ought be forced to reveal the names of individuals who signed a ballot initiative. Aside from bizarrely Orwellian nature of disclosing the names of people who support a particular cause (i.e. would people [...]

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If not happy, then optimistic. One of my students made the nice observation that insurers must be the most optimistic people in the world. Think about why? “They” are placing bets that bad things will not happen to you. And if you think about the multiple types of incentives at play within insurance companies, let’s [...]

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A summary of the debate here. Notice how insane this debate is. Here we have a state of 25 million people imposing an identical educational curriculum for everyone. Notice how no one ends up satisfied. Imagine your grocery store worked the same way. Everyone has an opinion about what deli meats and cheese should be [...]

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There are NO recorded Asian undergraduates disabled by ADD, and only 0.7 percent of Asian students have a learning disability, according to government data. Read the excellent Pope Center study on student disabilities here. I’ve been teaching since 2002 (with a two year hiatus). I have taught in aggregate probably around 2,500 students. I’ve probably [...]

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Health care expenditures have increased at a rate 2.5 percentage points higher than the rate of inflation over the previous 30 years. Higher education expenditures have increased at a rate twice the rate of inflation over the previous 30 years. Conventional wisdom is that both of these trends are indicative of unprecedented crises in each [...]

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Last year, 99.7% of Florida’s public school teachers were deemed satisfactory. Let’s put that in perspective. Saddam “only” got 99% of the vote in his last election. Our students here at the U of R would probably give less than 3/4 of our teachers a satisfactory ranking – and we all have PhDs and expertise [...]

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