> These numbers should (but probably won’t) finally kill claims that rising inequality is all about the highly educated doing better than those with less training. Only a small fraction of college graduates make it into the charmed circle of the 1 percent. Meanwhile, many, even most, highly educated young people are having a very rough time. They have their degrees, often acquired at the cost of heavy debts, but many remain unemployed or underemployed
Category: economics
Kaiser Obamacare premium study: Affordable Care Act will be cheaper than expected.
Kaiser Obamacare premium study: Affordable Care Act will be cheaper than expected.
The real success will be when the right starts using it as an example of market based reforms rather than dismissing it as socialized medicine.
Over 50 Percent of Food Stamp Recipients Live in the Suburbs
Over 50 Percent of Food Stamp Recipients Live in the Suburbs
suburban households’ total food stamp use doubled between 2007 and 2011
White working class suburbs are the new hood.
The Black-White High School Graduation Gap Has Nearly Closed. The Income Gap Is as Big as Ever.
How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater
How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater
as the tale of the humble IV bag shows all too clearly, it is secrecy that helps keep prices high: hidden in the underbrush of transactions among multiple buyers and sellers, and in the hieroglyphics of hospital bills.
At every step from manufacturer to patient, there are confidential deals among the major players, including drug companies, purchasing organizations and distributors, and insurers. These deals so obscure prices and profits that even participants cannot say what the simplest component of care actually costs, let alone what it should cost.
The term is information asymmetry. And it is one of the reasons why health care in the US is so damn costly and everyone claims that they are not the ones making money on health care.
Moment of Truthiness
Do people like Mr. Cantor or Mr. Paul know that what they’re saying isn’t true? Do they care? Probably not. In Stephen Colbert’s famous formulation, claims about runaway deficits may not be true, but they have truthiness, and that’s all that matters.
And please stop saying both sides are just as bad. MSNBC is not reporting we are running a surplus. The NYT isn’t reporting there is no deficit. Its isn’t the same.
Why Did Milton Friedman Think a Modern Economy Needed Heavy-Handed Government Regulation in the Liquidity Services Industry and Nowhere Else?
he was confident that someday he or somebody else–maybe even me–would find a good, concise, convincing way of proving the point that a modern economy needed very heavy-handed government intervention in regulating the commercial banking industry but nowhere else. It was, he thought, something about the social waste of unnecessary bankruptcy, the catastrophic consequences of bank failures, debt deflation, and the fact that the price of liquidity services was intimately tied up with the units of account that we used to denominate our web of debt.
Higher wages don’t hurt consumers!
Higher wages don’t hurt consumers!
In short, we have moved from labor intensive to capital intensive industries. Labor costs are becoming a much smaller part of consumer costs. High wages have much less effect on consumer prices.
Untitled
Terrifying Charts For Saudi Arabia – Business Insider
SEC Charges Texas Man With Running Bitcoin-Denominated Ponzi Scheme
SEC Charges Texas Man With Running Bitcoin-Denominated Ponzi Scheme
The SEC alleges that Shavers promised investors up to 7 percent weekly interest based on BTCST’s Bitcoin market arbitrage activity, which supposedly included selling to individuals who wished to buy Bitcoin “off the radar” in quick fashion or large quantities. In reality, BTCST was a sham and a Ponzi scheme in which Shavers used Bitcoin from new investors to make purported interest payments and cover investor withdrawals on outstanding BTCST investments. Shavers also diverted investors’ Bitcoin for day trading in his account on a Bitcoin currency exchange, and exchanged investors’ Bitcoin for U.S. dollars to pay his personal expenses.