Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.--deTocqueville
There's a Nobel prize-winning economic model that explains why even the most irrelevant coursework and silliest majors can be financially rewarding. It's called signaling. Basic idea: Academic success is a great way to convince employers that you've got the Right Stuff - to show off your brains, work ethic, and sheep-like conformity. Since people with these traits are productive workers, employers happily reward people who display them - even if the display itself has nothing to do with the job.
The opening of a Lemeiux thought experiment: Assume that the state is not a benevolent organization. It pursues its own interests, which means the interests of those who occupy positions of command at its helm. These interests may require it to satisfy the interests of certain electoral or quasi-electoral clienteles whose support is necessary to those in power. Under our assumption, the state will use the rule of law and the constitution as mere commitment devices to gain the confidence of the populace. State rulers will ignore the rule of law when they can get away with it--while proclaiming that "we are a nation of laws."
Olson on the WashPo's recent editorial to lower the voting age to 16:
At what point are young people to be entrusted with important life responsibilities? The Post has repeatedly opposed easing the drinking age from 21 so as to allow persons of 18 or 20, who may include service members returning from combat missions, to enjoy a glass of beer. It opposes subjecting late-teen juvenile offenders to the level of accountability applied to adult criminal defendants. Its coverage suggests sympathy with proposals to raise the marriage age to 18, which would mean that a couple of 17 is not deemed mature enough to enter on binding vows of mutual support even with parental blessing and judicial ascertainment of their independent choice.Now the Post supports slashing the voting age to 16. Perhaps the pattern here is that the Post sees 16 year olds as incapable of making decisions to govern their own lives, yet competent to govern everyone else’s.
An interesting thought about over-fished areas. The writer said the reason areas were overfished is that they were not owned, that property rights had not been established and so there was no incentive to preserve or protect the fish.
HealthLeaders Media (3/25, Commins) reports hospital prices increased 3.8% last month, compared to February 2017, which was “the highest growth rate in more than a decade, according to Altarum’s Health Sector Economic Indicators.” Charles Roehig, a healthcare economist at Altarum, said, “Hospital prices averaged 1.6% growth in 2017, increasing to 3.5% during the first 2 months of 2018. Further, growth has accelerated for each of the three main payers: Medicare, Medicaid, and private health plans.”
So when planners and politicians say they want to cut the costs that health care runs to the economy, they do not mean simply shifting from the private payer to the public state payer, they mean decreasing what is paid, period. A decrease in health care costs means a decrease in health care work, right?
Holy smokes 1! Pitt has hired Jeff Capel as their new head basketball coach. Most did not think Pitt would even have their phone calls accepted. He has been head coach at both Oklahoma and VCU. The past seven years, he's been the right-hand man and top recruiter for Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski, most recently holding the title of associate head coach.
Capel owns a 175-110 record as a head coach with three NCAA Tournament appearances, taking Oklahoma to the Elite Eight in 2009.
He is 43 years old and was named coach of VCU in 2002 at age 27 — the youngest in the country at the time — and took the Oklahoma job four years later at 31.
His departure from Oklahoma came under the specter of NCAA sanctions levied on the program within months of Capel's firing in 2011. The NCAA said its findings included unethical conduct by assistant Oronde Taliaferro, extra benefits, preferential treatment and ineligible participation. Capel was not implicated by the NCAA.
What is....the CBO?
Holy smokes 2! During a three-day stop in Beijing, Kim met Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior officials, where they discussed bilateral ties and Korean peninsula tensions, Chinese state media said Wednesday.
In a meeting, Kim told Xi that North Korea is committed to denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, and is willing to start dialogue with the U.S. and hold a summit meeting, the government-run Xinhua News Agency said.
April Fool!
In 1979, the worst accident in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry begins when a pressure valve in the Unit-2 reactor at Three Mile Island failed to close. Cooling water, contaminated with radiation, drained from the open valve into adjoining buildings, and the core began to dangerously overheat. By early morning, the core had heated to over 4,000 degrees, just 1,000 degrees short of meltdown. In the meltdown scenario, the core melts, and deadly radiation drifts across the countryside, fatally sickening a potentially great number of people. At the height of the crisis, plant workers were exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation, but no one outside Three Mile Island had their health adversely affected by the accident. Nonetheless, the incident greatly eroded the public’s faith in nuclear power. The unharmed Unit-1 reactor at Three Mile Island, which was shut down during the crisis, did not resume operation until 1985. Cleanup continued on Unit-2 until 1990, but it was too damaged to be rendered usable again. In the more than two decades since the accident at Three Mile Island, not a single new nuclear power plant has been ordered in the United States.
When you're admitted to a hospital, you are given the option to sign a Do Not Resuscitate order, also known as a DNR.
New research shows having those three letters on your chart could put you on course to getting less medical and nursing care throughout your stay. Fewer MRIs and CT scans, fewer medications or even fewer bedside visits from doctors.
What did they expect?
After the Pirates traded McCutchen and Cole, the NL Central-champion Cubs added pitchers Tyler Chatwood and Yu Darvish, the second-place Brewers added outfielders Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich and the third-place Cardinals added outfielder Marcell Ozuna.
Golden oldie:
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steeleydock.blogspot.com
This strange health care event continues on. Like a plane that has lost its air pressure it flies on, a death ship, everyone watching silent...
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The business world has a different lens. Here is an interesting note on that lens: Selling in Telsa bonds has intensified, driving prices to fresh lows, a day after the electric-vehicle manufacturer suffered a credit-rating downgrade.
In a study of 2,232 broken bats, the league found that maple bats were three times more likely to shatter than bats made with ash. Maple bats are also more likely to explode when they shatter, while ash bats more often splinter into small fragments. Maple bats became popular after Barry Bonds started using them about a decade ago and are used by about half of the players in the Major Leagues. It seems to me there are fewer such incidents this year.
The written words of a constitution do not enforce themselves. People must be generally willing to abide by its letter and spirit both, instead of regarding it as something to be twisted or ignored as suits their immediate purpose. A tradition of political morality is necessary to keep a written constitution meaningful. This is an observation from Yeager. This may be a very profound point. The culture may change and the underlying constitution that created it may just hang on, perhaps against the culture's will.
From Bloomberg:
"Affiliates once had to guess what kind of person might fall for their unsophisticated cons, targeting ads by age, geography, or interests. Now Facebook does that work for them. The social network tracks who clicks on the ad and who buys the pills, then starts targeting others whom its algorithm thinks are likely to buy. Affiliates describe watching their ad campaigns lose money for a few days as Facebook gathers data through trial and error, then seeing the sales take off exponentially. “They go out and find the morons for me,” I was told by an affiliate who sells deceptively priced skin-care creams with fake endorsements from Chelsea Clinton."
CBO, a nonpartisan independent government agency responsible for providing economic and budgetary analyses, projects the federal deficit — the net difference between incoming revenue and outgoing spending — will swell by about 188% over the next 10 years, increasing the deficit from its current value of $487 billion to more than $1.4 trillion in 2027.
By 2028, the value of net interest payments will equal about 3.1% of U.S. GDP, "nearly double the 1.6% projected for 2018."
In most markets, solar and wind power survive purely because the states mandate that as much as 30% of residential and commercial power come from these sources. The utilities have to buy it regardless of price. The California state legislature just mandated solar panels for homes built after 2020 (an added construction cost of about $10,000 per home).
A November 2015 New York Times/CBS News poll found that 56% of Democratic primary voters said they held a positive view of socialism. A Morning Consult/Politico survey in June 2017 asked if a hypothetical replacement for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi should be a socialist or capitalist. More Democrats opted for socialism, with 35% saying it's somewhat or very important that her replacement be a socialist, while only 31% said the same for a capitalist.
AAAAaaaaannnnndddddd......a graph:
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