Modern Research

Small liberal arts colleges are being put up for sale all the time in New England for shockingly low sums. Magdalen College in Warner is for sale for $5.5 million, is 129 acres, and all the campus buildings are included.

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The IMF’s Fiscal Monitor on Wednesday will feature a warning that public debt levels are set to reach $100 trillion this year, driven by China and the US.


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On the threatened dock strike. There were 50,000 or so ILA strikers but only 25,000 or so port jobs. That’s right, only about half of the union’s members are obliged to show up to work each day. The rest sit at home collecting “container royalties” negotiated in previous ILA contracts intended to protect against job losses that result from innovation.

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Modern Research 

This is what is being turned out as a research paper now. Paul Novosad Sam Asher Catriona Farquharson Eni Iljazi 2 Oct 2024. (SES is 'Social Economic Status'):

"Unequal opportunity in the sciences reduces scientific contributions from the most talented individuals and limits the rate of human progress. We study unequal opportunity by collecting data on the childhood SES of Nobel laureates in the sciences. The average laureate grew up in an 87–90th percentile household. Access to opportunity doubled from 1901–2023, but remains highly unequal. Barriers are higher for women, but lower for Americans. Access to opportunity across countries is much less equal, and has barely improved at all. Cities with more intergenerational mobility produce more laureates from non-elite families, and more laureates overall."

So The Nobel Prize becomes a proxy for achievement. Socioeconomic status and the winners' parents are major factors in their development and these corelations apparently are proofs of elitism and disparity of opportunity.

One might think that the studies of such superficialities are an effort to avert their eyes from the deeper, severe, and recalcitrant causes of the real problems.

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