I’d mentioned periodically that my oldest son has started high school, though I can’t remember if I’ve griped, in this forum, about the fact that the freshmen class has iPads and the teachers are going overboard with using them, to the point that all class readings, and homework assignments, and pretty much everything, is found via an app on the iPad. As we speak, he’s struggling through an assignment where he seems to need to flip back and forth between... Read more
Just for fun, for my fellow armchair economists, some speculation: if we eliminated the minimum wage right now, what would the de facto minimum wage look like, in current economic conditions? Narrow it down to particular regions, if you like. What would happen if the government actually enforced immigration laws? Or, to the contrary, if we had de jure rather than de facto open immigration? Read more
After my first “insta-lanche” earlier today (for those who don’t know, that means that Glen Reynolds, the “instapundit,” links to your piece on his blog and you get a reader count several orders of magnitude higher than usual – in this case, this morning’s “Campus Sexual Assault: I’ll believe it’s a crisis when. . .“), I found the original report, so, now that it’s quiet in the house, I’m going to go all Jane the Actuary-ish on you and read... Read more
This has been floating around for a while: “Columbia student drags mattress with her everywhere until alleged rapist expelled,” in this case, from the Today Show, as shared on facebook. OK, so it’s more of a camping-type sleeping pad than a regular mattress, judging from the picture, and she’s a visual arts major, so this is “performance art” and, hence, her senior thesis. The alleged rapist was found “not guilty” or whatever the equivalent Campus Tribunal terminology is, and presumably... Read more
Just a quick thought for the night: The pro-high-minimum wage line is generally that workers who are paid higher wages are more productive. The logic is, of course, faulty, because they’re looking at employers who choose to pay their employees above-minimum wages for what are, in terms of the work required, unskilled jobs, to get more-productive workers, and extrapolating to a situation in which all employers are required to pay this wage as a baseline. But let’s take it as... Read more
In today’s Trib: an article on the ins and outs of tipping. And here’s what bugged me about the article and/or the reality that it describes (assuming that it describes a reality that’s not just limited to upscale restaurants or certain regions or localities): First, of all, the statistics. Technomic, the Chicago-based food industry consultancy, released a study in August that showed how diners tip. The company surveyed restaurant customers across the country and found that at full-service, sit-down restaurants:... Read more
. . . because enrollment is down, or, at least, enrollment of Illinois freshmen is down by 1,000 students, with a corresponding increase to international student enrollment, according to an article in today’s Tribune reporting on a U. of I. board of trustees committee meeting. Additional financial aid funding could come from increasing student enrollment in programs that charge more for tuition, such as the College of Engineering, or from increasing the number of higher-paying international students, said Christophe Pierre,... Read more
So while at my folks’ last weekend (is it a regionalism of some kind to say “folks” for parents? And if so, did I pick it up from my Colorado-born dad or my Missouri-born mom?), there was an article in the paper about charter schools. Here it is, a poll conducted by the Detroit Free Press after, apparently, an extensive series on accountability in charter schools. (Detroit has two local papers, the conservative Detroit News and the liberal Detroit Free... Read more
Let’s start with the fact that I find the idea of a $15 minimum wage preposterous, but “a $15 minimum wage is preposterous” doesn’t make for a very interesting blog post. When all these protests first started making the news, I observed that it was peculiar that the fight was centered on fast food workers, or even was limited to fast food and retail workers, and, if it’s all about the hardships that families face when the breadwinner earns less... Read more
Where were you when the Wall fell? People a generation older than I am will tell you where they were when Kennedy was shot. Me? The first major “where were you?” event was probably the assassination attempt on President Reagan, and, after that, the Space Shuttle Challenger’s explosion. But the one that left the greatest emotional impact was certainly the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 25th anniversary of which is coming up soon. Why was I thinking about this? ... Read more
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