Well, yes and no. In the UPS announcement (linked to here, at the Via Meadia blog), UPS specifically attributes the new policy to costs from ObamaCare, but more honestly that was a case of the straw that broke the camel’s back. This policy — providing coverage only to spouses who do not have an alternate health insurance option — is hardly novel. I could go into my employer’s benefits database and pull up a statistic on the percentage of employers... Read more
Slate is always good for a few laughs. Today’s article: why the government should subsidize child-care for middle-class workers, from an author who lives in a world in which it’s impossible for any family to support themselves without government subsidies. I particularly like the comments on how the solution is for everyone to simply not reproduce. Read more
I hope to have time to flesh this out more later, but Megan McArdle has a post on disputes over the degree of underfunding of the Detroit pension plans — Orr, the Emergency Manager, wants to use an assumed return of 7%, and the unions want to use 8%, which would, apparently, better position themselves for a favorable outcome to the negotiations and decisions around the backruptcy. But the plan is 50% funded, optimistically. The reports linked to by McArdle are... Read more
So this morning, there was a Chicago Tribune article interviewing an author of a book ( Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture, by Hilary Levey Friedman) on differences between competitive dance and competitive soccer and chess for girls. The author writes of girls playing competitive soccer and chess as headed for the corner office and girls dancing headed towards working class occupations, or as the interview’s Q+A put it: Q: I got the sense, reading this, that soccer... Read more
What I learned about autism today: So I took the kids to the pool and spent some time talking to a friend (that’s the way it goes, isn’t it? Your friends are your kids’ friends’ parents) while the kids played. Her son has autism and we spent some time talking about the topic. First of all, she confirmed what I’d read earlier, that autism isn’t just one single ailment, but a set of similar ailments that have similar-enough symptoms to... Read more
The Economist (in this week’s print edition, and online here) reports that attendance at America’s National Parks, after years of growth to the mid-80s, has reached a plateau and even seen a slight decline. Here’s the key graphic: First thought: we had been hoping to make next year our big “out West” family vacation, now that the youngest is old enough to handle at least modest hiking (he’s 6), so after reading this article, I looked at the cost and availability of lodging. Want a... Read more
Regardless of what kind of Social Security system the government might implement in the future, everyone over the age of ____ should have their basic needs met by the government if they have no other resources, regardless of their work history (or lack thereof) in their younger years, without being expected to work at any available job or being expected to continually search for work. What’s the age? Those on the far left would say there should be no age... Read more
This post is a bit of a placeholder, as I need to dig up some statistics. But fundamentally, one of the responses to lack of retirement savings is the “just don’t retire” approach — either individually, planning on working indefinitely due to lack of retirement savings/benefits other than Social Security, or as a solution to the lack of retirement savings by Americans generally. True, early retirement to live a life of leisure is available to a declining percentage of Americans,... Read more
That’s the usual argument, from the conservative side, about why Social Security reform is needed: pundits either run the numbers on the benefits at retirement vs. the contributions over the years, and calculate a “rate of return” or they take the contributions and calculate an account balance if they received an average rate of return for a diversified equity/bond portfolio, and determine how much Social Security falls short of this ideal “Defined Contribution” benefit. But it’s not a helpful approach.... Read more
This is just something of a pet peeve of mine: “Chicago-style” pizza is not what you think it is. Sure, everyone labels a particular type of deep-dish “stuffed” pizza as “Chicago-style” but this is the province of a few specific Chicago chains: Pizzeria Uno, Giordano’s, Lou Malnati’s, most notably. It’s not what a typical Chicagoan eats when they get a pizza at the local pizza place, the sort that’s family-run and has generations of loyal customers. That pizza has a... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In