That’s the proposal in front of the Illinois legislature: the state pension is underfunded to the tune of $129 billion dollars (that’s almost double what the state spends, in total, in a year), so the State Universities Annuitants Association has proposed borrowing $107 in bonds, and hoping that there is no major market correction and that asset returns will exceed the interest rate at which the government is able to issue the bonds — an interest rate which, to be... Read more
So Megan McArdle reports today that A partnership of Amazon.com Inc., Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. is forming an independent company, “free from profit-making incentives and constraints” to “provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.” and, as you might suspect, I have something to say about that. Now, I should say that I’m not a healthcare actuary, and my experience in that field is limited to the reading... Read more
Here are two admittedly-broad characterizations. Immigration-skeptics worry that unskilled illegal (or even legal) immigrants will fail to integrate, but will instead remain a permanent underclass, performing cheap labor for wage-cutting employers and taking care of the children and lawns of the wealthy, while remaining in their narrow enclaves, making no efforts to learn English, and using up far more in government services for themselves and their children (Medicaid, food stamps, public schools including ESL and special ed services, etc.) than... Read more
“It’s expensive to be poor” refers to the various ways in which the poor pay more for their daily needs than the middle class — whether it’s the Terry Pratchett “boots theory” (a poor man spending cumulatively more on, in this instance, boots, because he can only afford the cheap ones which fall apart rather than buying a durable pair lasting longer), or being unable to buy their groceries in bulk because they have to cart things home on the... Read more
Or, “From the library: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond.” The book takes the form of a prologue with context, a long narrative telling the stories of the poor tenants of Milwaukee, and of their landlords, based on ethnographic fieldwork, and an epilogue with proposals. By “ethnographic fieldwork” I mean that the author, a Harvard professor, spent time living in a trailer park and in an inner city apartment, spending copious amounts of time with... Read more
Most Americans believe the following two things: We should allow that portion of the illegal immigrant population which has integrated into American society to be able to stay. We should fix our laws so that there is no more illegal immigration in the future. Yes, there’s a lot of dispute around the fine print. What constitutes “integrating into American society” — simply not being a criminal, or having learned English and gotten an education? How aggressively should we fight against... Read more
I read and wrote about J.B. Pritzker yesterday, and, by coincidence, there was a debate among the Democrats last night, that brought candidate Daniel Biss to my attention, and led me to look at his website. And, holy moly!, does he make Pritzker look like a moderate. Biss agrees with Pritzker on a $15 minimum wage and enhanced union bargaining power, as well as on marijuana legalization, protection for illegal immigrants, and all of the usual topics on which there’s... Read more
The line we generally hear about illegal immigrants is this: they lived in grinding poverty in their home countries, so you can’t really blame them for coming to the U.S., because here, even under the horrible conditions that come with living illegally, “in the shadows,” it’s still an improvement on the inescapably awful circumstances in their home countries. It’s what Cardinal Cupich said in his defense of illegal immigration: The vast majority of immigrants come here because they are poor... Read more
A. Whatever Tom Cotton and Dick Durbin can come to an agreement on. Look, I think it’s fair to say that Tom Cotton is pretty hard-line in terms of immigration enforcement. And Dick Durbin is determined to get to a path to amnesty*/mass legalization with as few enforcement concessions as possible, and, in general, seems to represent a mindset that illegal immigration isn’t really that bad, anyway. But Cotton knows that he’s not going to get enough votes to pass... Read more
That is, get even more Illinoisey, with greater levels of dysfunction? After all, the governor’s election coming up this fall is generally expected to be billionaire vs. billionaire, though, strictly speaking, Governor Rauner’s net worth is only in the hundreds of millions, while J.B. Pritzker’s net worth is reported to be $3.4 billion. (Yes, there are other Democrats running, but only he is spending heavily on advertising.) And Rauner, let’s face it, hasn’t done a stellar job, and “my ineffectual... Read more
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