One of the things that has been nagging at me is the increasing difficulty of having meaningful discussions about important topics with anything other than like-minded people. Americans increasingly treat their views, be they on Iraq, global warming, civil liberties, or other Big Topics of the Day, as articles of faith rather than positions they […]
Read more...The proponents of a “living wage” in the US have argued that setting minimum wages at a level that leaves full time workers at below subsistence level is bad policy, both economically and socially. While opponents argue that increasing pay for the lowest earners will reduce the number of jobs, elasticity of demand isn’t all […]
Read more...The Financial Times reports today that institutional investors and the SEC are taking interest in the difficult-to-justify pay disparities between the CEO and his immediate subordinates at some public companies. And isolated data points, like Sallie Mae, suggest that the ones with the biggest gulf (in its case, ten times) aren’t delivering commensurate performance. A […]
Read more...According to Bloomberg (hat tip 2Blowhards), well-groomed men do better financially than their rumpled peers. And contrary to popular perception, the impact is greater for men than women. Note that the study measured time spent on primping, and made no effort to assess the efficacy of those efforts. Perhaps the seemingly lower economic impact of […]
Read more...A MarketWatch story says that there is a surprisingly effective motivation for people to conserve energy: keeping up with the Joneses. Research indicates that setting an example is more effective than one might think. So whether it’s owning a Prius, using florescent bulbs, or eating more plant proteins (fish and meat are higher up the […]
Read more...Psychologists, when working with patients, need to differentiate between two types of people: internalizers and externalizers. Internalizers are very responsible and tend to blame themselves for Things That Happen, whether they are their fault or not. They fit well in jobs that demand professionalism and personal responsibility. By contrast, externalizers blame everyone else for their […]
Read more...Michael Panzner of Financial Armageddon discussed a personal finance article in the Wall Street Journal as a sign that it was becoming increasingly acceptable to use the R word: it seems that at least some in the media are coming around to the idea that an economic slowdown is on the cards…. In “When a […]
Read more...Consider the ironies in the discussion of free trade. It’s widely depicted by economists to be a good thing, and anyone who opposed it is considered to be economically illiterate. Yet the system we have deviates considerably from the free trade ideal and is more accurately called managed trade. And in this system of managed […]
Read more...The New York Times today, in “More Profit and Less Nursing at Many Homes,” describes the often shameful behavior of private equity owners of nursing homes towards their charges: Some excerpts: As such investors have acquired nursing homes, they have often reduced costs, increased profits and quickly resold facilities for significant gains. But by many […]
Read more...The Internet has become America’s newest addiction. In a JWT survey that as of this hour hasn’t been widely reported in the US, more than a quarter of the participants said they had cut back on in person interaction to spend more time on the Web. Admittedly, there is a big element of self-selection in […]
Read more...A front page Wall Street Journal story today discusses how clotheslines have become a new battle front in America. The environmentally minded are using them in increasing numbers (clothes driers account for 6% of residential energy use). This is yet another illustration of how status consciousness and years of cheap energy intersect to produce peculiar […]
Read more...It may seem a bit peculiar to turn to the topic of evil on a finance blog, since money brings out the worst in most people. However, while debates in the economic realm are usually couched in terms of efficiency, in the end we all live in a world that is a great deal more […]
Read more...This Bloomberg story, which cites a newly-released Fed report that says that minorities are denied loans more often than Caucasians and often pay higher rates, isn’t a surprise. If anything, what is surprising is first, that this is treated as news, and second (and related), that the Fed and other regulators have been slow to […]
Read more...I’m late to this item, and I probably should let it go, but it is so disingenuous (I’m tempted to say intellectually dishonest) that I can’t let it go by. On Sunday, the New York Times ran an “Economics View” article, “It’s Monetary Policy, Not a Morality Play,” by Tyler Cowen, well known libertarian and […]
Read more...Harvard’s Dani Rodrik in a recent post questioned the role of labor market rigidities (such as restrictions on firings and generous unemployment) in Europe’s higher unemployment. (As an aside, readers will know even that factoid is disputed. Barry Ritholtz has argued that if we calculated unemployment the same way Europeans did, the rates wouldn’t be […]
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