Once a Leader, U.S. Lags in College Degrees

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NY Times
Jul 23 2010
by Tamar Lewin

Adding to a drumbeat of concern about the nation’s dismal college-completion rates, the College Board warned Thursday that the growing gap between the United States and other countries threatens to undermine American economic competitiveness.
The United States used to lead the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now it ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.

U.S. Military Spending 1940-2010

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Saving vs Spending by Income Brackets

15 Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America

Here are a number of graphs looking at income inequality from various perspectives.  Needless to say, they all look a little grim for the U.S.  The question we will eventually have to answer is: how much is too much?  At what point does income inequality lead to political inequality or social instability?

From Business Insider

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The gap between the top 1% and everyone else hasn't been this bad since the Roaring Twenties


This chart shows average income of the top 1% as a multiple of average income of the bottom 90%.
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Economics Behaving Badly

July 14, 2010
NY Times
By George Lowenstein and Peter Ubel

IT seems that every week a new book or major newspaper article appears showing that irrational decision-making helped cause the housing bubble or the rise in health care costs.
Such insights draw on behavioral economics, an increasingly popular field that incorporates elements from psychology to explain why people make seemingly irrational decisions, at least according to traditional economic theory and its emphasis on rational choice. Behavioral economics helps to explain why, for example, people under-save for retirement, why they eat too much and exercise too little and why they buy energy-inefficient light bulbs and appliances. And, by understanding the causes of these problems, behavioral economics has spawned a number of creative interventions to deal with them.
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Turn 70. Act Your Grandchild’s Age.

July 9, 2010
NY Times
By Kate Zernike

Ringo Starr celebrated his 70th birthday last week by playing at Radio City Music Hall and saying his new hero is B. B. King, still jamming in his 80s. Joining Mr. Starr in his 70s next year will be the still-performing Bob Dylan (“May you stay forever young”) and Paul Simon (“How terribly strange to be 70”). Following soon after will be Roger Daltrey (“Hope I die before I get old”) and Mick Jagger, who is reported to have said, several grandchildren ago, “I’d rather be dead than singing ‘Satisfaction’ at 45.”
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The Medium Is the Medium

July 8, 2010
NY Times
By David Brooks

Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years.
Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington of the University of Tennessee, looked at those students’ test scores. They found that the students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading scores than other students. These students were less affected by the “summer slide” — the decline that especially afflicts lower-income students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12 books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer school.
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As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Subsidies

July 3, 2010
NY Times
By David Kocieniewski

When the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform set off the worst oil spill at sea in American history, it was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. Registering there allowed the rig’s owner to significantly reduce its American taxes. The owner, Transocean, moved its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Cayman Islands in 1999 and then to Switzerland in 2008, maneuvers that also helped it avoid taxes.
At the same time, BP was reaping sizable tax benefits from leasing the rig. According to a letter sent in June to the Senate Finance Committee, the company used a tax break for the oil industry to write off 70 percent of the rent for Deepwater Horizon — a deduction of more than $225,000 a day since the lease began.
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From Students, Less Kindness for Strangers?

June 25, 2010
NY Times
By Pamela Paul

FED up with the Me-Me-Me MySpace generation? Inclined to believe today’s young ’uns are blindingly self-aggrandizing and entitled? According to a major new study of college students, you may well be right.
Vindication for crotchety Gen-Xers — already depressed to find themselves the elders in this social relationship — arrived in a paper presented in May at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston.
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Report Optimistic on Africa Economies

June 23, 2010
NY Times
By Celia W. Dugger

JOHANNESBURG — Africa is often depicted as a place of war, disease and poverty, with a begging bowl extended to the world. But a new report paints a much more optimistic portrait of a continent with growing national economies and an expanding consumer class that offers foreign investors the highest rates of return in the developing world.
In a report released Thursday, McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, presented a bullish message to companies, arguing that “global businesses cannot afford to ignore the potential.”
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Now and Later

June 20, 2010
NY Time
By Paul Krugman

Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; save later, once it has recovered. How hard is that to understand?
Very hard, if the current state of political debate is any indication. All around the world, politicians seem determined to do the reverse. They’re eager to shortchange the economy when it needs help, even as they balk at dealing with long-run budget problems. But maybe a clear explanation of the issues can change some minds. So let’s talk about the long and the short of budget deficits. I’ll focus on the U.S. position, but a similar story can be told for other nations.
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Next for Afghanistan, the Curse of Plenty?

June 18, 2010
NY Times
By Donald G. McNeil Jr.

Let’s suppose there is $1 trillion worth of minerals under Afghanistan, as senior American officials and a confidential Pentagon memo said last week.
Is that a good thing — for either Afghanistan or the United States?
Some experts in mining and in Third World resource politics argue that it is not.  Because it takes up to 20 years for a mine to start earning profits and Afghanistan has been a battleground for 31 years, “no mining company in its right mind would go into Afghanistan now,” said Murray W. Hitzman, a professor of economic geology at the Colorado School of Mines.
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The ‘Learning Knights’ of Bell Telephone

June 15, 2010
NY Times
By Wes Davis

FIFTY-SIX years ago today, a Bell System manager sent postcards to 16 of the most capable and promising young executives at the company. What was written on the postcards was surprising, especially coming from a corporate ladder-climber at a time when the nation was just beginning to lurch out of a recession: “Happy Bloom’s Day.”
It was a message to mark the annual celebration of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” the epic novel built around events unfolding on a single day — June 16, 1904 — in the life of the fictional Dubliner Leopold Bloom. But the postcard also served as a kind of diploma for the men who received it.
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Prune and Grow

June 10, 2010
NY Times
By David Brooks

Sixteen months ago, Congress passed a stimulus package that will end up costing each average taxpayer $7,798. Economists were divided then about whether this spending was worth it, and they are just as divided now.
The president’s economists ran the numbers through their model and predicted that the stimulus package would create or save at least three million jobs. John F. Cogan and John B. Taylor of Stanford and Tobias Cwik and Volker Wieland of the Goethe-University of Frankfurt argue that the White House methodology is archaic. Their model suggests the stimulus will create about a half-million jobs.
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U.S. Health Care Comparisons to Other OECD Countries

Data from 2007 or most recent available year

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HEALTH CARE SPENDING AS A PERCENTAGE OF GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT

A country’s wealth usually dictates how much money it spends on health care, but spending in the United States is far beyond that of its peer countries.

CT SCANNERS, PER MILLION PEOPLE

The McKinsey study shows that the intensity of medical treatment — as seen in measures like the number of high-tech diagnostic scanners — is relatively high in the United States.

ANGIOPLASTY PROCEDURES, PER 100,000 PEOPLE

Though Americans undergo more surgical procedures like angioplasties, which widen clogged arteries, deaths from heart attacks are not proportionately lower.

LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH

Despite very good access to diagnostic equipment and surgical procedures, Americans’ life expectancy is lower than that of many other countries.

DEATHS FROM CANCER, PER 100,000 PEOPLE

Economists point to the rate of cancer deaths in the United States as an indicator that its spending is out of line with results.

ANNUAL CONSULTATIONS WITH DOCTORS, PER CAPITA

Experts say that the United States lags in basic preventive care, like annual checkups, and relies too heavily on expensive specialists.

HOSPITAL BEDS, PER 1,000 PEOPLE

The United States also has relatively few hospital beds for its population. Economists have noted that hospitals’ inpatient care is growing at a much slower rate than outpatient care, which has a much higher profit margin.

Our Fill-in-the-Blank Constitution

April 14, 2010
NY Times
By Geoffrey R. Stone
Chicago

AS the Senate awaits the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice, a frank discussion is needed on the proper role of judges in our constitutional system. For 30 years, conservative commentators have persuaded the public that conservative judges apply the law, whereas liberal judges make up the law. According to Chief Justice John Roberts, his job is just to “call balls and strikes.” According to Justice Antonin Scalia, conservative jurists merely carry out the “original meaning” of the framers. These are appealing but wholly disingenuous descriptions of what judges — liberal or conservative — actually do.
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Where U.S. Worker Come From

Great info about immigration and jobs from a NY Times article.

Immigrants By Occupation

Immigrants by home country
 - All Countries
 - Americas
 - Caribbean
 - Asia
 - Middle East
 - Europe & Russia
 - Africa
 - Oceania

Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism

April 1, 2009
NY Times
By Joseph E. Stiglitz

THE Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose. Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.
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Outlook: When Gitmo Was (Relatively) Good

The First -- and Last -- Days of the Guantanamo Bay Prison


Karen J. Greenberg
Outlook Contributor and Law and Security Expert
Monday, January 26, 2009; 2:00 PM

"In his first week in office, President Obama signed an executive order that would shut down the notorious U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. But as the United States moves to end this shameful episode, it's worth reflecting on the untold story of the very beginnings of Guantanamo... Those early days --back before Gitmo became Gitmo -- strongly suggest that the damage the prison inflicted on America's honor and security could have been avoided if policymakers had been willing to follow the uniformed military's basic instincts. It may be too late for these revelations to help redeem Guantanamo in its waning days. But U.S. detention policy in the years ahead could still benefit from learning about these small, initial efforts at decency."

Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of New York University's Center on Law and Security and the author of the forthcoming book The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days was online Monday, January 26 to discuss her Outlook article on the 2002 founding of the Guantanamo Bay detention center and President Obama's decision to close it.

A transcript follows.

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Global Retreat As Economies Dry Up

As World Trade Plummets, Bustling Ports Stand Idle And Foreign Workers Track Back Home


By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 5, 2009; A01

SINGAPORE This shimmering city-state was the house globalization built. When world trade boomed, Singapore's seaport at the crossroads of East and West became the Chicago O'Hare of freighters and supertankers. Singapore Airlines took off despite serving a country with no domestic air routes. Nearly everything manufactured here is made for export. One out of every three workers is a foreigner.
But as the world enters a period of deglobalization, Singapore is a window into the reversal of the forces that
brought unprecedented global mobility to goods, services, investment and labor. With world trade plummeting for the first time since 1982, the long-bustling port has become a maritime parking lot in recent weeks, with rows of idled freighters from Asia, Europe, the United States, South America, Africa and the Middle East stretching for miles along the coast. "We're running out of space to park them," said Ron Widdows, chief executive of Singapore-based NOL, one of the world's largest container lines.

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Once the Stimulus Kicks In, the Real Fight Begins

By Robert B. Reich

Sunday, February 1, 2009
Washington Post

The real stimulus debate hasn't even started yet. Congress will pass President Obama's stimulus package in the
next two weeks, more or less as he wants it. The House has already done its part, and the Senate appears likely to follow suit. But when the economy starts to turn up again, perhaps as early as next year, the president will have the real tough decisions to make. He'll have to choose which spending will continue -- or whether any of it will continue at all. Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton came to Washington with his own ambitious plans to reverse widening inequality, rebuild the nation's crumbling infrastructure, create an efficient and affordable health-care system and address the growing environmental crisis.

Lobbying culture will be tough to tame

Robert G. Kaiser
3/02/2009 1:28 pm


WASHINGTON -- Of all the grand ambitions laid out by President Obama, the nerviest may be his promise to transform American politics. What if U.S. government officials really accepted his definition of public service as "a privilege" that is "not about advantaging yourself," your friends or their clients? Could it actually happen?
Not easily. Washington is broken: Lobbyists and special interests have turned our government into a game that only they can afford to play. They write the checks, and the citizenry gets the bill. Politics is no longer a mission; it's a business.
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Wishful, and dangerous, thinking

Barack Obama's budget

Mar 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The president has not explained to Americans that if they want bigger government, they will have to pay for it.

A PRESIDENT’S first budget proposal is more than a set of figures. It is also an outline of his philosophy of
government. The plan Barack Obama delivered on February 26th envisages an ambitious and costly expansion of the government’s role in the lives of Americans. Its centrepiece is a big expansion of state-provided health care—for which he has budgeted $634 billion over the next decade while admitting that yet more will be needed. He will fill in the details in coming weeks (see article) while insisting the plan meets several criteria: it must extend insurance to the 15% of Americans who now lack it, it must help slow the growth in costs, and it must be paid for.
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A Tsunami of Excuses

NY Times
March 12, 2009
By William Cohen

IT’S been a year since Bear Stearns collapsed,
kicking off Wall Street’s meltdown, and it’s more
than time to debunk the myths that many Wall Street
executives have perpetrated about what has happened
and why. These tall tales — which tend to take the
form of how their firms were the “victims” of a
“once-in-a-lifetime tsunami” that nothing could have
prevented — not only insult our collective
intelligence but also do nothing to restore the
confidence in the banking system that these
executives’ actions helped to destroy.
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