Eight US Cities Account For 40 Percent Of High Paying Tech Job Openings

From The Wall Street Journal, Real Time Economics, "The Best $100,000+ Tech Jobs Are Increasingly Concentrated in Just 8 Cities: High prices aren't enough to stop the momentum of the leading tech cities" by Josh Zumbrun:

The eight leading U.S. tech hubs account for slightly less than 10% of U.S. jobs and about 13% of overall job postings. But the cities — Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Austin, Raleigh, Washington, Baltimore and Boston [Highlight added] — account for more than 27% of the listings for U.S. tech jobs, research from Jed Kolko, the chief economist of the job-search website Indeed, shows.

That’s already a striking concentration, but tech jobs with the highest salaries are even more centralized. Among jobs that typically pay over $100,000, nearly 40% of openings are in those eight cities.

Charter Schools Alumni Earn Four-Year College Degrees At Five Times The Rate At Public Schools

From The Wall Street Journal, "Charter Grads Get a Leg Up in College: The NAACP and NEA have chosen the wrong time to double down on failing traditional schools." by Richard Whitmire:

The data [source] comes from the first cohort of charter students, who are beginning to graduate from college. Here’s what we know now that the NEA and NAACP didn’t know when they adopted their anticharter positions: Graduates from the top charter networks—those with enough high school alumni to measure college success accurately—earn four-year degrees at rates that range up to five times as high as their counterparts in traditional public schools. These are low-income, minority students from cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Newark, N.J. Their college success is going to make bashing charter schools far more challenging for the NEA and the NAACP.***Roughly half the graduates of Uncommon, YES Prep and the KIPP New York schools—among the biggest and best known charter networks in the country—earn bachelor’s degrees within six years. About a quarter of the graduates of the lower-performing charter networks earn degrees within six years. That may not strike wealthy parents as something to brag about. Eighty percent of children from America’s wealthiest families earn four-year degrees within six years. But charters primarily serve low-income families, where only 9% of students earn such degrees. Charters make a difference for poor families.

Inflation Chart Since The Founding of the US

From The Wall Street Journal, Real Time Economics, "Gold Standard Didn’t Really Tame Inflation, New Research Says" by Michael S Derby:

St. Louis Fed economist Fernando Martin says inflation in the pre-Fed period was highly volatile as elected leaders periodic took the dollar off the gold standard and then re-established it. That created surges of inflation that were then followed by deflation.

“The postwar period exhibits the same recurrence of high inflation episodes as the preceding period,” Mr. Martin wrote. But without a gold standard forcing prices and wages lower at times, there was no deflation to pull the overall price level back down toward its historical average.
***

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Highest Percentage Of Renters In 50 Years

From MarketWatch, "More Americans are renters now than at any time in the last 50 years" by Quentin Fottrell:

More U.S. households are headed by renters than at any point since at least 1965, according to new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. “The total number of households in the United States grew by 7.6 million between 2006 and 2016,” it found. “But over the same period, the number of households headed by owners remained relatively flat, in part because of the lingering effects of the housing crisis.” And the rise in renters is significant, even accounting for the growth in the population over the last half-century.***

MarketWatch

Adults younger than 35 continue to be the most likely of all age groups to rent. In 2016, 65% of all households headed by people younger than 35 were renting, up from 57% a decade earlier. Last year, 41% of households headed by someone aged 35 to 44 were renting, up from 31% of all households in 2006.

US Drinkers Prefer Beer As Their Alcoholic Beverage

From Gallup, "Beer Remains the Preferred Alcoholic Beverage in the U.S." by Justin McCarthy:

Americans who drink alcohol continue to say they most often choose beer (40%) over wine (30%) and liquor (26%). Beer has typically been the preferred alcoholic beverage in Gallup's trend.

Source: Gallup

The latest results are from a July 5-9 update of Gallup's annual Consumption Habits poll. Gallup has found that beer is most popular among men; this year, 62% of male drinkers say they prefer beer, compared with 19% of female drinkers. Less-educated and middle-income Americans also tend to choose beer.

For the past two decades, at least three in 10 drinkers have said they prefer wine, peaking at 39% in 2005. Wine was slightly less popular in the early to mid-1990s. Women are significantly more likely than men to prefer wine, at 50% vs. 11%, respectively. This beverage is also preferred more among college-educated adults.
***

Source: Gallup

Medicaid Enrollees Have Worse Health Outcomes Than People Without Medical Insurance: Obamacare Expansion Of Medicaid Eligibility To The Uninsured Was A Cruel Sham Of Fewer Doctors And Poorer Results: Replace Obamacare Medicaid Expansion With Private Insurance And Improve Health Outcomes

From The Wall Street Journal, "How to Say Goodbye to ObamaCare: First, Republicans must abandon Democrats’ definition of success." by James Freeman:

Perhaps radical surgery will be needed, because the other awkward fact is that enrolling people in Medicaid means they will have fewer doctors available to treat them and worse health outcomes than people with private insurance—and often even worse than people without any insurance at all. Long before he became the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Scott Gottlieb wrote on this subject for the Journal in 2011. He described some of the relevant research:

• Major surgical procedures: A 2010 study of 893,658 major surgical operations performed between 2003 to 2007, published in the Annals of Surgery, found that being on Medicaid was associated with the longest length of stay, the most total hospital costs, and the highest risk of death. Medicaid patients were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital than those with private insurance. By comparison, uninsured patients were about 25% less likely than those with Medicaid to have an “in-hospital death.” Another recent study found similar outcomes for Medicaid patients undergoing trauma surgery.

• Poor outcomes after heart procedures: A 2011 study of 13,573 patients, published in the American Journal of Cardiology, found that people with Medicaid who underwent coronary angioplasty (a procedure to open clogged heart arteries) were 59% more likely to have “major adverse cardiac events,” such as strokes and heart attacks, compared with privately insured patients. Medicaid patients were also more than twice as likely to have a major, subsequent heart attack after angioplasty as were patients who didn’t have any health insurance at all.

Henry David Thoreau 200th Birthday: The Limits Of Government

Henry David Thoreau: Born: July 12, 1817, Concord, MA: Died: May 6, 1862, Concord, MA:

From "Civil Disobedience" By Henry David Thoreau, 1849:

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe- "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.***Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.***After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislation? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.***The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to- for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well- is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

THE END

New IRS Data Shows Largest Tax Deductions Of High Income Households

From Tax Foundation, "The Largest Deductions Taken by High-Income Households" by Scott Greenberg:

[W]hat are the largest [tax] deductions that high-income Americans currently claim?

We can answer this question with a new set of data, released by the IRS last week, on households with over $200,000 in income in 2014. [Footnote omitted.]

***

Source: Tax Foundation

The deduction for state and local taxes is the single largest deduction claimed by households making over $200,000. These households deducted $243 billion in state and local taxes in 2014 – accounting for 47 percent of all state and local taxes deducted by U.S. households that year. In recent years, several lawmakers have proposed eliminating the state and local tax deduction altogether; this data shows that doing so would mainly impact high-income households.

Top Ten States With Most Inbound And Outbound Movers: United Van Lines Ranking

From United Van Lines, 2016 National Movers Study, "Retirees Moving to Mountain and Pacific West:"

United has tracked migration patterns annually on a state-by-state basis since 1977. For 2016, the study is based on household moves handled by United within the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C. This study ranks states based off the inbound and outbound percentages of total moves in each state. United classifies states as “high inbound” if 55 percent or more of the moves are going into a state, “high outbound” if 55 percent or more moves were coming out of a state or “balanced” if the difference between inbound and outbound is negligible.

Moving In: The top inbound states of 2016 were:

1. South Dakota
2. Vermont
3. Oregon
4. Idaho
5. South Carolina
6. Washington
7. District of Columbia
8. North Carolina
9. Nevada
10. Arizona

South Dakota is the most popular moving destination of 2016 with nearly 68 percent of moves to and from the state being inbound. The state has continued to climb the ranks, increasing inbound migration by 23 percent over the past five years. New to the 2016 top inbound list are South Dakota at No. 1 and Arizona at No. 10 with 68 and 57 percent inbound moves, respectively.

Moving Out: The top outbound states for 2016 were:

1. New Jersey
2. Illinois
3. New York
4. Connecticut
5. Kansas
6. Kentucky
7. West Virginia
8. Ohio
9. Utah
10. Pennsylvania

In addition to the Northeast, Illinois (63 percent) moved up one spot on the outbound list, to no. 2, ranking in the top five for the last eight years.

New additions to the 2016 top outbound list include Kentucky (58 percent), Utah (56 percent) and Pennsylvania (56 percent).