Trump v Hawaii US Supreme Court Oral Argument Audio

Trump v Hawaii US Supreme Court Oral Argument Audio..

School Safety And School Choice: Comment To "Q&A: How an Economist Unlocked Hidden Truths About School Choice"

My comment to The Wall Street Journal, Real Time Economics, "Q&A: How an Economist Unlocked Hidden Truths About School Choice: Parag Pathak of MIT, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal for the nation’s most impressive economist under 40, says he 'fell into the topic' " by Michelle Hackman:

Prof failed to mention that many parents when given a choice will choose a new school based on its safer environment than its higher academic quality. Some studies try to hide this fact. Probably because many inner city, unionized schools are unsafe. A parent survey may ask for the parent's primary reason for leaving the old school with only a single question about academics and with multiple questions that have a student safety component, such as bullying, lack of discipline, lack of morals, safe environment, etc. The multiple questions with a safety component dilute the response rate and make it appear that safety is less important than academics to parents who want a choice. A choice, like a purchase, allows the parent to acquire a basket of benefits (safety, academics, sports, etc) that more closely matches the parent's and student's priority of benefits and more closely matches their wishes. Having a choice is always better.

Expensive Medicine: My Posted Comment To WSJ Opinion, "English Literature Isn’t Brain Surgery: Why is American medicine so expensive?" And An Addendum

My posted comment to The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, "English Literature Isn’t Brain Surgery: Why is American medicine so expensive? One reason is that doctors are forced to get bachelor’s degrees" by Chris Pope and Tim Rice and an addendum following the comment:

The article has cause and effect reversed. Medicine is a typical mature oligopoly, which over time has created legal, regulatory and capital investment barriers to the entry of competitors. Without competition, medicine's productivity improvements have historically lagged behind US productivity improvements allowing the cost of healthcare to grow faster than the inflation rate and allowing it to become too expensive. Instead of allowing competition and the marketplace to function, in the early 1900s, the AMA raised education standards that closed or merged half the medical schools in the US and it published a list of approved hospitals for residency training. By restricting entry, the AMA limited the supply of physicians, which continues to today with the help of antiquated state licensing laws for doctors, hospitals and other classes of medical providers. High education requirements are an anti-competitive effect of a cartel to justify higher physician earnings.

Addendum not in the published WSJ comment.

The closing of many medical schools in the early 1900s resulted in discrimination in admission to women and blacks. 5 of the 7 black medical colleges in the US were closed and blacks were denied admission to the non-black medical colleges. Women who were benefiting from the mid 19th-century expansion in women's education were becoming physicians. The early 20th century closing of medical schools shrunk the total number of acceptances to medical schools and the schools denied admission to females and accepted only males. In 1950, in the US, there were fewer female doctors than there were in 1900.

Americans Spend More On Taxes Than On Food, Clothing And Housing Combined: 30 Percent Of National Income Goes To Federal And State Taxes

From Tax Foundation, "Tax Freedom Day 2018 is April 19th" by Erica York:

What Taxes Do We Pay?
This year, Americans again will work the longest to pay federal, state, and local individual income taxes (44 days). Payroll taxes will take 26 days to pay, followed by sales and excise taxes (15 days), corporate income taxes (seven days), and property taxes (11 days). The remaining six days are spent paying estate and inheritance taxes, customs duties, and other taxes.

Source: Tax Foundation

My WSJ comment to "Trump’s Irrelevant Tariffs: The President won the real jobs war, which wasn’t with Mexico or Germany."

My WSJ, Opinion comment to "Trump’s Irrelevant Tariffs: The President won the real jobs war, which wasn’t with Mexico or Germany" by Daniel Henninger:

When you cannot find enough workers to break rocks with a hammer, you buy a hydraulic rock crusher. For many years, until recently, US business capital investment has been declining, especially after accounting for depreciation replacement. Is there a shortage of available and future workers or a shortfall in needed catch-up investment in capital equipment that will increase productivity? When the Bracero guest worker program ended in 1964, the growers replaced labor with harvesting machines. It is competitively natural for industries to become more capital intensive as they mature. Some companies cannot afford to make the needed investment and continue to seek workers, but will not be able to be as productive and compete on price and quality. Eventually, they will go out of business. The US is undergoing a delayed Schumpeterian creative destruction transition, as profitable companies become more capital intensive.

My Comment To "Degree Inflation and Discrimination" in WSJ Opinion.

My posted comment to The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, "Degree Inflation and Discrimination: Could civil-rights laws and ‘disparate impact’ protect job applicants who haven’t finished college?" by Frederick M. Hess and Grant Addison:

Disparate Impact is flawed. It sets a minimum standard for ability. Hiring is a long term investment and employers want workers who can exceed the minimum, take more responsibility and be loyal. DI [Disparate Impact] concept is at its core discriminatory and statistically suspect. It assumes all ethnic, racial, cultural groups prioritize jobs equally, so that the same population percentage of equivalent skill, intellect, aptitude of each group is applying for a job. In reality, different populations do not have the same specific career goals. The most able and the least able of each group may be applying for different jobs and careers. Standardized tests are giving given to large populations, but employer tests and applications are given to smaller sample populations. There is no reason to assume from percentage employed that any one company is discriminatory because its application results in different outcomes. Applicants for a specific job opening may differ in ability. Look at professional basketball.