Monday, June 29, 2015

The Student Debt "Crisis"

$28,000   Average amount of debt owed by undergraduates who incur tuition debt

$17,000   Average annual salary difference between high school and college graduates

So the "crisis" is that I have to borrow money that I recoup in two years of working? Sounds like a good ROI to me. If that's a crisis, please bring me some more. 

Monday, June 15, 2015

Wages and Benefits Per Worker -- Perspective

Just something to keep in mind as you listen to all the rhetoric from Democrats running for President in the next year.


Thursday, June 4, 2015

George Will's excellent reality-based graduation speech about the government-induced college bubble.



Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Income Inequality Is a Symptom, Not The Disease

Harvard  professor Robert Putnam has some revealing data in his book "Our Kids" that echoes the themes about which Charles Murray has been writing. Namely that America is becoming rigid. It is settling into immobile classes that don’t mix.  Not in neighborhoods, not in schools, not in marriage and not in work. 

The current fad is to focus on "Income Inequality". But this is focusing on the symptoms of a disease, not the disease itself.  It's akin to providing pain killers to cancer victims rather than chemo therapy . The disease is a growing class of people who, for a whole host of reasons other than not having much money, engage in adverse behaviors. Worse, they "infect" their children with those behaviors, as the two charts below demonstrate. 

AA figured this out out a long time ago. You can cite a dozen reasons why you're an alcoholic (including bad genes from your parents), but you can't stop being one until you take some personal responsibility for your condition.