Quotulatiousness

November 2, 2011

Going to university isn’t enough: you need to take the right program

Filed under: Economics, Education, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:04

Alex Tabarrok points out that the widely reported student debt problem is made much worse because students are taking courses that don’t lead to higher-paying jobs:

Over the past 25 years the total number of students in college has increased by about 50 percent. But the number of students graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM fields) has remained more or less constant. Moreover, many of today’s STEM graduates are foreign born and are taking their knowledge and skills back to their native countries.

Consider computer technology. In 2009 the U.S. graduated 37,994 students with bachelor’s degrees in computer and information science. This is not bad, but we graduated more students with computer science degrees 25 years ago! The story is the same in other technology fields such as chemical engineering, math and statistics. Few fields have changed as much in recent years as microbiology, but in 2009 we graduated just 2,480 students with bachelor’s degrees in microbiology — about the same number as 25 years ago. Who will solve the problem of antibiotic resistance?

If students aren’t studying science, technology, engineering and math, what are they studying?

In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985.

It’s still true that students who graduate from university will tend to have higher lifetime earnings than their peers who do not get degrees, but there’s a huge difference between the expected earnings from an engineering degree than from a “studies” degree.

History pop quiz

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Law — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:12

Tim Black wants you to identify how long ago a certain communication to the royal family was written:

‘I write to formally request the consent of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to provisions to be included in the . . . Bill.’

So, history fans, in which democracy-forsaken year did a member of the Houses of Parliament open a letter to an heir to the throne with this line? Not sure? Perhaps this sentence will help: ‘Granted that these proposed changes . . . will apply to . . . contracts entered into by or on behalf of the Duchy of Cornwall, we should be very grateful to receive the consent of the Prince of Wales.’ There are plenty of clues there: the cowering, creeping tone; the excessive, almost fearful formality; and, of course, the sheer palpable deference towards the Crown. Surely this particular parliamentarian’s request must originate from some time before parliament began to forcibly assert its interests against those of the Crown during the seventeenth century? Perhaps it was even earlier: 1590 or maybe even 1565.

This is a follow-up to a post from earlier this week.

Disagreeing with Pete Townshend

Filed under: Economics, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:03

Felix Cohen has an interesting article up at the Guardian‘s “Comment is free” section:

When I was originally sent some quotes from Pete Townshend’s John Peel lecture on Apple — which he refers to as a digital vampire — and music piracy, I was ready to fundamentally disagree with the thrust of his argument, but having taken the time to read it and parse it I’m surprised at how much sense there is. Regrettably, though, he also commits some fairly serious and unforgiveable misunderstandings of Apple and Amazon as companies, the internet and, perhaps least forgivable, the nature of creativity and the auteur as arbiter of what’s acceptable for public consumption.

[. . .]

Because I also believe that the commercial success you and your peers achieved was a brief, Burgess Shale-like period in popular culture, where the dearth of real social recommendation meant that people like John Peel, and now, sadly, Simon Cowell, imposed their tastes on swaths of youth. Peel (Cowell considerably less so) was an amazing, charismatic, much missed man who was able to tap into the zeitgeist and promote acts who wouldn’t have a chance without him. But he had his tastes and dislikes like anyone, and that’s the downfall of auteur theory; you don’t get to see outside of someone else’s perspective.

[. . .]

And, like the creatures in the Burgess Shale, we can look back and say: this brief flowering of bizarre and fantastical cultural expression was only made possible by its environment. This was what popular culture looked like when the only people who could make a real living were the top 0.0001%, while everyone else toiled in garages, college music rooms and village halls, trying everything in their power to break through. And, sadly, it ended up anodyne, populist and, well, The X Factor.

[. . .]

I’m not sorry that the period where you were able to be wined and dined by vast, terrifyingly wasteful record labels because you were paying for all of their A&R failures is over. To return to my prehistoric metaphor, the Cambrian period ended with a mass extinction event, but the period that followed allowed for the establishment of the species we see today. We should hope that creative popular culture follows a similar pattern, and that new artists and musicians will be able to be successful, widely heard, nurtured by crowd-supported services such as PledgeMusic rather than bloated A&R corporations; companies with a more human attitude to what they do and who they are doing it for.

The decline and fall of Righthaven

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:40

Ars Technica has what should be the final legal chapter in the Righthaven saga:

Looks like it’s time to turn out the lights on Righthaven. The US Marshal for the District of Nevada has just been authorized by a federal court to use “reasonable force” to seize $63,720.80 in cash and/or assets from the Las Vegas copyright troll after Righthaven failed to pay a court judgment from August 15.

Righthaven made a national name for itself by suing mostly small-time bloggers and forum posters over the occasional copied newspaper article, initially going so far as to demand that targeted websites turn over their domain names to Righthaven. The several hundred cases went septic on Righthaven, however, once it became clear that Righthaven didn’t own the copyrights over which it was suing. Righthaven, ailing, was soon buffeted by negative court decisions as a result.

[. . .]

The appeals court has refused to act on Righthaven’s request to delay its August judgment further, and the money was due last Friday. When it didn’t show up, Randazza Legal Group went back to the Nevada District Court to request a Writ of Execution to use the court’s enforcers, the US Marshals, to collect the money. The court clerk issued the writ today, and Righthaven’s $34,045.50 judgment has now ballooned to $63,720.80 with all the additional costs and fees from the delay.

I spoke to Marc Randazza this evening, who tells me, “We’re going to enlist the US Marshal in marking sure this court’s order has some meaning.” He looks forward to heading over to Righthaven’s offices as soon as possible. Should Righthaven not have the cash in its bank accounts, the writ allows Randazza to “identify to the US Marshal or his representative assets that are to be seized to satisfy the judgment/order.”

The degree of threat that Righthaven and other lawfare groups posed to bloggers and anyone else who quoted material on the internet was discussed back in May.

Universities are far from being bastions of free speech

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:28

George Jonas on the sorry state of free speech in Canadian universities:

Are Canadian universities a threat to free speech? If you ask me, yes, and if you ask civil rights lawyer John Carpay, he’ll go even further. Carpay has ranked universities so that you can see which one is a bigger threat than the other. He demonstrated it last week at a breakfast organized by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy for Calgary’s Chamber of Commerce, where guests in the Fireside Parlor were treated to a preview of Carpay’s “Campus Freedom Index.”

[. . .]

Saying that universities reflect the Zeitgeist is an understatement. Universities are more fashion conscious than Women’s Wear Daily. Academics go sashaying and flouncing like so many models on a catwalk in their ivory towers as they display the latest whim of the great designer, Intellectual Currency. Philosophers have better centuries and worse centuries, as the spirit of the times changes. The 18th century was good; the 19th century mixed, the 20th century baneful. Universities incubated both fascism and communism, along with their many sub-versions (pun intended). Although the great democracies defeated those two particular monstrosities in the end, it was a close-run thing and no thanks to their academic elites. As for the 21st century, with jihadists infesting campuses all over the world, we’re off to a rocky start.

[. . .]

When some brave souls associated with universities speak out against censorship, as they do on occasion, they’re the inspirational exception. The rule is an obedient dissemination of the dogma of the day, including terrorist chic, with Hamas apologists shouting: “No freedom of speech for racists.” I heard them do it at the Alma Mater of a noxious doctrine called “Israeli Apartheid,” a.k.a. University of Toronto.

A Canadian institution of higher learning is the least likely place, I’d say, to encourage a clash of ideas to discover the truth. Greasing the squeakiest wheel of an intellectual bandwagon, then handing out honorary doctorates to those who hitch a ride on it, would be more of its speed.

QotD: The evolution of the public sector

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Education, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:03

The public-sector workplace has become a kind of artificial Eden, whose fortunate inhabitants enjoy solid pay and 1950s-style job security and retirement benefits, all of it paid for by their less-fortunate private-sector peers. Some on the left have convinced themselves that this “success” can lay the foundation for a broader middle-class revival. But if a bloated public sector were the blueprint for a thriving middle-class society, then the whole world would be beating a path to Greece’s door.

Our entitlement system, meanwhile, is designed to redistribute wealth. But this redistribution doesn’t go from the idle rich to the working poor; it goes from young to old, working-age savings to retiree consumption, middle-class parents to empty-nest seniors. The Congressional Budget Office’s new report on income inequality points out that growing Medicare costs are part of the reason upper-income retirees receive a larger share of federal spending than they did 30 years ago, while working-age households with children receive “a much smaller and declining share of transfers.” Absent reforms, this mismatch will only grow more pronounced: by the 2030s, Medicare recipients will receive $3 in benefits for every dollar they paid in.

Then there’s the public education system, theoretically the nation’s most important socioeconomic equalizer. Yet even though government spending on K-to-12 education has more than doubled since the 1970s, test scores have flatlined and the United States has fallen behind its developed-world rivals. Meanwhile, federal spending on higher education has been undercut by steadily inflating tuitions, in what increasingly looks like an academic answer to the housing bubble. (If the Occupy Wall Street dream of student loan forgiveness were fulfilled, this cycle would probably just continue.)

The story of the last three decades, in other words, is not the story of a benevolent government starved of funds by selfish rich people and fanatical Republicans. It’s a story of a public sector that has consistently done less with more, and a liberalism that has often defended the interests of narrow constituencies — public-employee unions, affluent seniors, the education bureaucracy — rather than the broader middle class.

Ross Douthat, “What Tax Dollars Can’t Buy”, New York Times, 2011-10-30

November 1, 2011

Niall Ferguson on the West’s “killer applications”

Filed under: Economics, History, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:08

Niall Ferguson points to several key institutional innovations that were key to the rise of the West, compared to the rest of the world:

The West first surged ahead of the Rest after about 1500 thanks to a series of institutional innovations that I call the “killer applications”:

1. Competition. Europe was politically fragmented into multiple monarchies and republics, which were in turn internally divided into competing corporate entities, among them the ancestors of modern business corporations.

2. The Scientific Revolution. All the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology happened in Western Europe.

3. The Rule of Law and Representative Government. An optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on private-property rights and the representation of property owners in elected legislatures.

4. Modern Medicine. Nearly all the major 19th- and 20th-century breakthroughs in health care were made by Western Europeans and North Americans.

5. The Consumer Society. The Industrial Revolution took place where there was both a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better, and cheaper goods, beginning with cotton garments.

6. The Work Ethic. Westerners were the first people in the world to combine more extensive and intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.

For hundreds of years, these killer apps were essentially monopolized by Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia. They are the best explanation for what economic historians call “the great divergence”: the astonishing gap that arose between Western standards of living and those in the rest of the world.

Long Island Rail Road: “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal — but what’s legal“

Filed under: Law, Politics, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:37

Nicole Gelinas points out that the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) pension scam is only part of the problem:

Last week, the feds indicted 11 Long Island Rail Road retirees and their alleged associates in a “massive fraud scheme” to steal a billion dollars through fake disability claims. But the bigger outrage is that for decades the LIRR has held state taxpayers and riders hostage — thanks to outdated Washington labor laws.

The first inkling of the scandal came in 2008, when a press report noted that nearly every LIRR worker retired early, getting an MTA pension and a federal benefit. Looking into the anomaly, federal prosecutors unearthed evidence that at least two doctors and other “facilitators” had for years signed off on fake injuries and ailments so that workers could take their pensions.

[. . .]

The state’s fear of an LIRR strike helps drive up the railroad’s costs. Last year, the Empire Center reported, the average LIRR worker pulled in $84,850 — not including benefits.

That’s more than anywhere at the MTA except headquarters — and 23 percent more than subway and bus workers make. Seven of the top 10 people who made more in overtime than they did in regular wages hailed from the LIRR — including one conductor who tripled his $75,390 salary. Plus, workers pay nothing for health benefits.

Beaver versus Polar Bear

Filed under: Cancon, History, Humour — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:08

Lester Haines conjures up exactly the right image to illustrate the absurdity of the “Canadian national symbol” argument:

A Canadian politician has rather deliciously insisted that vast tracts of his nation were opened by “the relentless pursuit of beaver”, an agreeable concept that for some reason conjures an image of Silvio Berlusconi furiously paddling a kayak through white water rapids in pursuit of a fleeing supermodel.

The description of Canada’s beaver-hunting past comes from New Democratic Party MP Pat Martin, who isn’t too impressed with Ontario senator Nicole Eaton’s proposal to replace the beaver with the polar bear as the country’s national emblem.

Eaton reckons the polar bear, with its “strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity” is a more appropriate emblem for the 21st century than the “dentally defective rat” that has symbolised the nation since 1975.

While I don’t think the symbol needs to be changed, it might be best if our politicians are busy in this sort of snark hunt rather than inflicting further intrusive regulations and distortions into the economy.

Alberta’s policy to help small breweries has unintended consquences

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:20

When governments try to rig markets to achieve certain goals, they often end up getting results they didn’t foresee:

The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission presumably had good intentions in mind when it brewed up a policy to lend a helping hand to small breweries. Namely, beer companies qualify for substantially reduced beer tax rates on the first 200,000 hectolitres sold in Alberta. The explicit aim was to help small players compete against industry leviathans such as Molson and Labatt. And, implicitly, the tax break would entice craft breweries to set up shop in the province.

However, eight years after the reduced beer tax rates—estimated by one analyst to total about $200 million in savings—were first implemented, little in the Alberta beer business has worked out the way the AGLC envisioned. Only five small breweries have opened for business in Alberta since the policy was implemented. And in that time Alberta has, in fact, become a market characterized by discount beer. And at least one of the breweries taking advantage of the AGLC policy doesn’t even brew in the province, let alone Canada.

[. . .]

Alberta’s small brewer system would appear to be yet another case of the law of unintended consequences—especially when a government agency tinkers with the free market economy. From a dearth of craft brewers to a helping hand for American jobs, the AGLC’s beer tax policy is enough to drive a teetotalling Albertan to drink.

NFL week 8 results

Filed under: Football — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:12

I’m much happier with my results this week, although it only helps me regain some of the ground I’d lost over the previous two weeks. I’m now sharing a three-way tie for tenth spot in the AoSHQ pool (six points behind the leader, but only two points out of second place).

    √ @Tennessee 27 Indianapolis 10
    ∅ New Orleans 21 @St. Louis 31
    √ @New York (NYG) 20 Miami 17
    √ @Carolina 21 Minnesota 24
    √ @Baltimore 30 Arizona 27
    √ @Houston 24 Jacksonville 14
    √ @Buffalo 23 Washington 0
    √ Detroit 45 @Denver 10
    √ New England 17 @Pittsburgh 25
    √ @San Francisco 20 Cleveland 10
    √ Cincinnati 34 @Seattle 12
    ∅ @Philadelphia 34 Dallas 7
    ∅ San Diego 20 @Kansas City 23

This week 10-3 (8-5 against the spread)
Season to date 74-42

QotD: The unnatural prolongation of adolescence

Filed under: Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

OWS: Lawless, selfish, disrespectful, and mean. They are overgrown children, in other words — not adults in any real sense of the word. It is an oddity about modern Americans that always strikes me: many seem so . . . unformed. I’ve seen pictures of my grandfather and grandmother when they were in their early 20’s (married and with 2 kids already, and another on the way) and they seemed like fully-formed adults already. They looked like adults; they dressed like adults; they behaved as adults. Yet now I see people at 30, 40, 50 years old who seem little more than self-obsessed adolescents — smug, directionless, angry but inchoate, lavishly educated but not particularly intelligent, entitled without being industrious or deserving. They even groom and dress like children: slovenly, unwashed, unbarbered, sneakers, t-shirts, sweatpants, looking like unmade beds. I look at the OWS protests and I see a crowd of ill-behaved, unsupervised toddlers, but no adults willing (or perhaps able) to call them to order. My grandparents had much more difficult lives in any way you can measure than these spoiled brats, and yet they were better people — and happier people, on the whole.

“Monty”, “DOOM: I like that Doom Doom Pow”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2011-10-31

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