Colleen Hroncich, Cato at Liberty, December 6, 2024.
excerpt:
Although conservative Christians are probably not generally considered pioneers, they were at the forefront of homeschooling in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s no wonder, then, that many curricula and resources for homeschoolers are Christian in nature. When Blair Lee, a college professor with a background in chemistry and biology, started homeschooling her son in the early 2000s, she struggled to find quality secular science resources. What started as an effort to fill that gap eventually became Secular Eclectic Academic (SEA) Homeschoolers.
“Homeschooling was never on my radar,” Blair says. “My son was a very early reader. ‘No Child Left Behind’ left all the older kids behind. His teacher inspired me to decide to homeschool him. “She said that with the current system, my child would be prepared for a lot of tests and that they would always want to take tests because it would make the school look good.” They will not be given jobs that challenge them and encourage their growth. The teacher predicted that eventually he would wonder why he needed to try so hard. Although he is still “advanced,” he will be performing well below his capabilities. Blair listened to his teachers and homeschooled his son from first grade through high school.
DRH Comment: The teacher’s treatment of the child was terrible. I don’t necessarily blame the teachers. It was people at the top of the government who messed it up. I remember what was one of the last two straws that motivated me to pull my daughter out of Pacific Grove Public Schools at the end of fourth grade. We went to the parent-teacher conference and said to the teacher: “My daughter is getting all A’s, but she’s wondering what the A’s mean.” The teacher replied, “Oh, Karen is one of those people you don’t have to worry about.” . From the context, it was clear that “worry” meant “thinking.”
Conversable Economist, by Timothy Taylor, December 9, 2024.
excerpt:
When people outside Argentina discuss Javier Millei, who will become president of Argentina in December 2023, it can feel as if they are actually saying how they would feel if Millei were elected in their own country. there is. For example, Mr. Millay effectively cut Argentina’s government spending by 30% in one year. As such, U.S.-based commentators tend to judge him based on whether he supports a 30% cut in U.S. government spending. They do not ask whether such a policy would make sense in Argentina in particular, or what facts of Argentina’s history would motivate a majority of voters to try such a policy. Not yet.
To understand why Argentines turn to Millay, it helps to ask the following questions: What happens if your country’s standard of living growth lags by decades? Additionally, from the 1990s to 2000 What if we had a reform experience that seemed to work in the early 2000s, but now it feels like the country is back on the same old treadmill of very slow growth and high inflation?Tobias Martínez González and Juan Pablo Nicolini, in “Argentina at the Crossroads” (Quarterly Review: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, November 13, 2024), provide background on Argentina’s economic experience throughout history. There is. Since both schools are affiliated with the University of Torquato di Tella in Buenos Aires, they are providing a close-up look at Argentina’s economy and Millei’s inauguration as president. Their purpose is not to comment on the merits of what Mr. Milley has done in his first year as president, but to convey Argentina’s economic situation, which is the response to which Mr. Milley was elected.
and:
The authors summarize Argentina’s economic experience over the past half century in tables and figures. The table shows that growth was briefly strong in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the Argentine government was able to control inflation. But as inflation rose, growth fell.
Marc Joffe, Cato at Liberty, December 9, 2024.
excerpt:
The baseball club formerly known as the Oaklanders began a journey that would eventually reach Las Vegas in the late 2020s. But the team may need to ask for more money from Nevada taxpayers before completing its journey. Professional sports, where wealthy owners hire well-paid athletes to compete in front of disproportionately wealthy audiences, may seem like the least suitable business for a large tax-funded government operation. , somehow the subsidies never end.
Until the early 20th century, stadiums in the United States were typically privately funded. But in 1928, voters in Cleveland, Ohio, approved a $2.5 million bond measure to fund the construction of Cleveland Municipal Stadium, beginning the Depression-era trend toward publicly funded construction. The stadium failed as part of the 1932 Olympic bid, but soon became the home of the MLB Cleveland Indians and later the NFL Cleveland Browns. The facility was demolished in 1995, just 64 years after it opened, reinforcing the idea that major municipal infrastructure projects are generational investments that will benefit residents far into the future. It’s something to put a damper on. Instead, stadiums rapidly age and require replacement or costly modifications.
The same goes for the Oakland Coliseum, which opened in 1966, became home to the A’s in 1968, and was considered obsolete long before the A’s eventual departure in 2024. The Coliseum and adjacent Oakland Arena have long been plagued by municipal bond debt. their very existence.
By Phil A. McBride, The Line, December 10, 2024.
excerpt:
For more than a century, Canadian businesses have relied on checks and the post office to send and receive money across the country and around the world. It’s simple. All you have to do is write a check, put it in the mail, the recipient deposits it in their bank, waits five business days for it to clear, and voila, you have your money.
However, that is of course not happening at the moment as the postal strike continues. In fact, tons of checks in the mail are stuck there, leaving businesses and Canadians with money stuck in transit. I am increasingly convinced that this strike will be remembered in the future as the death of checks in Canada, at least as a primary medium of business exchange.
By JD Tucille, Reason, December 11, 2024.
excerpt:
Evoking collective cries of despair from socialists and anti-corporate protesters, Pennsylvania State Police have arrested Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. They argue that Thompson was interfering with the medical care they thought they deserved, and that shooting him dead in the street was a bloody attack on justice.
This assassin’s fans, and the justice system has yet to convict him of this crime, are morally degenerate people. But if insurance executives like Thompson think that’s all that stands between them and their vision of a single-payer health care system that meets every desire, they’re also dreaming. It will be. There’s a lot wrong with the primary way health care is paid for and delivered in the United States, but what the haters want is probably unachievable, and the methods many of them prefer will make the situation even worse. Dew.
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And Canada’s single-payer system is notoriously reliant on long wait times for rationed care. “Doctors report that in 2023, the median wait time between referral from a general practitioner and receiving treatment will be 27.7 weeks,” the Fraser Institute researched last year. “This represents the longest delay in the study’s history and is 198 per cent longer than the 9.3 week wait time that Canadian patients expected in 1993.”
One has to wonder what the people who are furious about Brian Thompson and applaud his murder would say about the officials who control the system elsewhere. No hospital offers “no waiting time, free of charge, and unlimited treatment from a doctor of your choice.” Some insurers lack the minimum discipline imposed by competition among U.S. insurers.
Written by Joshua D. Rauh and Gregory Kearney, Hoover Institution, November 2024.
excerpt:
However, most states significantly underestimate spending, often using interest rates as high as 7.5%, assuming that high investment returns will make up for much of the shortfall. For example, using an assumed return on investment of 7.5 percent, the state can say that $100,000 that will be paid out in about 10 years is “fully funded” even if only $50,000 is set aside today. Using more realistic assumptions associated with the Treasury yield curve, the authors of the above study found that a more accurate approximation of the underfunding level is $5.12 trillion.
Because of these concerns, states have largely ignored the possibility of making a significant transition away from DB. [Defined Benefit] It seeks to offset some of the DB costs by increasing contribution rates that are allocated to employees, school districts, and, to a lesser extent, state governments themselves, rather than to plans. For example, California increased employee contribution rates from 8% of salary to 10.25% from 2014 to 2024. Over the same period, the employer contribution rate increased from 8.25% of salary to 19.1%. The state government’s own contribution rate is 8.328%, which may only increase by at most 0.5% per year. Without these increased contributions, which are largely passed on to school districts, unfunded liabilities would continue to grow even more rapidly.
