StrangeSox

If you have some sort of ideological problem with the U3 rate, well, okay, the same government using "pseudo rules, loopholes and shortcuts" publishes U1, U2, U4, U5 and U6 as well. I think most people think of and view the unemployment rate as a measurement device and they're looking at it in relative terms. It doesn't matter if you don't like where it's calibrated to if you're just using it to gauge "more or less than a previous measurement" or to analyze trend lines. That's not to say that it's not important to consider changing workforce participation rates, underemployment, etc., but there's nothing inherently wrong or dishonest about the U3 rate. That piece Y2HH linked to seems pretty hackish. It presents the "unemployment rate" as a single number that the government puts out and doesn't mention that they actually put out six different numbers. Then it presents this graph: Interestingly, it doesn't actually cite any of the data used to produce it. Are the non-employed all of the non-employed (U-6), or just discouraged workers (U-4)? But, more problematic, it labels them as the "Official Unemployment Rate" and the "Unemployment Rate Adjusted for the Nonemployed." Why not explain what U-3 and U-4 are and label them that way? Probably because it would undermine the central argument that the "official unemployment rate" is just a lie from politicians to support Democratic policies (see: the swipes at QE and stimulus spending). FWIW, Davies is affiliated with CATO and works in the economics department at GMU, one of the most libertarian universities around. He's clearly making these arguments in a political context, not as a disinterested economic observer.

QUOTE (Jake @ Oct 9, 2013 -> 08:42 AM) Just a growing trend in the USA - money as the all-determining factor to the quality of your existence nvm misread what Jake wrote

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 03:14 PM) Bought tickets for Gravity this coming weekend at the IMAX. It's going to cost my wife and I 48 bucks for the tickets and parking. f***ing insane. Where are you seeing the movie that you have to pay for parking? You're in the 'burbs.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 8, 2013 -> 02:38 PM) So farming/food production shouldn't be either? QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 8, 2013 -> 03:14 PM) In a perfect world, no, they should be socialized.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 8, 2013 -> 02:34 PM) Education shouldn't be a for-profit game though, especially if it's being paid with government funds. Most colleges are non-profit. Do you mean to say that people working in the education field should take a vow of poverty?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 8, 2013 -> 02:08 PM) Not to discount research, but why is that the responsibility of the tuition paying student? If I was paying tuition, I am paying it to be taught, not so he can go publish papers, research things and add a little to his prestige. A lot of research is funded by outside grants, but many institutions are research institutions and students know this full-well before attending. Some colleges, like Rose-Hulman, are teaching facilities first, but your flagship schools are primarily research-based. If they weren't it'd be hard to attract grad students and professors who either are training or have trained for a life of research. It's not about "adding a little to their prestige," it's one of the primary reasons professorships exist.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 8, 2013 -> 12:06 PM) You are crazy. I have swype and there's no way I could open up messaging and then swype accurately enough to write coherently. Maybe "I here" Oh yeah it's not until I'm actually in the message box that I'm talking about.

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 8, 2013 -> 11:54 AM) I wonder if food producers are thinking, hey we need to be extra careful during the shutdown because the government isn't fully supporting and watching over us

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/...own-salmonella/

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 8, 2013 -> 10:59 AM) One thing I genuinely miss - memorizing the buttons to click to open up a text, using alpha to write in my text, and sending. Not even having to look at the screen. I don't have to look at my screen using swype

you can calibrate that usually

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 8, 2013 -> 09:26 AM) That is so unbelievable it's laughable. That would basically mean every single claim was legit except for what 60 minutes reported. They literally found every case of fraud in the country. GMAB. SS disability is just like workers' compensation: you find Petitioner-whore doctors to opine about over stated injuries and there's really nothing an arbitrator/admin judge can do but accept what that doctor says in his/her medical records. Edit: Looks to me like that 1% rate has nothing to do with fraud so much as errors in calculating benefits when someone had been working or could have worked: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-13-635 NPR had to issue a bunch of corrections to their stories after they were very heavily criticized. The 60 Minutes piece repeats essentially all of the same errors.

$120k from three students wouldn't come close to covering the cost of a single professor, given how many ways that $120k would be split before it went to a professor's salary.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 09:42 PM) Without the administrative support the professors production will decrease dramatically. I hate taking a great deal of time entering data into spreadsheets. I meant at a higher level, New directors of this or that made-up position, outsized compensation packages, etc., not administrative assistants. I can dig up the data on this tomorrow if you're interested.

Hey guys what's going on in this thread

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 06:57 PM) When McDonalds had already settled many, many lawsuits over their too hot coffee while continuing to serve coffee many degrees hotter than anyone else? Yes. Their rational was their customers did not drink the coffee in the car, but waited until they were at work. Further causing the McD trouble was their employees initially refused the woman napkins while laughing at her. Read up on it. It really is a fascinating case and miles different than was portrayed in pop culture. Let's not forget that she suffered third degree burns. It wasn't some mildly hot coffee that was uncomfortable.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 05:01 PM) I've been involved in far too many for it to be too overstated and that's just my limited experience in Illinois. I'm convinced that the laws need to change because the greatest cost in medicine is the malpractice insurance. You may be convinced of that, but there is really no empirical support for that position. At all.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 05:38 PM) Actually 60 minutes's piece was terrible. The majority of people applying for benefits under that program are still denied, and the appeal rate has actually fallen since the collapse rather than increased. The program itself is heavily audited by the GAO because of misleading claims like the one you just made and it is constantly found to have fraud rates that are well below 1%. The people getting disability under social security meet the standards for disability. In fact, under more reasonable standards, more people probably should be able to receive that. A university of Michigan study found that out of the people who applied are turned down, nearly 80% are still not working 2 years later. The main reason why disability claims have increased since the recession is an aging population. The Social Security program trustees in 1994 predicted that there would be an increase in disability claims necessitating an infusion of extra funds into the program by 2016 solely as a consequence of an aging population, putting it right on schedule for exactly what we've seen. The program itself has sent back cash to the treasury before and basically will remain close to long-term balance once what was predicted 2 decades ago happens. There was also an increase in the retirement age for OASDI benefits a couple years ago from 65 to 66, leaving quite a few more people disabled who would otherwise have been covered by regular social security benefits. Npr had a similarly terrible piece earlier this year.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 06:04 PM) There is simply n o reason that it should cost $40,000+ a year for a person to go to college, where they see an actual person for maybe 4 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week. 2-3 students per year should be able to cover a teacher's costs. What do the other 30-50 students cover? Time for higher educational facilities to cut the fat. Administrative and facilities bloat, slashed state funding. Definitely not professorship positions, which are being increasingly replaced with non-tenure adjunct lecturer positions.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 03:20 PM) Alot of this however is a continuous circle pretty much exclusive to the US. Much of it is the legal system. Unlimited tort and lawsuits force the medical practitioner to have highly priced insurance for protection. Insurance companies payout far too much on some cases. These are the same insurance companies which own many of the health care insurance companies. They take loses in one area and make it up in others. One sure way to lower insurance costs in the US and where it all should start is tort reform. I've been an expert witness in many cases where the lawsuits where absolutely stupid yet insurance companies had to pay. There are many legitimate ones as well but too many stupid ones. Tort reform has been tried in the US in several states. The results are negligible. Multiple studies have found that the costs of medical torts are pretty typically overstated. http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpres...-of-proportion/

I think we can all agree that this anecdote from HH shows us all just how 'valuable' an education from ND is!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 10:27 AM) Replace him with a bottom level coach, and the revenue from the program disappears with it. This doesn't apply to the players as well?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 10:01 AM) The biggest reason is that the system would probably collapse if they had to change it for the 1% of the 1%. Stop and think about it for a while. The vast majority of schools aren't what are being talked about here. And within those schools, we aren't talking about the vast majority of their athletes. If you had to come up with a pay system to pay players, you would be adding how much? $2000 per athlete per year? $5000? $10,000? Minimum wage? Now start multiplying that times all of the players on each team, at each university. Also remember because of Title IX you couldn't pay just the teams making money, aka the male teams, you would have a system that gave equal pay to all female athletes as well, in equal headcounts as male teams. History has already shown non-top university programs being shuttered over the minimal costs of Title IX. Can you imagine what is would look like if you and added hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least, to non-revenue programs and sports, at non-revenue producing universities? Really all you are doing is taking away opportunities for a free educations for kids who might not have that chance otherwise (once those scholarships and teams disappear), in favor of kids who are going to make their money anyway. You don't actually have to do any of that. You simply abolish the NCAA cartel's rules that forbid a school from paying athletes or from athletes making money outside of the school. Doesn't Boeheim's $1.8M+/year salary take away opportunities for free educations? Why does this argument apply to some of the NCAA labor force, but not other parts? If the reality were that the billions of dollars generated primarily from basketball and football were being used to fund other scholarships, general campus improvements, etc. that would be one thing, but they aren't. They're used to make basketball and football coaches and the AD's some of the highest paid employees on campus and to build sports stadiums and training facilities.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 09:48 AM) Nice move of the goalposts. What goalposts were moved, and from where? edit: moving goalposts doesn't mean changing the topic, but I wasn't trying to do that, either. I added that response as an aside. It's not really directly relevant to the topic at hand (why NCAA athletes shouldn't be paid), which is why I started with the "BTW."

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 09:47 AM) I'm impressed you are so worried about rewarding the elite athletes of America. Is this supposed to be an argument for or against something? It just looks like an irrelevant sideswipe. Why should these athletes be frozen out of the multi-billion dollar revenue stream they generate and that makes piles of money for coaches, AD's, media networks, apparel companies, etc.? edit: I don't see how my concerns here don't align with my politics in general. I'm siding with labor getting a bigger share of the profits they generate and that wouldn't exist with their work over the NCAA cartel controlling all of it. Look to major league labor disputes, and you'll see me making similar stances. If there's one aspect of the labor market that actually approaches anything close to a true meritocracy, it's professional sports.