A Cynical Look at Higher Education

For those interested in getting their PhD you may enjoy this. No comments needed. Enjoy.

The Future of the Textbook

When a technological shock is ushered into an industry economists examine what the ramifications are. This is an excellent example, and if your stuck on a final position paper this may give you some ideas. In addition if you are writing about the music industry or journalism there may be some correlations here. The old way of doing things has changed. How do we move on? (this is not an economists, but it is a great read for this type of class)

Deficit vs. Debt

Yet another example of how politicians try to play on words. This is a typical article about how our federal government needs to cut the deficit. What should be the serious discussion is what to do about the debt. I don’t know who to blame, the politicians or the journalists who never mention this to them. At stake are your generation’s future austerity packages. As we learn in class, cutting the deficit every year will still result in increasing the national debt.

The Beginning of TARP

We learn about the theory behind TARP and we read about it in the paper, but this video really explains how things really started. Please take the time to watch the video and be ready to discuss it next week.

Batting .300

For those baseball fans out there this article is a great one. Another example of how economists are everywhere. The picture is very telling.

Our Stagnate Economy

Technically speaking we are not in a recession. That does not mean our economy is doing well. Far from it as this article details. What they do not even mention is that we need about 100 to 150 thousand jobs just to keep up with the retiring baby boomers. Not only are we not getting these jobs in our economy but we actually lost about 100 thousand jobs this past month. The charts in the article tell the story of just how many jobs we need to recoup to get to where we were. The bottom line is that just because we stopped digging ourselves in a deeper hole doesn’t mean we are near climbing out of it yet.

Will Philadelphia Tackle The Marijuana Controversy?

The big question is “Should we (Philadelphia) legalize Marijuana?” This issue is right around the corner. Many local publications have given their takes on it. Some good recent sources:

The Philadelphia Magazine, and three from the Inquirer this past Sunday. One against, two for it (one by an economist).