From the American Conservative: The College Bubble Won’t Just Pop Although taken for granted by millions of Americans, the choice to obtain a college degree mystifies economists. Teenagers making the first significant financial decision of their lives are paraded through prospective student tours—essentially timeshare presentations for minors—and finally make an arbitrary pick where they will… Continue reading Why the college bubble won’t pop

This aged poorly Sorry, deficit hawks: low interest rates are here to stay And then in April 2022 he reverses course, arguing that policy makers are not doing enough about inflation. The timing of first article, August 19, 2021, couldn’t have been worse. Although inflation was starting to pick up a bit, treasury yields were… Continue reading Why did inflation spiral out of control: a retrospective

It’s intellectually trendy nowadays to downplay the importance and or significance of college. Some common arguments I see are: “It’s just signaling” “It’s just conformity/obedience” “College is only good for measuring conscientiousness” There is truth to all of these. But I still stand by the perhaps less popular assertion that college, especially for STEM but… Continue reading School and College: it’s more than just conformity and obedience

MSTR has dropped 25% today to $150, which means it has given up all its gains since the CEO, Michael Saylor, began buying bitcoin in 2019-2020. But hasn’t the price of Bitcoin still risen since then? Yes, but the problem is Mr. Saylor took on billions of dollars of debt to buy Bitcoin at above… Continue reading The crypto crash, continued

I saw this going viral Social Justice Advocates Don’t Get to Just Exempt Themselves From Politics But they’re not going to step back. The fact that you might have been able to enforce such a condition in your seminar on the humanities at Columbia does not mean that this is a principle that will survive… Continue reading The left don’t need politics

I saw this going viral The Rich Are Not Who We Think They Are. And Happiness Is Not What We Think It Is, Either. First, rich people own. Among members of the top 0.1 percent, the researchers found, about three times as many make the majority of their income from owning a business as from… Continue reading Low tech vs. high-tech wealth, and the relationship between wealth and power

Childhood lead exposure is often blamed for black academic underachievement. It’s a popular explanation because it bypasses the much more partisan issue of race, and both sides are probably in agreement that childhood lead exposure is determinantal to development. How well does this lead hypothesis stand up to scrutiny? Poorly. The black-white SAT math gap… Continue reading Don’t blame lead for black-white achievement gap

Why Bitcoin is Not That Stupid Overall it’s a pretty bad argument. As I have said many times, there is a definite inverse correlation between the size of one’s personal brand/following versus accuracy/usefulness of said individual’s advice or skill. People who have 0-100 followers on Twitter, annons on 4chan, etc. are much more likely to… Continue reading No good reason to buy bitcoin

Taleb claims there was deflation in 2020: INFLATION (again)When discussing the inflation of 2022 (like parrots), make sure you incorporate the deflation of 2020. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 7, 2022 Of course, this is refuted by looking at the actual data, which shows inflation in 2020, about 1.2%. Any alleged deflation in 2020… Continue reading Tooleb tweets, part 3

The tweet below seems to exemplify or encapsulate the situation today regarding the so-called ‘vacuum of leadership’ as discussed in How the Vacuum of Leadership in Washington led to Rage Online: Weak nations require strong leaders; strong nations require weak leaders, or, better, no leader. (New pamphlet) — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 5, 2022… Continue reading The Vacuum of Leadership, part 2