BTW, despite all the serious problem with the US education system, the fundamental problem is economic. The US still has the best engineers in the world and extremely productive workforce but the jobs are outsourced abroad because multinational corporations find it more profitable to employ cheep low-level slave labor than expensive top-notch US labor. Education is NOT the problem, it’s a (very serious) symptom of the failure of the US political-economy.
Archive for the ‘Links/Articles/Video’ Category
The American Dream Is Leaving America – NYTimes.com
Posted: 2014/10/28 by Punkonomics (@dearbalak) in Links/Articles/VideoTags: education, human capital, investment, US
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All The Wealth The Middle Class Accumulated After 1940 Is Gone
Posted: 2014/10/27 by Punkonomics (@dearbalak) in Links/Articles/VideoTags: income, inequality, middle class, wealth
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/20/middle-class-wealth-shrinks-1940s_n_6014874.html
Here’s more proof the middle class is dying.
The middle-class share of American wealth has been shrinking for the better part of three decades and recently fell to its lowest level since 1940, according to a new studyby economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics.
In other words, remember the surge of the great American middle class after World War II? That’s all gone, at least by one measure.
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Why our happiness and satisfaction should replace GDP in policy making
Posted: 2014/10/24 by Punkonomics (@dearbalak) in Links/Articles/VideoTags: economics, GDP, happiness, policy, satisfaction, Subjective Well Being, SWB
Why our happiness and satisfaction should replace GDP in policy making.
Since 1990, GDP per person in China has doubled and then redoubled. With average incomes multiplying fourfold in little more than two decades, one might expect many of the Chinese people to be dancing in the streets. Yet, when asked about their satisfaction with life, they are, if anything, less satisfied than in 1990.
The disparity indicated by these two measures of human progress, Gross Domestic Product and Subjective Well Being (SWB), makes pretty plain the issue at hand. GDP, the well-being indicator commonly used in policy circles, signals an outstanding advance in China. SWB, as indicated by self-reports of overall satisfaction with life, suggests, if anything, a worsening of people’s lives. Which measure is a more meaningful index of well-being? Which is a better guide for public policy?
Punkonomics (@DearBalak) 