HarryHirsch

In Europe the law argues that cars are dangerous, and if you loan your car to a habitual bad driver, that's on you. You can either get the person who drove it to fess up, or the judge can fine you (because you lent out your car against better judgment) and impose a drivers log, so the circus doesn't happen again.

The arguing about having a constitutional right to drive bad boggles the mind, road deaths in the US are high, compared to civilized nations. Wikipedia states it's 14.2 deaths per 100000 inhbitants, that's between Sierra Leone (13.8) and Angola (15.0). For comparison, India has 12.6 traffic deaths per 100000 citizens and the worst country in Europe is Greece at 6.1.

The right metric is death per citizen, not per mile, because it's about the number of people who have lost a family member or friend.

When you get around exclusively on two wheels (motorcycle and bicycle) bad drivers are a direct safety threat. Even cagers ought to be careful about being permissive with red light running, side-on crashes are remarkably deadly for the one who got hit in the door because there is not much structural protection or space on the side of the vehicle.

Economists, of course - the confounder of discrimination is absent here. Recall: if something appears weird in the US, it's usually due to slavery.

They imported top graduate student talent that went to the us and might have wished to stay but could not or wouldn't put up with the H1-B indentured servitude or was better paid back home or just patriotic.

Also - less financialization. In US, a statistician goes to work for any 3-letter agency or high finance. In a less financialized economy they might devote themselves to crystallography instead.

George Sheldrick wrote an important program at the age of 75. He chose not to follow a chess career as a young man, but he could have.

... pitching his books and preaching the Prosperity Gospel, which is antithetical to mainstream Christianity and not good financial advice.

Why would someone listen to Dave Ramsey of all people? He is neither an economist, nor a Christian, he has nothing to contribute to the subject!

His shtick is real estate investment, of course he wants to see Joe Public buy a starter home. The trouble is: real estate as a government-guaranteed investment vehicle is what brought us the housing affordability crisis.

The decision to implement benefit cliffs is absolutely intentional, because income requirements that cause people to fall of medicaid or SNAP completely are sharp, and maybe 10 % of the population rely on those. Obamacare subsidies are phased out gradually, because half the country relies on Obamacare, and if there were issues around Obamacare, that would have repercussions at the ballot box.

It serves to have an underclass that politicians can dump on, it seems.

Their health would improve?

It's not an unmitigated positive, instead it's a transparent move to paper over the high cost of housing by getting both parents to work. Of course housing prices will adjust accordingly, the supply remains the same, and the demand side has more money to spend.

It's not a surprise that especially at elite college it's classical economics that is taught in the gen. ed. courses. Its models are simple, and plainly visibly wrong.

If behavioural economics or political economics were taught instead, anything with models that have explanatory power it would be viewed as lefty and revolutionary, and that would really upset donors. Consequently we are stuck with homo oeconomicus.

Yet meanwhile, women entered the legal profession in the 1920's but wages did not catch up until the 1960's when the Equal Pay Act was passed. Economics 101 would say you could snap up competent female lawyers for a little more than they were paid at their current firm and thus wages would creep up, yet this would not happen.

The authorities aren't going to send you off to reeducation, they will just determine (accurately) that you are a me-first guy who must not be allowed on the public roads and won't return your license. A win for the general public because road traffic is a coordinated effort.

Truth, but we need to consider road safety. Lock the lady up, and lock all other texters up. Motorcyclists all over the nation would agree.

School voucher 2.0, it's going to be great!