In the prior post I brought back some of 2018’s posts from this blog that should have had more internet traction. In case you missed them, here are a few more: Government budgets are moral documents It looks like a real U.S. budget from the dysfunctional Congress will not be a Paul Ryan legacy. He should have read this post… Read more »
I started this blog in early 2018 as a place to post some pieces I had developed over several years looking at how probabilistic randomness and other mathematical realities affect everything from the way we vote to our scientific and religious understandings of the “human condition.” Some blog posts achieved more web penetration than others, and so this post is… Read more »
In an earlier post I looked at the business side of what I call penny-sucking economics, where significant effects on the economy are made in billions of small-amount transactions. In this part, I will look at the effect of penny-sucking economics on ordinary consumers and its role in rising income inequality.
The comic books of my youth often had a section in the back advertising the opportunity to purchase something wondrous for only one dollar plus a self-addressed, stamped envelope. While these offers were usually disappointing once received, I remember my first get-rich idea was to try to get one million people to send me a dollar. It turns out that… Read more »
I think it is safe to say that most utility executives detest net metering, in which any excess electricity generated by solar panels and other home-based “green technology” is “bought back” by the electric utility at the same rate charged to that home for using electricity. I sat on a “green innovations” committee for my small Iowa town for a… Read more »
December 1, 2018, is the 49th anniversary of a major sociological experiment in randomness conducted by the United States government, and it is one that changed the fates of hundreds of thousands of young men and their families. On December 1, 1969, the first televised Selective Service draft, also the first nationwide randomized draft since World War II, was conducted… Read more »
Note: This post has been updated for 2020 data. While I still don’t understand why most Republicans continue to see science and scientists as the enemy, especially in the area of climate change, let me suggest that if you don’t want to hear what the scientists have to say, would you perhaps listen to the actuaries instead? I’ve known a… Read more »
Are there viable alternatives to the credentialing/degree system widely employed in American higher education? Is there innovation in the wings that both enables a more cost-effective education credentialing process and also puts at risk scores of traditional educational institutions? That is the subject of this post. In earlier posts I have been exploring the financial implications of “free college for… Read more »
In the mess around apparent voter suppression and messy counts endemic to this past midterm election, a fundamental misunderstanding of our constitutional rights is played out frequently by media commenters who ought to know better. In brief, the U.S. is not quite the democracy that you likely thought it was, and perhaps it is time that we did something about… Read more »
The prior post in this series on the math of “free college for all” was about the application of the “fixed-cost dilemma” to higher education funding, which unavoidably skews the financial choices made by college and university administrators based on the accounting treatment of fixed versus incremental costs in their institutions. There is no better place to look at this… Read more »