Millionaires Go Missing

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124329282377252471.html

This Wall Street Journal article shows the problems the left has
with simple arithmetic. When you tax something more you get less of it. When you subsidize something more you get more of it.

We are subsidizing business and personal failure at a faster clip each and every day and what are we doing for job creation? Well we continue to make it incredibly difficult to hire your first employee - and we keep adding payroll taxes to those that dare to hire anyone new (unless they happen to be a UAW auto worker).

There is a point when folks simply sell there homes and businesses and move elsewhere.

Irish lad pulls the wool over the media

http://news.aol.com/article/wikipedia-quote-hoax/475157?icid=webmail|wbml-aol|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fwikipedia-quote-hoax%2F475157

Now I have to admit that I did not check out the reliability of this story on
Snopes or any other source but it sounds right. The challenge is that traditional newspapers are dying and therefore cutting costs and trying to figure out new ways to survive (but most will not).

The biggest problem that I have with our media other than not checking their facts enough is they flat do not understand the difference between correlation and causal relationship. If event A happens frequently when event B occurs then we have a correlation. But we don't know if A causes B or B causes A or neither of these causes the other without further analysis.

An example that really annoys me is the statistic that people with college degrees earn about $1 million more over their lifetimes than people without college degrees. The media and our politicians then assume that all college creates better jobs and a wealthier society. But a causal relationship has not been proven - only a correlation.

But do graduates get their college degrees because they have higher IQs, or because they have spent less time in jail, or because on average they have lower teen pregnancy rates or because they come from wealthier families? Or do all the factors that lead to one going to college contribute to higher career earnings more than the college experience itself. The income derived from college study in Sociolgy is really questionable from my angle.

Banks flinging cheap money

James Surowiecki's article "Monsters, Inc." in the May 11, 2009 New Yorker.

"With the housing bubble, by contrast, there was no meaningful development in the real economy that could explain why homes were suddenly so much more attractive or valuable. The only thing that had changed, really, was that banks were flinging cheap money at would-be homeowners, essentially conjuring up profits out of nowhere. And while previous booms (at least, those of the twenties and the nineties) did end in tears, along the way they made the economy more productive and more innovative in a lasting way. That’s not true of the past decade. Banking grew bigger and more profitable. But all we got in exchange was acres of empty houses in Phoenix."