Discussed Today… Getting more lawyers (or, any professional) into public service Recall fever The Donnas Said…“send her home on BART” Getting more lawyers Hold the jokes, I know some lawyers and they’re not (all) money-grubbing, back-stabbing bastards (yet). The ABA came out today and said that they have discovered that fewer and fewer students choosing to take careers in public service (public defense, prosecution) versus private practice. Who can blame them? With the average year’s tuition to a private university going from 7K to 25K a year (tack on an apartment, food, etc.), is it any wonder that these people find the austere yet socially rewarding charms of public work less than exciting?

continued from previous post As cultures desire capital, they face competition mowing their laurels out from under them and must seek the golden fleece of innovation. As those selfsame cultures seek to find new margins and tools whereby to secure their capital, they will push closer and closer to the walls of taboo and the outmoded, irrelevant rules of religious proscription. And thus we come to a cave in Afghanistan: Do we act to safeguard our mores from the reaper of innovation and its attendant capitalism, McDonald’s, Lexuses, and Britney Spears? Do we forego capitalism, Westernization, globalization and attack its symbols and its home?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09econ.html When the state funds industry, how is it anything but communism, by definition?

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/10/09/1/a-discussion-about-the-economic-crisis-with-paul-volcker Volcker: “It seems to me what our nation needs is more civil engineers and electrical engineers and fewer financial engineers”

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/03/friedmans-follies.html?printable=true&currentPage=all Friedman, you’re on probation.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13237193 “The Economist” addresses the supply-side economics of the drug market. Every day in Texas there seems to be another story about Mexican police out-gunned and out-maneuvered by narco-mercenaries packing matériel coveted by all non-NATO nations. Maybe a data-driven, economic, approach is called for.

Since the global financial system started unraveling in dramatic fashion two years ago, distinguished economists have suffered a crisis of their own. Ivy League professors who had trumpeted the dawn of a new era of stability have scrambled to explain how, exactly, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression had ambushed their entire profession. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/13/why_capitalism_fails/?page=full

http://pragcap.com/the-truth-about-the-economy-in-2-minutes Are we living in a kleptocracy?

A reader recently sent me a nice bit of research about job market for MBAs. It was a well-written article and I enjoyed reading it. Readers, you may find this interesting as well. One of the sections marked for growth is “Big Data:” a topic near and dear to my heart. I especially found this quote by Robert Fitzgerald of the Lorenzi Group interesting: …take statistics and economics…[don’t] be choosy about…[their]…first job. Fitzgerald was later quoted: “Get ANY role you can. Yes, it will suck. Yes, you are worth more, or at least your degree is. And while you are in that role, in your free time, start analyzing everything.

https://medium.com/basic-income/self-driving-trucks-are-going-to-hit-us-like-a-human-driven-truck-b8507d9c5961 A staggering article. I wish it weren’t petrol dependent, but Tesla may have a battery for that. Regardless, with improvements to transportation (self-driving, petrol reduction, etc.) not just trucking but the wide spots in the road whose destiny is tied to it will be disrupted.

America has unlocked the talent of its women in a way that few nations can match; girls are outpacing boys in high schools, universities and graduate schools and are now entering the work force at higher salaries. But the ranks of those women still thin significantly as they rise toward the top, from more than 50 percent at entry level to 10 to 20 percent in senior management. Far too many discover that what was once a manageable and enjoyable work-family balance can no longer be sustained — regardless of ambition, confidence or even a partner who shares tasks equally.

Relocating next out of San Francisco, San Francisco. What is that city without art and artists? Some sort of blighted hellscape with a detached 1%, tech workers, and the abject poor? http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2016/01/06/where-have-all-the-art-stores-gone

I’ve been morbidly obsessed with the Brexit process. I happened to be working a late night when the vote came through and my phone pipped with an NYTimes news alert that Britain had chosen to exit. But I’m inclined to wonder, based on my recent readings of “Connectography” whether some of the global cities will come to view the nation-states that bore them as less and less necessary to their continued prosperity. Noted Khanna: …the more London…[props] up England’s depressed and depopulated regions…[Londoners] view the rest of Britain as a liability sapping London’s finances rather than a strategic asset. (p. 75)

I think that the two most considerable politico-economic happenings of the moment are the rise of Donald Trump and the “Brexit.” While the former is galling and the latter astounding, both of them are upheavals that I choose to contextualize in a political phase that I have taken to calling “The Globalized World” realignment. In the US, I believe, this realignment will culminate in half of each of the main-line political parties finding more common cause across the aisle and may lead to a fracturing of the current political party order into new parties that I call “Big World” and “Small World.

Krugman: Donald Trump won the Electoral College (though not the popular vote) on the strength of overwhelming support from working-class whites, who feel left behind by a changing economy and society. And they’re about to get their reward — the same reward that, throughout Mr. Trump’s career, has come to everyone who trusted his good intentions. Think Trump University. Yes, the white working class is about to be betrayed. Let’s see where these voters are in four years? Will they be materially better? Or will they be brainwashed and battered into accepting that, absence evidence, they are to think they are better off?

Houston Is Now Less Affordable Than New York City Yeah its expensive here, But 2.75 miles and 10 minutes I’m at Times Square. I’d barely be at Super Kroger from my dads house in that time.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/878946307/the-rich-have-stopped-spending-and-thats-tanked-the-economy?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=nprnews&utm_campaign=npr Who’d have thought trickle down economics would fail for the ….4th time in my lifetime. I’m starting to think that society is rudely failing to live up to political planks.