Public Transit Realities

Matt Yglesias reviews Sim City 4 and laments the fact that "the game is curiously optimistic about middle class people's willingness to ride a bus to a subway station then take a subway then get on another bus and take that to work. Maybe when gas costs $20 a gallon, but in the real world I think people who aren't ...

Haggling over Haggling

Will Wilkinson reports that he didn't buy as many things as he would have liked on a recent trip to Turkey because the cultural proclivity to haggling left him cold. He suspects this experience is generalizable. [P]robably hundreds of my dollars stayed in my pocket because I didn’t have good information about the quality of products and I knew ...

Why Don’t More People Go to College?

Joseph Altonji, Prashant Bharadwaj, and Fabian Lange observe that, despite increasing economic incentives for people to obtain college degrees, the percentage of people graduating high school and college has been declining. They note several studies showing the high correlation between college attendance and parental educational attainment. They conclude, At this point we can only speculate as to why the response in ...

Medicare Trustees Report

The latest report issued by the Medicare Trustees is not good. The HI annual cost rate is projected to increase from 3.11 percent of taxable payroll in 2007 to 11.40 percent in 2082—8.02 percent of taxable payroll more than the projected income rate for 2082. Expressed in relation to the projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP), HI cost is estimated to rise ...

Working Man’s PhD

In my Indiana-North Carolina postmortem, I noted my hatred for the term "working class" because "it implies that those putting in 60 hours a week at high paying jobs don’t work." Recently promoted full professor Dan Drezner, who is about to enjoy three months off from work ("if you don't count editing one book, writing part of another book, prepping ...

Inflation Not as Bad as You Think?

David Leonhardt argues that, despite the belief that the Consumer Price Index understates inflation, the opposite is really true. The problem, he contends, is that everyone is keenly aware of rising prices but most people are oblivious when costs go down. In 2003, a pound of hamburger cost all of $2.20. More than two decades earlier, in 1980, ...

Chain Restaurant Elitism

Over the last couple of days, Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Ross Douthat, Daniel Larison, and Megan McArdle have confessed that chain restaurants such as Outback, Cheesecake Factory, and Olive Garden aren't all that bad, generating a surprisingly fierce round of responses in their comment sections. Most of these places serve reliable food in large quantities at reasonable prices which, really, is ...

Gasoline Tax Honesty

Bloomberg's Catherine Dodge wins line of the day honors for her lede, "Never before have two presidential campaigns staked so much on 18.4 cents." Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are closing out their marathon campaigning in Indiana and North Carolina tussling over Clinton's proposal to suspend the federal tax on each gallon of gasoline for the summer months, one of the ...

$5 Gas Coming Soon, People Fear

Americans will soon be paying $5 a gallon for gasoline, at least if a survey of people who haven't the foggiest idea of how the petroleum market works is any indication. Americans are already paying through the nose for gasoline, and they think it's only going to get worse. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that 94% of respondents ...

America’s Outdated Infrastructure

Thomas Friedman laments that said state of America's transportation infrastructure. A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have ...

Baghdad Luxury Hotels and Condos

The Pentagon is backing a massive development project financed by Marriott and others to gentrify Baghdad. Forget the rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and lack of a sewer system. Now try to imagine luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad. That's all part of a five-year development "dream list" — or what some dub an ...

When Taco Trucks Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Tacos

Los Angeles County has strengthened its law against taco trucks and other mobile food vendors at the insistence of brick-and-mortar restaurant owners, Jonathan Gold reports. Last week, led by Gloria Molina, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors passed a law basically outlawing taco trucks, making it a crime for them to linger at one location for more than an hour, punishable ...

Amazon Sues Over Internet Taxes

New York is trying to collect taxes from online retailers who ship goods to the state, even if they have no brick-and-mortar presence. Amazon is suing, claiming the law is unconstitutional. Amazon.com has filed a lawsuit challenging New York State’s new law forcing online retailers to collect sales tax on shipments to state residents. On Friday, Amazon filed a complaint ...

Obama Joins in on Burdensome Transparency Act

Senator Obama has joined Senators Norm Coleman (R-Neb Minn) and Carl Levin (D-Mich) to introduce the "Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act".Today Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), and Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Chairman, Ranking Minority Member, and Member of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, introduced the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act to ...

Europe’s Middle Class Stagnant

The Middle Class is disappearing, the NYT reports. In Europe. The European dream is under assault, as the wave of inflation sweeping the globe mixes with this continent’s long-stagnant wages. Families that once enjoyed Europe’s vaunted quality of life are pinching pennies to buy necessities, and cutting back on extras like movies and vacations abroad. Potentially more disturbing — especially to ...