Educated Chinese workers unemployed by choice

The Times reports on voluntary unemployment among two young Chinese workers (who happen to be dating) each with advanced education, who prefer to wait rather than take a factory job. Both report family support, which on the one hand is more strained than it would be in the U.S. because of more severe generational disparities in education, and on the other hand is less strained because of the one child policy.

Inside the late 2007 FOMC meetings

The New York Times published an article summarizing the FOMC meeting transcripts from fall 2007 that were recently released after the standard 5-year delay. Most notable to me were remarks attributed to Bernanke in the September meeting in which he argues for leaving the federal funds rate unchanged so as to avoid any appearance of a bailout of financial market participants.

Stiglitz on macro effects of inequality

Today Joe Stiglitz blogs about some costs of inequality and in particular why he feels it is responsible for the slow recovery. For me the notable statistic was that growth in the pre-crisis decade "was reliant" on the bottom 80 percent of households spending 110% of their incomes. Nothing like giving one hundred and ten percent.

SJSU and cyber-remediation

The Times published an article about Udacity and San Jose State University partnering to offer introductory and remedial classes online. If remediation can be more effectively achieved through cyber-learning, that seems like a development that is close to fully Pareto optimal, helping everyone and harming nobody.