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Unfortunately, in spite of having a Republican Congress and a Republican President, the U.S. still imposes some significant barriers to international trade. John Palmer amusingly proposes a way that the barriers to U.S.-Canada trade could be elminated.
If you want teachers to be judged on subjective qualities like their ability to inspire students, you have to let schools hire, fire, promote, and demote their teachers accordingly. That means paying not by objective criteria like degrees and seniority but by a boss's professional evaluation. It means allowing into the classroom great teachers who have subject knowledge but not a lot of idiotic education courses on their transcripts.
Jerry Flint writes in Forbes that GM's problems are worse than you think. Steve Pearlstein in the Washington Post says all of the Big Three are in deep trouble.
An extraordinarily interesting look at the economics of medical care by a practicing surgeon and fine writer, Atul Gawande. (Link via Kottke.)
Wealthy Manhattan parents have seen the future and it's . . . Mandarin.
A bit of evidence that not every graduate economics dept. views applicants the same way.
Ruth Wisse, Harvard professor of Yiddish and comparative literature, has whiny Margaret Carlson's number:
Egalitarian feminism’s legacy to women like Margaret Carlson is a perpetual discontent. The more they are granted, the more they think they are missing. The more power they attain, the less powerful they feel. The more they achieve, the less they are gratified. The more they are blessed, the more loudly they curse their fate. So I watch with dismay today’s brand of socialization, the one pushed by females fostering the cult of grievance and males turned into pretzels by free-floating guilt.
Malcolm Gladwell rips the Meyer-Briggs personality test.
Max Boot says 500 mpg cars are feasble right now. I'm usually against higher taxes, but I favor an increase in the federal gasoline tax to help move this along