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The Wall Street Journal rankings are based solely on college admission rates from high schools. But what does this actually measure? Most of the top high schools have very selective admissions. The top public school, for example, Hunter College High School, accepts students based on stringent standardized testing. The rankings are skewed by the students high schools accept — better schools accept smarter kids who go to better colleges.

That said, for private schools at least (rather than magnet public schools founded with stringent admissions), it’s a little circular: They accept better students, send them to better schools, get better ratings, and thus allow them to raise their acceptance standards, (getting them better schools, ratings, standards, etc.).

Is there an alternative method of measuring how “good” high schools are? Some way of measuring say, the effect of teaching at that school on college admission? A study should be done (if one hasn’t been) that attempts to rank high schools after adjusting for standardized test scores of students entering. Essentially, given that school A’s class has an average percentile of 85% in 8th grade testing and school B’s class has an average percentile of 65%, how do the colleges A and B’s students went to stack up after adjusting? E.g. School B wouldn’t need to send students to nearly as prestigious or highly ranked schools as A to obtain a similar rank because its students were significantly less likely to get into the best colleges before they attended school B.

SitNews: Vertically Privileged Alaskans Defended:

Rep. Mike Doogan, D-Anchorage, hailed the report as groundbreaking and sent two letters to the governor, one to the House Speaker, a postcard to the president, and a singing telegram to the Bundestag urging them to immediately adopt the tallness tax.”Ive said it time and time again,” Doogan said. “The big and powerful always prosper at the expense of short people.” Doogan reports his height at 5 11″, but medical records list it closer to 5 8″. “Its time tall people start carrying their own weight. Id also like to see legislation to limit the amount of higher altitude air they breathe. By the time the air gets down to us, most of the good stuff has already been all breathed up.”

(Height tax from Mankiw’s paper)

Regarding:

Digg post

Nicholas Gottlieb
ngottlieb@gmail.com
http://www.nicholasgottlieb.com

To: Digg.com

Re: Copyright Infringement Under the DMCA

I recently noticed a posting by user “grobstein” on Digg.com containing a number I used to encrypt copyrighted material (currently available here: http://digg.com/political_opinion/8C_87_AC_0F_83_1D_28_2F_95_88_5D_04_50_17_EB_98/). This website, http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1155, gave me all rights to decrypt the copyrighted poem on it with that key. By publishing the key, a user on your site is facilitating violation of that copyright, something outlawed by the DMCA. I hereby request that you immediately remove that post and all others containing the number: 8C 87 AC 0F 83 1D 28 2F 95 88 5D 04 50 17 EB 98.

1. Identification of copyrighted works:
Encryption of the poem on this webpage: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1155 using the key 8C 87 AC 0F 83 1D 28 2F 95 88 5D 04 50 17 EB 98.

2. Infringing material offered by:
Digg.com user “grobstein” publicized the key which can be used to decrypt the poem, violating my copyright.

3. Statement of authority:
I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

Thank you.

Nicholas Gottlieb

Freedom to Tinker » Blog Archive » You Can Own an Integer Too — Get Yours Here

8C 87 AC 0F 83 1D 28 2F 95 88 5D 04 50 17 EB 98

Here’s mine. Don’t use it to decode that Haiku or I’ll use the DMCA on you.

The elasticity of public opinion (the size of it’s reaction divided by the size of the policy change, to the extent those can be quantified) varies widely throughout the world’s governments. North Korea’s public opinion is essentially inelastic. Russia and China are inelastic, too, but somewhat less so. Democracies tend to have extremely elastic public opinion.

All rational leaders want to continue being leaders. That’s true for any country. That desire means that rational leaders in any situation will do their best to make sure the state continues to exist. But leaders of countries with elastic public opinion have a competing requirement as well: they have to keep the people happy, or they will be ousted (whether by revolution or losing reelection).

The consequences of this competing obligation exist on a number of levels. In foreign policy, it causes inconsistency, since policy has to change with public opinion.

In domestic policy, I think that it actually causes bad policy to be enacted because often, bad policy looks like good policy to the public (particularly the kind of stuff that gives them short term benefits but ultimately hurts the country). There’s a big range of policies that won’t threaten the survival of a state but are still not good for that state, and democracy (or elastic public opinion, at least) causes those policies to be enacted more often. Some examples are insurance regulation (see my last post), minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid (see my earlier post on those), tariffs, certain kinds of immigration laws…the list goes on (and obviously, some of those are much more arguable than others, but I think a few are pretty clearly bad, but still look appealing to the empowered public).

So what’s the alternative? Well, public opinion needs to play a minor (at most) role in  choosing leaders, or ousting old leaders, in order to minimize the above-mentioned harms. But presumably, that opens the door to some pretty serious dangers. There’s no accountability. Leaders might let some of their interests not directly related to the survival of the state come into play — e.g., getting rich, or some such — allowing for bad policy. The same seems to apply here — there’s a wide range of policies that don’t cause state failure that may be good for the leader and bad for the country.

If there were a way to select a leader who would act solely for the interest of state survival (which can mean economic growth, etc., since that sort of thing certainly contributes to continued survival), than that leader would be able to rule more effectively than anyone could in a state with elastic public opinion. The question is, is that possible? (Note: leader could mean, essentially, any ruling body). Or even, is there a way to combine the accountability of an elastic public opinion with the ability to act rationally provided by inelastic public opinion?

The simplest reason that insurance regulation — by which I mean the laws that require all insurance companies to cover this or that, and the like — is bad is because it constitutes a price floor. By forcing insurance to cover something, the government raises the minimum cost to the insurance company which in turn raises the minimum price to consumers. Price floors raise the price, leading directly to decreased demand (only the people who can pay X want the insurance, rather than the people who wanted it when it was priced at Y<X). So, there’s a lot of people who are uninsured because of these price floors.

So, what’s the argument for them? Well, it tends to be that, without them, insurance companies would go around taking people’s premiums and not providing coverage. The government needs to step in to make sure people don’t get cheated. My initial response is that if the government weren’t stepping in, a system would have developed (whether it’s simpler contracts that consumers can understand or just Consumer Reports) to facilitate insurance-choosing. Obviously some people will make mistakes, but people buy used cars that don’t work, as well. Most industries are governed by contract law, why mandate that certain things be in contracts.

To this, they say that insurance is too complex a commodity. Consumers can’t read these giant, confusing legal contracts governing their purchases of insurance let alone understand them. The government has to step in because the insurance industry is too opaque, and people can’t be sure what they’re buying (whereas, if they’re sold a car without an engine, they’ll notice as soon as they try to drive). Well, there’s a few things to say about this. First of all, the internet and other technology have made life much easier for the consumer. It’s now easy to find information about nearly any product. One of the reasons the insurance industry isn’t yet so transparent is probably because of government regulation. When the government mandates insurance coverage of certain things, there’s no need for the insurance company to make the contract easy to understand or for the consumer to try and understand it: it’s all in the law. If it weren’t in the law, consumers would have an incentive to find out what they’re buying, and competitive would have an incentive to make it obvious to their buyers.

I’m willing to admit that there’s a possibility the market wouldn’t take over quickly enough. Some people would get screwed. Dave floated an idea when I was discussing this with him earlier which I thought was relatively low cost, and could quell fears that the market isn’t efficient enough. Following the retraction of government regulation, the government could introduce a certification program in which it certified insurance companies that followed the regulations it previously had in place (or any others they might come up with). It’ll be, essentially, a government-run Consumer Reports for insurance. Because the mechanisms are already in place, the transition time will be insignificant.

The benefits of abolishing these regulations are potentially enormous.  The effects of the price floor insurance regulations create exacerbate the ones discussed in my other post on health care (about Medicare and Medicaid). There are millions of uninsured people because they can’t afford the insurance provided by the private sector. If insurance regulations were abolished, a broader range of service would be available. Those who can’t afford the current insurance would be able to afford something less protective — lower quality, but cheaper. Some insurance is better than no insurance, and one cannot expect insurance to cover people at a loss (which is why the regulations don’t help anyone). In conclusion, we’ve got to get rid of insurance regulation. And passing federal bills eliminating genetic “discrimination” (basing premiums on how likely someone is to get sick) is not the way to do that.

Job benefits come in many forms: health care, housing, a car, etc. But beyond the tangible things, people who enjoy their work are given some amount of happiness as well. In a broad sense, this is accounted for by the market: coal miners earn higher wages than some other workers not only because of the health risks of mining coal, but because it’s just plain unpleasant (probably, at least — I, myself, have never mined coal).

On the individual level, though, this is ignored. Person A may enjoy a job while person B hates it. But in most cases, persons A and B are paid the same amount in real wages even though person A receives more benefits. Should (and can — probably not) companies take this sort of thing into consideration and distribute pay accordingly?

There’s a lot of practical reasons why they shouldn’t. First, the happiness comes at no cost to the employer — it might even be a benefit: happy workers might be more productive. Second,  paying the unhappy workers more might diminish their unhappiness, making them ineligible for the pay increase (this one’s not always going to be true, but in some workers it will be). Third, paying unhappy workers might decrease the happiness of the originally happy workers who feel they’re being cheated. Fourth, it’s practically difficult to tell who is happy and who is not, and moreover, people could probably fake it in order to get more money.

But let’s say it was practically possible, and that workers who were happy initially remained happy despite the raises they don’t receive. And let’s say that the workers who do receive the pay raises become happier, but don’t then lose the raise — the company data shows that they had been consistently unhappy with their job and will return to that state if the raise is taken away. Then, there should be a net gain in productivity for the company. Naturally, the marginal cost of this net gain might be greater than either the marginal revenue from it or the marginal cost of the productivity gained by hiring a new worker all together, but there are probably cases where it’s not.

In his article “The Plot Against Medicare,” Paul Krugman talks about how the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 is privatizing (and ruining) Medicare. While I can’t say I know much about the Medicare Modernization Act, it made me remember an argument I made in debate once: that Medicare is in fact ruining private health care. What I mean by this is that it (poorly) fills a niche in the health care market, preventing the private sector from moving into the low-cost health care industry.

I don’t have the numbers, so obviously I can’t prove it. But it seems to me like the private sector health care providers would move in and provide low-cost (and obviously lower quality, but presumably still better than current Medicare and Medicaid) care to the poor and elderly if the government wasn’t already providing care. Moreover, it would probably cost society less than the government services because A) the infrastructure already exists in the private sector, including the overhead and B) the market tends to be more efficient than government, and almost certainly would be because of the competition that can’t really exist at the moment.

In conclusion, I think that Medicare and Medicaid may be filling a niche — health care for the poor and elderly — that otherwise would be filled by more efficient and higher quality care provided by private companies.

Greg Mankiw’s Blog: Why Aspiring Economists Need Math
A student who wants to pursue a career in policy-related economics is advised to go to the best graduate school he or she can get into. The best graduate schools will expect to see a lot of math on your undergraduate transcript, so you need to take it. But will you use a lot of differential equations and real analysis once you land that dream job in a policy organization? No, you won’t.

That raises the question: Why do we academics want students that have taken a lot of math? There are several reasons:

[…]

4. Your math courses are one long IQ test. We use math courses to figure out who is really smart.

From what I can tell, not having yet been to college, this is very true. Math and physics majors, probably among a handful of others, are extremely difficult, which is why all high selectivity opportunities look for them (e.g. graduate schools and financial jobs, for starters). And, aside from my genuine interest, this is one of the main reasons I’m hoping to major in physics and math.

Obama the ‘Magic Negro’ - Los Angeles Times