Tuesday, November 28, 2000
At the risk of raining on the nouveau-riche parade, a question: If a successful company is made so solely by workers who can't maintain their own standard of living, how successful is it? And for whom?
Posted: 12:12 AM
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Friday, November 10, 2000
All of a sudden, eyes are being opened all over America to some of the strange ballot forms we have and problems with the system. The truth is, a lot of sloppiness has crept into our voting system and it has not mattered before. Now it matters.
Posted: 10:05 PM
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Monday, November 06, 2000
There's a lot of shock and surprise among some people when they hear that there is this intermediate body. Some people think the Electoral College deprives them of their vote but I see it as a system that has functioned with very few glitches over the years.
—
Michael White, who coordinates the votes of the Electoral College as part of his job as the director of legal affairs and policy for the Office of the Federal Register, in the New York Times.
Posted: 11:51 PM
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"On Tuesday," noted the German daily Die Tageszeitung, "the most self-absorbed and least politically interested people in the world are going to elect the most important government in the world."
Posted: 11:16 PM
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There is a man who claims to have uncovered the scientific laws that he says make the electoral college scheme brilliant, subtle, and complex. ... After twenty years of trying to get his argument down to a mathematical theorem, in 1996, Alan Natapoff published a paper in Public Choice with a deluge of charts and formulas and functions that he says proves one thing: The electoral college -- as it's arranged now -- increases your voting power.
Posted: 8:33 PM
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Thursday, November 02, 2000
British scientists are heading for the South Atlantic in an attempt to disprove claims that penguins fall over backwards when aircraft fly overhead. The flightless birds are said to be so mesmerised by helicopters and jets that they lose their balance as they attempt to keep track of them.
— Not really a commentary, but oddly fascinating nonetheless. From
an article in The Age of Melbourne, Australia.
Posted: 9:51 PM
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A look at the causes of high school graduates' wage declines shows that relative demand for workers with different levels of education is mostly irrelevant. Perhaps as much as a third of the growth in the wage disparity between high school and college graduates has been caused by a falling minimum wage and a decline in unionization. In 1979, the legal minimum was $6.53 (in 1999 dollars); today it is only $5.15. In 1978, the chief executive officers of major American corporations earned about 29 times the pay of average workers in their companies. By 1999, this multiple had grown to 107 times.
— From Richard Rothstein's
piece in the New York Times about the wage premium a college degree seems to bring, but not because of rising demand for educated workers.
Posted: 12:29 AM
permanent place
