The average guy will spend many times that getting her into the sack in the first place...

Hmmm: "According to Planned Parenthood, birth control pills cost between $15 to $50 a month, depending on health insurance coverage and type of pill. On an annual basis, that means the Pill costs between $160 to $600."

Educational Spending: a Solyndra in the classroom

The immense, stunning waste of resources that our 'educational' 'institutions' have perpetrated on our society is an utter scandal.  Another way our glorious Federal state destroys our wealth and our children's futures.  Read the whole thing here.  From Forbes.

So, it appears that our massive “investments” in education have produced no measurable economic return. Should we be surprised by this? No. Average scores on standardized tests have not risen, despite the fact that we are “investing” seven times as much in real terms in each student than we did six decades ago. So, even by the measures used by the educational establishment, it is clear that the higher spending has not created any additional human capital.

The nation and its people would be much better off today if most of the additional “investment” in education that we have made over the past six decades had been used to create more nonresidential produced assets. GDP, real wages, and our standard of living would all be considerably higher.

Subsidizing failure for the cronies

The economics of EVs are terrible - unless you can get oil to $200 a barrel which is wildly unlikely.  Yet the Obami are increasing the subsidies on EVs to 10K per car.  At a time when America is bankrupt.  Attaboy Barry.  You exhibit the spirit that made Chicago.....corrupt.

MORE TROUBLES FOR electric-car battery makers. “If oil can get up to $200 per barrel and stay there then the prospects of EV makers will brighten somewhat. But it is questionable whether the global economy can support sustained high oil prices. As long oil prices dampen demand below the level at which EVs become competitive it is hard for EVs to become an effective substitute for oil-powered cars.”
DOUBLING DOWN: Obama’s proposed budget calls for upping plug-in vehicle tax credit to $10,000. “Getting to a million plug-ins in four years will be tough. Last year, the top two plug-ins, the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf, sold just 17,345 units, combined.”

Where have all the jobbies gone?

I wonder if Pete Seeger will sing this one at Obama's renomination.  The proportion of Americans who are employed continues to collapse under the oh so progressive leadership of our first law lecturer.  The decline from the end of the recession represents tens of millions of irretrievably lost years of productive effort.  Heckuva job, Barry.

Hope!  Change!

Doin' the Crony

The Obami do crony capitalism so well.  I wonder whether he learned it in Indonesia - where it's been elevated to an art form, or in Chicago, where it's been elevated to a.....art form.  Let's all do the Crony.

The Washington Post has found $3.9 billion in taxpayer funds were sent to 21 firms with ties to the Obama administration:

Sanjay Wagle was a venture capitalist and Barack Obama fundraiser in 2008, rallying support through a group he headed known as Clean Tech for Obama.
Shortly after Obama’s election, he left his California firm to join the Energy Department, just as the administration embarked on a massive program to stimulate the economy with federal investments in clean-technology firms.
Following an enduring Washington tradition, Wagle shifted from the private sector, where his firm hoped to profit from federal investments, to an insider’s seat in the administration’s $80 billion clean-energy investment program.
He was one of several players in venture capital, which was providing financial backing to start-up clean-tech companies, who moved into the Energy Department at a time when the agency was seeking outside expertise in the field. At the same time, their industry had a huge stake in decisions about which companies would receive government loans, grants and support.
During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm,Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

The rest here.

Atlas Shrugged: not history, prophecy

The Hill: Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a “Reasonable Profits Board” to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a “windfall profit tax” as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation.

…The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding “a reasonable profit.” It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms.

And here directly from the proposed bill:

(4) REASONABLE PROFIT.—The term ‘reasonable profit’ means the amount determined by the Reasonable Profits Board to be a reasonable profit on the sale.

Addendum: Here is Bryan Caplan’s classic, Atlas Shrugged and Public Choice: The Obvious Parallels and here is the award-winning Atlas Shrugged app.

Business Leaders: "College Sucks"

Is there any more fraudulent institution in America today that the modern 'college'?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Business Leaders See Higher Education as Hampering Economic Growth.“The rising cost of higher education, its indifferent quality, its resistance to change, and its lack of accountability are endangering the nation’s prospects for future economic growth, according to a report on the views of business executives that was released today by Public Agenda and the Committee for Economic Development. The report, which draws on focus groups last year with 27 executives in Ohio and Texas, and on telephone interviews with 12 others, echoes the concerns that business leaders have expressed in two other recent reports that cover similar terrain.”

Evidence for the Capital Strike

It just goes on and on and on and....

But the good news is with a change in governing philosophy there could be a rapid snap back.  There's hope for change.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Gallup: Health Costs, Gov’t Regulations Curb Small Business Hiring.

We're on the road to nowhere

And a feckless former untenured law lecturer is leading us there.

JOHN STOSSEL: We Are On The Road To Bankruptcy. “What the president was talking about is not even a cut. The politicians just agreed that over the next 10 years, instead of increasing spending by $9.48 trillion, they’d increase it by ‘just’ $7.3 trillion. Calling that a ‘cut’ is nonsense.”

Bad news brainwise

The mental acuity decline curve.

If their students were customers, they couldn't behave this way

But the public schools have inmates, not customers.  So why shouldn't the principle think of them as criminals.

TODAY IN GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS: LAUSD Principal Focuses On Real Miramonte Criminals: The Children. “That both teachers and administrators view parents and students as the enemy is an open secret. But it’s rare that you see it expressed so baldly.”

The drive to dominate is innate

Even among pedantic losers supervising elementary school children.  All they need to do so is the State's guns, shackles and money.  Without it they become merely pedantic losers.  Break it up, break it all up.

NANNY STATE UPDATE: Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets:” State agent inspects sack lunches, forces preschoolers to purchase cafeteria food instead. “A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.”

Barack Obama: Our Federal Underpants Gnome

South Park had an episode where "underpants gnomes" were implementing and exciting new business plan plan.  You can watch the key parts of the episode here.  Essentially it went like this:

1. Collect Underpants
2. ?
3. Profits

President Obama's newly released budget is in the finest Underpants Gnome tradition.  Essentially, one can describe it's logic as:

1. Collect Underpants
2. ?
3.  Balanced Budget and Prosperity

And it also makes about as much sense as a crude cartoon about tiny imaginary men does.

Hope!  Change!  Underpants.

The Momma's Boys index

Percent of young men living with their parents is highly correlated with social and financial collapse.  Not surprising, really.

Apple accounts for more than 100% of the S&P's earnings growth last quarter

Stunning.  And frightening.

Courtesy of Ajay Makan and Dan McCrum at the FT, Barclays Capital estimates that based on reporting thus far earnings growth for S&P 500 companies was 7 percent in Q4. 

But if you strip out Apple, that plummets to 2.9 percent. One company, in other words, is responsible for most of the earnings growth among the large cap firms in the index.

Crony Capitalism pays in America as much as third world countries

Economists show that markets reward political connections in the US as much as they do in corrupt, third world countries with weak institutions.  Markets don't do that unless it's substantially true.  From an article about our nation's leading Crony Capitalist, Warren Buffet.

Having the correct political connections was critical. A National Bureau of Economic Research study by four researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, documented the power of such connections. Economist Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues found that when Timothy Geithner, a man who had spent his career shuttling back and forth between Wall Street and Washington, was announced as President Obama’s nominee for treasury secretary, it “produced a cumulative abnormal return for Geithner-connected financial firms of around 15 percent from day 0.” The stock market reflects the thinking of all investors, and they clearly believed Geithner would be able to reward his friends directly or indirectly.

Conversely, when there was word that Geithner’s nomination might be derailed by tax issues, those same firms were hit hard with “abnormal negative returns.” Acemoglu et al. systematically examined companies that had corporate ties to Geithner, had executives who served with him on other boards, or had other direct relationships. They found that “the quantitative effect is comparable to standard findings” in Third World countries with weak institutions and higher levels of corruption. In other words, markets react to government actions in the U.S. the same way they do in a corrupt developing country. Crony capitalism pays, and the market knows it.

Are Colleges Ripping us off?

In a word:  yes.

Are State Colleges Ripping Us Off?

A. Barton Hinkle | February 10

Half of all college students make no learning gains in their first two years, and 36 percent show no significant intellectual growth even after four years.

Are Colleges becoming finishing schools for women?

I believe that most residential colleges will become social institutions rather than primarily educational.  Technology will democratize access to the best teaching, meaning that snobs (who are ever with us) will double down on the 'elite' residential college and emphasize certain forms of 'decorum' to differentiate themselves from the hoi polloi.

It won't work.  But they'll blow trillions trying.

Are Liberal Arts Colleges Becoming Finishing Schools for Women?

I spent the morninig laughing and being intrigued by a book called Worthless: The Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major by a guy named Aaron Clarey. On the back of the book is picture that (I assume) is Clarey louging on what looks like the beach with an Army t-shirt on smoking a big cigar. This is the guy who is going to give you or your kid some good practical advice on how to pick a major in college.

The book takes aim at “Big Education” and in non-PC terms lets the reader know what is happening inside higher ed. Clarey has a wicked sense of humor and his graphs and charts just add to the fun. There is one that shows the breakdown of what he calls “worthless degrees.” “Nearly 70% of worthless degrees are awarded to women” he states along with a chart showing the breakdown of 68% of women to 32% of males who get these worthless degrees. Worthless degrees include those such as Women’s studies, sociology, philosophy, psychology, education and the liberal arts and humanities. In other words, those majors that avoid math.

It does seem to me at times that colleges are becoming finishing schools for women. I wonder if this is why many men avoid them?

There’s nothing reformist, nothing change-oriented about Barack Obama" - Fleisher

I disagree.  I think there's lots of 'change orientation'.  It's just not reformist.  Ari points out that all of the 'money out of politics' blather emanating from The One is just that.  Blather from the biggest private fundraiser in the history of political fundraising. More here.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Super PACS. That’s called free speech and everybody is entitled to it. Here’s the problem, though, with what Barack Obama has done. This is part of a pattern of behavior with Barack Obama that goes back to 2008. If you recall back then, he said he would accept public financing for the campaign, just as John McCain did. Then as soon as he figured out he could actually raise more money than public financing would get him, he flip-flopped on that issue and took unlimited money to fund his campaign. He also, because he wants to act as if he’s changing Washington as a reformer, said he wouldn’t allow any lobbyists at the White House, then he gave wavers for lobbyists. He said his staff wouldn’t be allowed to meet with lobbyists in the White House. So what did they do? They walked out the front door of the White House, across the park, and to the Caribou Coffee House where they met with lobbyists. And now this flip-flop on the Super PAC idea itself. This is a super flip-flop. But worse than that, it’s a president who has to act as if he is smarter, better, more moralistic than all his opponents, everybody else, while his pattern of behavior is to have words that are wind, but his actions are just like everybody’s else’s in Washington. There’s nothing reformist, nothing change-oriented about Barack Obama when you get to the heart of it.

Europeanization of the Welfare State - NYT

It used to be one of the defining characteristics of the US welfare system was its focus.  Most of the money came from the top and went to the bottom.  This contrasted with European welfare states where far more of the benefits went to the broad middle class than the poor.  One of the goals of the Obami has been to make our system more European.  And according to the New  York Times, they've succeeded.  This is before the massive Healthcare 'Reform' bill is implemented which will no doubt increase the dollars flowing to the (older) middle class from the (younger) poor.

This isn't about compassion.  It never was.  It's about getting and holding power.  And it's the middle class who vote.  Screw the poor, they're just a bunch of damned non-voting criminals.

It's all so progressive.

LINDSTROM, Minn. -- Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region's long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

There is little poverty here in Chisago County, northeast of Minneapolis, where cheap housing for commuters is gradually replacing farmland. But Mr. Gulbranson and many other residents who describe themselves as self-sufficient members of the American middle class and as opponents of government largess are drawing more deeply on that government with each passing year.

Dozens of benefits programs provided an average of $6,583 for each man, woman and child in the county in 2009, a 69 percent increase from 2000 after adjusting for inflation. In Chisago, and across the nation, the government now provides almost $1 in benefits for every $4 in other income.

...The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

The 'Yellow Peril"

Massive discrimination against Asians in admissions to our most elite campuses.  Imagine that:  our most 'progressive, egalitarian' institutions applying a racial double standard  Didn't see that one coming...

Racial Disparity in acceptance rates

Racism has consequences.

Gender Pay gap App

Finds a shocking disparity in incomes between men and women.

Politico.com reported this week that "The Obama administration recently launched a software development competition designed to help achieve equal pay in the workforce for American women. The competition has several prize categories, including five scholarships to attend an 8-week design and entrepreneurship program. Another winner will get $5,000 from a private nonprofit to help further develop their app."

It's called the Equal Pay App Challenge, and here's some information from the competition's website:

"Nearly 50 years after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, on average women are still paid less than their male counterparts for doing comparable jobs – that’s called the pay gap. It means that each time the average woman starts a new job, she’s likely to start from a lower base salary, but it also means that over time the pay gap between her and her male colleagues is likely to become wider and wider.

For the average working woman, the pay gap means $150 less in her weekly paycheck, $8,000 less at the end of the year, and $380,000 less over her lifetime. For women of color and women with disabilities, the disparity is even bigger. Your challenge is to use publicly available labor data and other online resources to educate users about the pay gap and to build tools to promote equal pay."

Here's an example of how the app might work for some women, based on these salary data:

Enter Your Marital Status: Single

Enter whether you work full-time or part-time: Full-time

Enter the number of children you have: Zero

Do you work in a large U.S. city? Yes

Enter your age: Under 30 years old

Enter your city of employment below, and the Equal Pay App will report the gender pay gap for your demographic group in your geographic area.  A negative (positive) pay gap reflects lower (higher) median full-time salaries for women in your group (single, childless, under 30 years old) compared to your male counterparts.

Atlanta: +20% pay gap in favor of women

Memphis: +20% pay gap in favor of women

New York City: +17% pay gap in favor of women

Los Angeles: +12% pay gap in favor of women

San Diego: +15% pay gap in favor of women

Charlotte: +14% pay gap in favor of women
.

Shortages emerging for 180 critical drugs

It must be the Pharmaco's fault.  Right?  BHO and his executive orders remind me of Allende or Castro or Mao shrieking at 'capitalist hoarders' and demanding campaigns of vigilance.  He's a clueless leftist academic. Always was, always will be.

HEALTH CARE: Supply of a Cancer Drug May Run Out Within Weeks. “A crucial medicine to treat childhood leukemia is in such short supply that hospitals across the country may exhaust their stores within the next two weeks, leaving hundreds and perhaps thousands of children at risk of dying from a largely curable disease, federal officials and cancer doctors say.”

This seems kinda third-worldish to me. And these shortages keep happening.

UPDATE: Reader Don Jansen writes: “So price controls are imposed on injectable drugs and lo and behold a shortage arises. Who would have thunk it?” Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Physician-reader Eric Novack writes: “Glenn- these shortages are very real… one center I work at has trouble getting propofol for anesthesia and another cannot get zofran (ondansetron), one of the most effective anti-nausea drugs on the market…” Very upsetting.

MORE: More here: “Again, the reader is left with the impression that drug manufacturers are hugely incompetent, failing to produce the needed amount of drugs even in the face of rising prices. Thank goodness President Obama is on the case, issuing executive orders! But the existence of any kind of shortage in a market-driven economy should make one’s nose twinkle. One drug shortage might be some kind of freakish anomaly, but 180 crucial drug shortages? The usual suspect in these kind of situations is the dead hand of government, and according to bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, writing in last August’s New York Times, that’s exactly the case. . . . In other words, government has distorted the market and removed incentives for the production of life-saving drugs. And the New York Times’ readership, unless they somehow recall Emanuel’s opinion piece, are left none the wiser.”

Obamacare plus the FDA: a recipe for disinvestment

Couple pending price controls and limitations with the utterly (and under the Obami, increasingly) insane FDA regulatory regime and there is precious little room for actual health care innovation.  The result:  massive disinvestment in the sector, with labs closing and companies returning their capital to the shareholders.  It's really the only prudent course.  The capital strike continues....

AN ADMISSION OF DEFEAT? “Announcing layoffs along with a stock buyback – let’s think about what that means. AstraZeneca did that just the other day, and they’re far from the only ones in this industry (or others) spending billions to buy back their own shares while they’re cutting costs elsewhere.”

Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles 2

My oh my how the worm has turned.  Germany couldn't conquer Europe with guns so now it is conquering it with...Euros.

The real reason Obama's going to lose

With Gas prices set to be above $4 all summer (thanks in part to Obama's environmental fundamentalism), the American people are going to be very, very angry at him.

CHANGE: Gas prices to spike 60 cents by May. Tank up!

The Drug War: insane, out of control, unAmerican

And people get mad at me for calling it fascist.

TEN YEARS IN PRISON FOR SUDAFED? “Tough break. That’s 2 to 10 years. Should have committed armed robbery. The average sentence is 2 to 6 months for that in West Virginia.”

Warehousing a larger and larger proportion of our population

We are becoming Europe.  It's all so progressive.

I suspect you'll be hearing a lot about this email from former Reagan OMB director David Stockman (whose relationship with mainstream-conservative budget and economics gurus is long and complicated) contending the official unemployment rate in the Bureau of Labor Statistics report is "made up." I'd focus on one significant point that is mentioned halfway through and almost ignored: "The plain fact is that we are warehousing a larger and larger population of adults who are one way or another living off transfer payments, relatives, sub-prime credit, and the black market."