Last night, I had a disquieting and somewhat absurd realization that most people think it’s fine for some people to be rich and other people to be poor. I was struck anew by how difficult I actually find that to…
Tag: A Day in the Life
In the Ballpark
New Orleans has brought me my first-ever NFL game and second- and third-ever NBA games in quick succession (and I have a feeling that, at those ticket prices, we’re going to become Pelicans semi-regulars). But it sadly lacks an MLB…
401(k)’s and IRAs are a Pyramid Scheme
The stock market is booming! On Wednesday, February 25th, 2015, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at an all-time record-high of 18,224.57 points. This is getting awfully close to triple the March 2009 lows and is, according to all the…
Rim to Rim to Rim Revisited
When I was in college, one of my closest college friends, Stina, spent the summer of 2000 working at a cafeteria in the Grand Canyon. It’s one of those quirky little facts of American life that you might not think…
For the Love of the Train
I took the streetcar home yesterday. I don’t always take the streetcar to and from work, like I did with BART when I worked at Glide in San Francisco. I often take the car, dropping Alex off on the way,…
The Unexpected Virtue of Mardi Gras
I’ve been trying to explain to people all week what I loved so much about Mardi Gras. For those who were here, or have been here, the explanation works a little better. I am here attempting to distill an explanation,…
The Sound of Silence
One of the great challenges of the modern age is finding sufficient solitude. By “modern age”, of course, I don’t mean the 1950s, which I guess took hold of that term a while back and didn’t let go. I mean…
Labor Force Participation Rates Falling Twice as Fast as Predicted
Contrary to what you might imagine about the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and its record-keeping on the purported unemployment situation, they are fairly aware of the impact of the crashing labor force participation rate on the overall employment picture.…
Fire in a Crowded Theater
This, I predict, will be an unpopular post. Few events in recent memory have brought such universal calls of immediate condemnation as Wednesday’s massacre of cartoonists and staff from the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. As a pacifist, I join…
No, Unemployment Didn’t Just Decline
It went up. Unemployment in the United States actually rose in December 2014 from the previous month, from 11.56% to 11.66%. This is largely the result of a revision to November numbers declaring the unemployment rate during that month to…