Peter Frase has an excellent post about the Reinhart-Rogoff debacle and how it reveals the limits of wonk-journalism. In essence, wonk-journalists are those that sort of know how to read studies and translate them for the masses, but they cannot vet those studies, and the way that they present the studies gives them way more… Continue reading Peter Frase on Reinhart-Rogoff debacle
Poor people in the top 200 colleges
So I am playing around with the IPEDS Delta Cost Database, which is loaded with tons of data on thousands of higher education institutions in the United States. I noticed that their data allowed for a comparison that I have been curious about for a while now, which is how much institutions are getting in… Continue reading Poor people in the top 200 colleges
The argument against inequality as such
So I wrote something in The Atlantic today. The basic argument is that, under certain conditions, it might make sense to make the poor poorer provided that you make the rich much less rich. Here is how that argument can work. Assume that a huge income gap, in and of itself, harms individual well-being. The… Continue reading The argument against inequality as such
The Atlantic: Inequality Hurts the Rich and Poor Alike
I have a piece in The Atlantic today, the first of hopefully many to come. An excerpt: All of this is to say that there are non-material ways in which high levels of inequality diminish quality of life, for the poor especially, but even for middle and upper-income individuals. Distrust and mental illness are two… Continue reading The Atlantic: Inequality Hurts the Rich and Poor Alike
Cheating scandals undercut theories of reform success
Yglesias has an odd post today asking: what do widespread cheating scandals within schools captured by the Education Reform Crowd prove? He dedicates most of the post to attacking the idea that cheating scandals provide support for using non-test-based teacher compensation systems, e.g. those based on seniority and degree attainment. I am not sure who… Continue reading Cheating scandals undercut theories of reform success