friend of the built environment

One caution to those piling back into the stock market after locking in their losses last year (or, worse, earlier this year): Up 48% from trough does not mean “these 500 stocks are up 50%.” It just means “paper asset market value of a select club of arbitrary firms are trading 50% higher.”
Huh? Well, first, [...]

Keep those factories and mills ready and waiting - you never know when a commitment to manufacturing might come in handy…
Everybody and their brother has been touting healthcare as the “growth industry” but since it already consumes 17% of the entire U.S. GDP, there’s very little oxygen left

An excellent debate going on at Miusheri’s journal on the pros and cons of Michael Pollan. My personal view is that Pollan is trying to get us to pay more attention to our food in general and thus pay more attention to the horrible things we’ve had to do in order to produce our specialized civilization where [...]

Interesting perspective that I hadn’t even thought about till now. Chalk one more up for the horrors suburban sprawl is doing to our civilization: it’s even killing the press, primarily by killing the time citizens can spend consuming the news.
Today North American newspapers find themselves on a road to extinction.  On-line options get much of [...]

So did you hear? Extending Medicare to the Rest of Us will result in those already on Medicare being killed.
Yep, that’s right: seniors love their Medicare (aka, the world’s largest government health care system), but as soon as they hear that those under 65 want some of the same benefits and protections of Medicare, the [...]

I’ll miss my Nerd Bird. Tonight is my last east-bound turn on what has always been one of the few pleasant air travel experiences I’ve repeatedly had over the years.
US Airways has always been one of the only carriers to offer such pleasant overnight transcontinental nonstops, probably because their hubs are on the far sides [...]

If you are over 65 you are not allowed to have an opinion on health care reform. You already have a national socialized health care system that you can’t be turned down for and that you don’t have to pay any additional premiums for to get the minimum level of coverage. The current debate is [...]

Yes, the observant among you have noted that once upon a time I bashed universal, single-payer health care in general. What has changed that turned me into a limp-wristed leftist on this issue?
Perspective, I guess. In the past couple years, the very foundation of my entire concept of political economy has shifted. I realized to [...]

Would that local leaders could have such grand vision to look up to:
Pittsburgh won’t be the next silicon valley any more than it became the “Manhattan of the Alleghenies” in the 1920s. We won’t be the “next” anything. Well, that’s not entirely true. We could be the “next Pittsburgh”. Let’s work toward that.

From our friendly local bureaucrat:
I find it interesting that people are willing to voluntarily plunk down $1.29 million to a casino, with a 10% probability of maybe, possibly being one of the very few that share the benefits of a radical wealth transfer, but that an increase of State income tax to fill a budget gap [...]

I’m not a journalist, I’m a screeching commentator with no readership. My type tend to feel “goodbye and good riddance” is the best reaction to the decline and imminent demise of dead-tree-based media. Some are even celebrating it.
But there are a couple problems here:
Quality: Internet has not just killed paper-based news, but journalism and its [...]

So what happened in 1985 and 1995 to cause the S&P to “turn the corner“?
Not a lot of people seem to have asked this. In 1985, did Reganomics finally kick-in and the tax savings and government deficit-spending finally started hitting corporate profits? Maybe the Clinton-Gingrich axis and their astute handling of trade negotiation and liberalization [...]

The alleged bounce in Germany and France perhaps indicate that a consistent amount of government involvement in the economy is probably more effective than the wacky swings between regulatorphobia and Keynesophilia seen in the US over the past century.
Note I’m saying “alleged” bounce - not sure I’ll be convinced for at least a couple quarters, [...]

… Is Demographic Inversion.

Really fun, and good even when they’re bad.

In communities throughout America, students are being told they are not allowed to bike to school.
“It’s pervasive throughout the country and we’re hearing about it more and more,” he said. The problem, according to Ping, is that many school principals and administrators feel that biking and walking to school is simply unsafe. They are concerned [...]

Paul Krugman, despite his recent coronation as King of Inventive Economic Labels, still seems to be a perpetual optimist:
As I’ve pointed out, that’s bad, but it’s not horrific either by historical or international standards. On a comparable basis, federal debt hit 109 percent of GDP at the end of World War II, and hit a [...]

Notice how the Bush years welcomed in the era when the US capital flow cycle really started to resemble that of a typical third-world banana republic?
It really started with the latter Regan-Bush1 years, but it took off in 2001 and never really stopped.
The big difference is that the US does not have cheap labor, does [...]

No more funeral processions. Can you think of any sillier excuse for ‘final respects’ than driving a bunch of cars from one part of the city to another and snarling up traffic just to dump a body? I mean, I’ve always wanted my final words to be ‘fuck you’, but this isn’t quite what I [...]