We are richer than we realize Martin Feldstein

Op ed piece in the Wall St Journal.  Feldstein, economist, Reagan's chairman of Council of Economic Advisers, argues that although wages have been stagnant for decades, improvement in the quality of products amounts to an improvement in the standard of living.  He cites television sets and audio speakers as examples.  Strange choice of examples though.  TV sets have been good to us, a 1950's RCA color TV, table model in a cheap sheet metal cabinet, 21 inch round picture tube sold for $500 in the 1950's.  I bought a new Sony flat screen 31 inch recently for $400 at Walmarts.  But audio speakers are not the glamour product they were back when Acoustic Research AR-2's ruled the land.  I don't think they even sell decent stereo speakers up here anymore.  Clearly a product whose time has passed.
   Feldstein should have mentioned automobiles.  Back in the day you could buy a brand new low end six passenger Chevy sedan for around $2800.  It got 18-20 mpg, and only lasted 60,000 miles or 6 years, what ever came first. Today you can buy a 4 passenger Chevy Cruz, which will get better than 20 mpg, and last for 100,000 miles or 15 years, but it costs $17,000.  Better quality, off set by six times the price.
   Dunno if I buy Feldstein's argument.  Modern products are better, but they mostly cost like crazy.  If you haven't had a decent pay raise since the 1950's, you are hurting.   

Trump talks to Democrats. Beltway in flames

Congressional Republicans proved they cannot do much, if anything, in the Obamacare repeal.  Obamacare is killing jobs, forcing people to accept part time work, raising health insurance premiums to awful levels, introducing $6000 deductibles which makes the insurance worthless. And Republicans had been promising Obamacare repeal for years.  But they still could not come up the the votes to actually do it.  Too many RINOs, to many extreme right wingers who do not understand "compromise", and too many just plain right wing kooks.
   So, the country needs  emergency funds to deal with Harvey and Irma, and we need to raise the national debt limit so we can borrow to roll the existing debt over.  Schumer and Pelosi  only asked to tie the two bills into one, and limit the debt ceiling relief to a mere 90 days.  This gives them an opportunity to use the debt ceiling as a hammer to get something they want all over again in just 90 days.  PITA from Trump's viewpoint, but doable.  So Trump, figuring he cannot rely on congressional GOPers, said "Deal", and he signed the bill into law yesterday.  Not too shabby. 
   The republican media has been bad mouthing Trump over this deal for the last couple of days.  I haven't heard Ryan or McConnell bellyaching about it, at least not in public, I'm pretty sure neither of 'em are happy, but done is done, and they don't want to get into a public feud with Trump.  They fear they might loose. 

Did doctors cause the opioid crisis?

Yesterday's Wall St Journal suggests that is the truth.  A paper by Princeton University economist Alan Krueger shows correlation between a decline in workforce participation and the rise in opioid prescriptions over the period 1999 to 2015.   Krueger admits that he cannot prove cause and effect, but it is certainly worth more investigation.  Correlation does not prove causation is the cliche.  But it is certainly suspicious. 
  Previous Journal articles said that 75% of medicaid patients receive prescriptions for opioids, which is way, way outta line. 
   Maybe all we have to do is clamp down on the doctor's prescribing habits? 

The country is more divided than it used to be

Yesterday's Wall St Journal published these figures reflecting a serious divide between Democrats and Republicans.  With this kind of attitude differences no wonder Congress cannot muster the votes to pass anything.

Issue                                                                                Democrats        Republicans

Support traditional marriage, one man one woman?           17%                 42%

Support the NRA?                                                             4%                 34%

Support immediate action on global warming?                    31%                  4%

Support Black Lives Matter?                                             28%                  1%

OK with social changes of recent years?                            77%                  30%

Support immigration?                                                         80%                  40%

Confident life will be better for our children                         25%                  48%

Radio Shack isn't quite dead yet

Yesterday's Wall St Journal had a piece about Radio Shack's survival.  They declared bankruptcy a second time in 2015. They have closed all the Radio Shack owned stores, except for a mere 100.  The brand is being carried by independent retailers. 
  The lawyers are talking about (and billing for)  exiting the second bankruptcy this year.  No details were given.  The Journal wishes them well, and quotes an independent retailer at length.  The retailer was enthusiastic but he didn't have any info either.
  I wish them well.  I remember shopping  Radio Shack back when it was a single store on downtown Washington St in Boston.  That was before Tandy bought them and built them up to a nationwide chain.  Shopping Radio Shack in the old days, when they sold Realistic hi-fi (later stereo), ham radio gear, electronic parts, and strange surplus items, was fun.  The current stores, selling kids toys, cell phones, batteries and cables are not so fun.  They still have small collections of electronic parts, which I go to buy, but these are small low cost items that won't keep a store afloat.  They seem to have given up on personal computers, a market they pioneered in the '70s.  Radio Shack needs some product, some big ticket items, with some decent margin, to pay the rent.  And they cannot compete with the big box stores on price.  Walmart can always demand lower prices from its suppliers than anyone else can. 
   You would think there would be some openings.  Up here in the sticks, the only place that carries computer stuff (paper, ink cartridges, laptops, monitors, routers, etc) is Staples.  Hardly a computer oriented kinda store. 

Were the Nazi's lefties or righties?

And why should I care?  We know the Nazis were really really evil.  They caused WWII, they slaughtered six million of their own citizens, mostly Jews, but some gypsies, mentally retarded, political opponents, Poles, Russian POWs, they weren't fussy about who they offed. 
   Does it matter if what little ideology the Nazis had is called part of the left or part of the right, whatever we mean by "left" and "right".  They were evil.  If they had lasted a little longer we would have nuked them.  As it was, the Nazis collapsed just a few months before the bomb was ready for action.  And the few nut cases running around today carrying swastikas deserve serious police surveillance, followed by arrest and prosecution if we catch them doing anything actionable. 
  Same thing goes for the Klan, and the Communists.  I don't care if you call them left or right.  They are bad evil people.  That's all I need to know.  

Will the snowflakes kill off free speech on campus?

School is starting up again.  Last school year was full of stories of campus vigilantees driving speakers off campus, rioting, demanding resignation of the president, and other misbehavior.  The target was any speech or speakers coming from the right, or even the center right. 
   College administrators caved to the protesters every time.
   I never saw any suggestions to expel student rioters.  Easy enough to do, we have lots and lots of video of them breaking windows, slugging faculty members,  lighting fires, and other antisocial acts.  Just expel them, problem solved.  Publicize the expulsions.  Most of the students will get the message that misbehavior is the end of their college career.  And tuition is non refundable. 
  Unless the colleges show some backbone, the US college education will degenerate into four years of lefty greenie political indoctrination, mixed with heavy duty partying.