Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Personal Finance, Economics and Investing

Carnivals and sweet posts for the week,

When we think about the study of economics, we usually think of the mathematical models we were taught in high school and college. The entire corpus of economic studies has been founded on the notion of people as predictable, “rational” actors. Neuroeconomics, a relatively new field that is acquiring more and more intellectual currency, closely studies human behavior and its influences, based largely on stunning advances made in neuroscience over the past few years. (Post by Lauren Bailey)

Amid all of the talk about unemployment duration and the unemployment rate is a little known ratio, touched upon in this Wall Street Journal editorial. You’re curious, however – because the unemployment rate calculation has been messed around with quite a bit, how does it line up with the ratio? Lucky for you, I’ve got a graph here.

The incidence of a tax (who truly pays for it) is very significant in welfare analysis. Cameron Daniels analyzes this concept using the real life example of gas prices.

The Mission: Introduce a friend who’s been living in a cave to rock and roll, three albums at a time. Even he (she?) couldn’t help but be exposed to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, so you can give him other material. You have five care packages available, with spots for three albums each. No greatest hits albums. Also, write your friend a letter telling him what you found hard to leave out and what you had no problem removing.

… is higher than credit card debt in our country (hat tip: Wall Street Journal). How can this be?, you may ask, when the number of news stories on credit cards seem to vastly outweigh the corresponding reports on student loans. Well, yes, credit card stories seem to outnumber student loan stories by a ratio of about 15 to 1, according to StudentLoanJustice.org. How did this happen?

I recently posted on the ‘Bush Tax Cuts’, however, as Dr. Mark Perry points out, another way of looking at the Bush tax law is the ‘Bush tax hike’! Compared to the top marginal rate under Bush I and Reagan, the Bush II tax ‘cuts’ had a higher marginal tax rate on the highest bracket. In fact, as one of Dr. Perry’s commentators points out, the 2011 retirement of the Bush tax law could be considered another ‘Bush Tax Hike’ – as President Bush was the one who put an expiration date on the law.

How about this title in the Wall Street Journal? “Credit Cards Take From Poor, Give to the Rich” is the name, in reference to a Boston Federal Reserve Bank report on credit card reward programs. The paper says just that: credit card rewards programs and merchant fees for credit card usage are increasing the overall cost of goods for check and cash customers.

Here’s something you can really sink your teeth into – a calculator from the Tax Foundation which will let you input your tax data. What does it output? Well, your tax burden under the ‘Bush’ tax cuts (passed in 2003), your tax burden if the plan expires, and your tax burden if the changes in President Obama’s budget are enacted. Now that you have this data, you can cut through the noise and choose which one you like the best by simply figuring out under which plan you owe the least! Joy!

Here’s another quick, fun entry for you… Bloomberg Business has helpfully aggregated PayScale.com data in order to show you which schools have the highest return on investment. The list is sortable by name, rank, 30 year investment return, and other categories.