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

The official U-3 unemployment rate is now 9.6%, up a tick from the 9.5% we saw last report. However, private employers added 67,000 jobs in August, while July’s numbers were revised upwards to 107,000 private sector positions and June numbers were also adjusted to 61,000.

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.

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 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.

You know what’s depressing? A graph of spending versus revenue, which is updated through 2009. The Heritage Foundation recently uploaded one of these graphs, and I’m happy to share it with you today.

Fresh off of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s classic quote to the Brookings Institute, “The rich are not paying their fair share”, it’s nice to see a few publications with proof that thought may be a little wacky. The Congressional Budget Office released a timely report they named “Average Federal Taxes by Income Group”. What does that report show? Strangely, that the share of the burden of taxation for the rich in this country has actually been increasing. Shocking, I know, with all of the quotes you can find to the contrary. Let’s take a look…

…enter grade inflation. This site has recently touched twice on the topic of the spiraling cost of advanced education. Recently the New York Times covered something that the schools are giving back for the increased attendance cost – higher grades. Yes, grade inflation is increasing at a pretty decent clip right along with college costs.