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

…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.

Writing checks to charities, as covered in previous articles is one way to give to your top causes. However, it’s not the only way for you to make a difference to your non-profit of choice.

Is Journalism, as suggested by the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, dying a slow death? Or is Mr. Gerson simply being melodramatic? The issue boils down to how you define journalism. If journalism- in the mold of the traditional magazine and newspaper journalism- is dying, is that the end of news? Tough questions, for sure, but what is the goal of media? To train journalists?

The Congressional Budget Office recently released their scoring of the Senate Health Care Bill. Reading some of the headlines in major newspapers, one would be forgiven to think that the health care plan being debated in the Senate is a deficit reducing panacea for all of the United States’ health problems… “No Big Cost Rise in U.S. Premiums Is Seen In Study” touts the New York Times, for example. The health care bill is supposed to ‘bend the health care cost curve’ and extend coverage to the unfortunate people who don’t currently have insurance. Sadly, it completely misses the mark.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight Warren Buffet’s post today in the New York Times. Buffet is never lacking with a quote or an opinion, and on the topic of deficit spending he’s no different. Hilariously, he refers to the massive influx of liquidity into the economy as “Greenback Emissions”. I definitely agree with Buffet on this topic; we’re in for a pretty good amount of inflation if the government doesn’t dial back it’s money printing efforts.