Personal Economics 101

A new study by two scholars at the University of North Carolina and a professor at Texas A&M examined the impact of DEI programs in corporate America and found no evidence that these programs lead to higher returns. The study reported: “The business case for diversity” is the dominant rhetorical paradigm for how U.S. corporations debate actions and policies around racial/ethnic diversity. In this paper, we conduct an empirical test of the paradigm by gathering data on the race/ethnicity of the individuals shown on the leadership pages of S&P 500 firms’ websites as of mid-2011, 2014, 2017, 2020 and 2021, and then determining if any of nine measures of the racial/ethnic diversity of these executives reliably predict…their firms’ financial performance over the next fiscal year. We do not find reliable evidence that they do. As such, our results do not support the “business case for diversity” when the claim is assessed using 1-year-ahead financial performance metrics and multiple ...

You'll find these concepts of Stoicism in Meditations  by Marcus Aurelias , a Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher.

If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, i...

On January 2, 2021, a man aboard a Southwest Airlines flight bound for Kansas City, Missouri, from Orlando, Florida, was detained by law enforcement for allegedly assaulting fellow passengers. According to the report from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) , he became violent “because someone in his row would not change seats to accommodate his travel partner.” The FAA fined him $32,500. The next day, on a Frontier Airlines flight that had just landed in New York City, a passenger allegedly attempted to gain entry to the flight deck while deplaning, assaulting two flight attendants and threatening to kill one of them. The captain called for law enforcement to meet the man upon exiting the plane. He was fined $30,000. Reports of air-rage and disruptive behavior such as these on US airlines hit an all-time high in 2021, according to the FAA. On January 13, 2021, the FAA implemented its “zero tolerance” policy . That year, the FAA received 5,973 reports of unruly passengers from a...

From the Committee to Unleash Prosperity The percentage of teenagers who are working in America is abysmally low. In the 1950s, almost half of teenagers were working. That work rate slid slightly in the 40 percent to 45 percent range when baby boomers and Gen Xers were teens in the 1970s, and 1980s. That labor force participation rate crashed with the spoiled generation – i.e., millennials – whose work rate as teenagers fell to as low as 28%. In other words, only a little more than half as many millennials worked as teens as previous generations. (Now in their late 20s and 30s, they are insisting on the right to “work” at home, or in offices with transgender bathrooms.) More recently, there has been a slight tick-up in teen work rates to one in three among Gen Z teens – but even this is a pitifully low rate. Why does this matter? Because almost every study on wages and career success shows that the earlier an individual starts to work and learn job skills, the higher their earnings and...

by Kaylee McGhee White Reposted from the Washington Examiner I have written extensively over the past year about the victims of gender ideology : the children and young adults struggling with the normal pangs of maturation who get swept away by a movement that promises them identity and community, and the parents who feel helpless as they desperately try to drag them back to reality. But let’s be clear about something: Not everyone in this movement is a victim. All you have to do is watch some of the videos highlighted by accounts like Libs of TikTok , and you’ll realize that many of these gender ideologues are unabashed activists who would love nothing more than to shove their crazed distortion of reality down your throat. They know that what they are preaching is nonsensical, and they relish the idea of forcing you to conform to it. Here’s a perfect example of this kind of narcissism, which runs rampant in leftist circles: This is a young man who is so obsessed with himself and his n...

This Headline from the Los Angeles Times was eye catching.  Proposed bill would shorten California workweek to 32 hours. Here’s what you need to know: “The bill, AB 2932, would change the definition of a workweek from 40 hours to 32 hours for companies with more than 500 employees.” Companies would be prohibited from cutting the pay of workers – so effectively every worker covered by the law would be getting a 20% mandatory pay raise. France and many other Western European nations tried this in the 1980s and it led to the deindustrialization of these countries, before they abandoned the ruinous experiment. I wonder if the geniuses in Sacramento who are plowing this bill forward have any idea where the money will come from so that workers can be paid more to produce less. It’s a very good way to move all manufacturing out of California. Some employers will simply try to raise prices to make up for the higher labor costs, which will only make inflation worse. Brilliant. And Governor ...

 

Florida has passed a “Parental Rights in Education bill” - and the Disney corporation, which of course has Disney World in Orlando, is livid. The left has, all too predictably, nicknamed the bill the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. Disney, mind you, is the company that focuses on turning out entertainment for kids. And the Florida law is designed to protect kids from kindergarten through third grade from classroom instruction on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” Democrats and the Left are demanding that children between the ages of 5 and 8 receive indoctrination - ah, that would be “classroom instruction” - on, yes, sex and, transgenderism. This at an age when most normal children have zero inkling about sex of any kind. And if they do, parents want to make sure it is they themselves who are teaching their own kids about the birds and the bees. But in the day and age of woke corporations, even Uncle Walt has become Uncle Woke. As noted here at CNBC : “CEO Bob Chapek said he will ...

Learn from Victor Davis Hanson how the rights of the American citizen are under attack by a ruling class that seeks to make our government unaccountable to the people. You can enroll in this FREE online course, “American Citizenship and Its Decline,” today at: https://hillsdale.edu/citizen https://youtu.be/7GNl4bPHpX4

From " Outliers: The Story of Success " by Malcolm Gladwell.  Genius is not everything—emotional and practical intelligence are also critical to success The man who invented the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test was Lewis Terman, a professor of psychology at Stanford. His area of expertise was quantifying intelligence. In the early 1920s, he decided to dedicate his life to the study of singularly gifted kids. After a thorough vetting process through several rounds of tests given to elementary students in California, Terman selected a group of 1,470 children who had done brilliantly on the tests. The average IQ among the children was 140, and some had IQs as high as 200. He affectionately referred to these children as the “Termites,” and he dedicated his life to tracking their progress and life events. IQ matters, clearly, but only up to a point. An IQ of 100 is average and above 145 is considered genius, but an adult with an IQ of 180 is not more or less likely to win a Nobel P...

  From National Law Review SEC Approves NASDAQ Board Diversity Proposal Over Significant Dissent Monday, August 9, 2021 The SEC recently approved two proposals by NASDAQ concerning board diversity. Specifically, the proposals would "require each Nasdaq listed company, subject to certain exceptions, to publicly disclose . . . information on the voluntary self-identified gender and racial characteristics and LGTQ+ status . . . of the company's board" and to "require each Nasdaq-listed company, subject to certain exceptions, to have, or explain why it does not have, at least two members of its board of directors who are Diverse." The proposal would also "provide certain Nasdaq-listed companies with one year of complimentary access for two users to a board recruiting service, which would provide access to a network of board-ready diverse candidates for companies to identify and evaluate." ( https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nasdaq/2021/34-92590.pdf ) The thr...

The Big Double-Cross President Joe Biden Supposedly, a bi-partisan group of Democrat and Republican Senators reached an agreement with President Biden on a $1.2 trillion "infrastructure" package. But an hour later, Biden changed the conditions of the agreement, saying he would not sign the bill, if passed, unless he also received a bill that would include everything else he wanted, some $3 trillion in other "infrastructure" programs.  Republican senators are now threatening to sink a the compromise after President Joe Biden said that its adoption was conditioned on the passage of a complementary bill containing top Democratic priorities. Multiple senators who took part in bipartisan negotiations during the bill’s creation have already said that they may now withhold their support, jeopardizing its passage given the 60 votes necessary for it to overcome a potential filibuster. “No deal by extortion!” South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Friday. “It was ...

A very well-done and interesting video. For more on this topic, visit Gapminder Foundation

Awakened parents crashing party preaching anti-white hate White students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee were instructed to “confront whiteness” on their college campus by two far-left speakers, the latest example of rampant anti-white lectures, but elsewhere the public is rising up and pushing back on the Left’s twisted version of equality. Strategies to Combat Classroom Indoctrination From critical race theory, which divides the world into race-based oppressors and oppressed, to anti-capitalism lectures, children in America’s schools are being force-fed one-sided ideological instruction. The increasingly widely used The New York Times’ 1619 curriculum, which incorrectly claimed that America was founded to protect slavery, and new mandates such as California’s controversial ethnic studies curriculum, which one teacher says teaches students “that the privileges they have are all based on race that makes them dominant or oppressors over other people,” are just a couple of promi...

Critical Race Theory: The Enemy of Reason, Evidence, and Open Debate By Peter J. Wilson National Review On September 22, 2020, President Trump issued Executive Order 13950, “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping.” The order contained the kind of emotionally charged language about critical race theory that is seldom seen in these legalistic documents: “This ideology is rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.” The order quoted from training materials being used by government agencies and from statements of the agencies themselves, such as this from the Treasury Department: “Virtually all White people, regardless of how ‘woke’ they are, contribute to racism.” The department, according to the order, “instructed small group leaders to encourage employ...

As Americans know from their own illustrious history, any nation’s well-being hinges on only a few factors. Its prosperity, freedom, and overall stability depend on its constitutional and political stability. A secure currency and financial order are also essential, as is a strong military. Perhaps most important is a first-rate inductive educational system.  Of course, nothing is possible without general social calm (often dependent on a reverence for the past) and secure borders. The following article by Dr. Victor Davis Hanson and YouTube presentation are well worth the time. How Much Ruin Do We Have Left? Western Civilization, the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, and Today

This is in no way meant to be an in-depth analysis, but just a cursory examination of the data would conclude that the leftist narrative of systemic racism in America is wrong. After the chart, I include a story on reactions by the Detroit Police Chief over comments by a congresswoman.  For 2020: Total number: 1,021 White: 44.5% (60.1% of population) Black: 23.6% (13.4% of population) Hispanic: 16.6% (18.5% of population) Other: 2.7% (8% of population) Unknown: 10.9% (unknown percent of population) Conclusion: Blacks have slightly more incidents of killing by police, but numbers don't show "systemic" racism in police departments. No one with any intelligence could conclude this from the actual data.  If blacks have a higher ratio of crimes committed, the easy -- yet wrong -- conclusion is racism. Yet, socioeconomic factors have more influence on potential crime rates than anything else.  Detroit police chief fires back at Tlaib’s ‘shameful’ rhetoric Detroit Police Chief J...

By Victor David Hanson, Ph.D. Stanford University Ed Bastian made $17 million in 2019 as chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines, Georgia’s largest employer. Bastian just blasted Georgia’s new voting law. He thinks it is racist to require the same sort of ID to vote that Delta requires for its passengers to check in. Yet most Americans believe voting is a more sacred act than flying Delta and, moreover, may have noticed that Delta has partnerships with systemically racist China. Also, a recent Associated Press poll showed that 72% of Americans favor requiring photo ID to vote. The most privileged CEOs of corporate America—those who sell us everything from soft drinks and sneakers to professional sports and social media—now jabber to America about its racism, sexism, and other assorted sins. The rules of cynical CEO censure are transparent. First, the corporation never harangues unless it feels it has more to lose—whether by boycotts, protests, or bad publicity—than it stands to gain...

States compete with each other in a variety of ways, including in attracting (and retaining) residents. Sustained periods of inbound migration lead to (and reflect) greater economic output and growth. On the other hand, prolonged periods of net outbound migration can strain state coffers, contributing to revenue declines as economic activity and tax revenue follow individuals out of state. The 2020 National Movers Study, while showing only a subset of all moves, still provides a targeted look at the types of interstate migration patterns we can expect to see in government-issued data once it becomes available.