Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading today (organized by topic):
Economics
- Why College Costs Rise, Even in a Recession, by Ron Lieber
New York Times: “If you have paid college tuition recently, you probably have questions. Where does all that money go? And why doesn’t the price tag ever fall?”
- Disneyland and the Texas Tower, by Daniel Hamermesh
UT-Austin economics professor Daniel Hamermesh provides an interesting “real world” example of a so-called “two-part tariff” involving revenue sharing arrangements between a local artist and the University of Texas.
Health Care Reform
- How to Insure Every American, by John Shadegg and Pete Hoekstra
Wall Street Journal: “We don’t need radical change. Subsidies and high risk pools can get the job done.” The proposal outlined by Messrs. Shadegg and Hoekstra bears a remarkable resemblance to the Mackey and Garven “plans”!
- Incorrect conventional wisdom about health care reform, by Keith Hennessey
- More on Rising Healthcare Spending, by Greg Mankiw
Miscellaneous
- Notable & Quotable, by Steve Malanga
Wall Street Journal: “Steve Malanga writes about what Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber would think of America today.”
- Two Mongolias, from the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” blogsite
Boston Globe: “Mongolia (the independent nation), and Inner Mongolia (a neighboring autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China) share a common history and geography, and have both evolved in recent years, centering much of their growth on their famous culture. Mongolia is a young democracy – its 1990 revolution less than 20 years old now – formerly a Soviet-backed communist republic, and much earlier ruled by many different dynasties back to Genghis Khan in 1206. Inner Mongolia continues to undergo a cultural shift as ethnic Han Chinese now make up nearly 80% of the population, and efforts at retaining Mongolian culture are being undertaken. Collected here are a number of recent photographs of these two Mongolias. (33 photos total).”
Political Economy
- Warning: The Deficits Are Coming!, by John Fund
Wall Street Journal: “The former head of the Government Accountability Office is on a crusade to alert taxpayers to their true obligations.”