“Roger M. Battistella argues in “Health Care Turning Point” that the last thing the health-care system needs is more government involvement. His prescription: market competition.”
Obama’s Misleading Assault on the Insurance Industry, by John Calfee
“The president knows better than his demagoguery suggests.”
Why Health Reform Is Bad Politics, by Kim Strassel
“Contrary to all the theories, Democrats will not benefit from ObamaCare.”
Politics
Road to the Nut House, by Peggy Noonan
“You have to be crazy to run for president. Seriously, you do.”
Magic and Science
The magic of the placebo, by Eric Mead
“Sugar pills, injections of nothing — studies show that, more often than you’d expect, placebos really work. At TEDMED, magician Eric Mead does a trick to prove that, even when you know something’s not real, you can still react as powerfully as if it is. ”
Postal Service expected to announce ‘significant changes’ – washingtonpost.com
“The U.S. Postal Service will release projections Tuesday that confirm for the first time the suspicion that mail volume will never return to pre-recession levels. In response, the agency is pushing anew for a dramatic reshaping of how Americans get and send their letters and packages.”
My brother John Garven and I were talking about this very topic yesterday; John mentioned (among other things) that wages and benefits for postal workers account for > 80% of total revenue, which seems rather high, but I am not a labor economist so I don’t know offhand what the total labor costs to revenue ratio typically is for comparable firms.
I did manage to find a dated (2002) study commissioned by the American Postal Workers Union online which compares labor costs at USPS with labor costs at UPS and Fedex; below, I reproduce my own version of Table 1 on page 2 from that study:
The primary takeaway from this report is that that USPS clearly has (historically had) higher salary and employee benefit costs as a percent of operating revenues, operating expenses, and (adjusted) operating expenses (see the report for the details concerning that particular calculation) than its competitors.
I have a personal interest in this topic since I have family members who work or have worked for USPS. It amazes me that it has taken the USPS this long to come to the realization that it doesn’t make much sense to staff for a first-class mail world when consumers have so many close substitutes available (e.g., email, fax, alternative delivery via Fedex and UPS, etc.). This is yet another data point in support of John Steele Gordon’s hypothesis that government can’t run a business.
Postal Service expected to announce ‘significant changes’ – washingtonpost.com
“The U.S. Postal Service will release projections Tuesday that confirm for the first time the suspicion that mail volume will never return to pre-recession levels. In response, the agency is pushing anew for a dramatic reshaping of how Americans get and send their letters and packages.”
My brother John Garven and I were talking about this very topic yesterday; John mentioned (among other things) that wages and benefits for postal workers account for > 80% of total revenue, which seems rather high, but I am not a labor economist so I don’t know offhand what the total labor costs to revenue ratio typically is for comparable firms.
I did manage to find a dated (2002) study commissioned by the American Postal Workers Union online which compares labor costs at USPS with labor costs at UPS and Fedex; below, I reproduce my own version of Table 1 on page 2 from that study:
The primary takeaway from this report is that that USPS clearly has (historically had) higher salary and employee benefit costs as a percent of operating revenues, operating expenses, and (adjusted) operating expenses (see the report for the details concerning that particular calculation) than its competitors.
I have a personal interest in this topic since I have family members who work or have worked for USPS. It amazes me that it has taken the USPS this long to come to the realization that it doesn’t make much sense to staff for a first-class mail world when consumers have so many close substitutes available (e.g., email, fax, alternative delivery via Fedex and UPS, etc.). This is yet another data point in support of John Steele Gordon’s hypothesis that government can’t run a business.
I would like to call attention to a short video presentation by Nobel economics laureate Daniel Kahneman on the science of happiness which is well worth watching and thinking about. This video was filmed last month at the TED 2010 conference (held February 9–13 in Long Beach, CA; according to TED’s website, “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out … as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.”). Here’s is a synopsis of Professor Kahneman’s talk; you can view the presentation by clicking on Professor Kahneman’s image below:
“Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy — and our own self-awareness.”
