Like almost every woman with a college degree, I read Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article on women, families, and careers. I agree with a lot of it, too. One part jumped out at me, in part because I was thinking of writing a blog post about it anyway: Sandberg thinks that “something” is an “ambition gap”—that women… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Political Discourse
Paying for College: Declining Family Incomes
The Federal Reserve Bank released its study on changes in US family finance from 2007 to 2010, and the results are not pretty. The headline is that median net worth fell 38.8 percent over this period. One reason that college seems so unaffordable these days is that, well, it is. A middle-class family has fewer… [Read More]
Another Sports Stadium Funding Disaster for Taxpayers
Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune has a long story about how the Chicago suburb of Bridgeview used taxpayer money to build Toyota Park, a stadium for the for-profit, privately owned Chicago Fire soccer club. Did it pay off? Why, yes, of course it did. It paid off for the team and different businesses that had connections to… [Read More]
What Happened at JP Morgan Chase, Anyway?
One of my friends suggested that I write a post explaining what happened at JP Morgan Chase, in plain English. The bottom line is that they bought a lousy insurance policy. The company has a big debt portfolio, which is no surprise given that it is a major corporate lender. If some horrible economic event… [Read More]
Paying for College: On Athletic Scholarships
For a long time, I believed that college athletes were entitled brats who were not capable of getting a degree on their own, and that it was really stupid of them to go pro before graduation. Hey, I was wrong, okay? And, as I realized this, I’ve come to a few observations that may be… [Read More]
