Month: September 2012

#S17 is today, and reminds us of the price of inequality

~ MilesCorak ~ 10 Comments

The twitter hash tag is #S17, and using it will connect you to all those preparing for the first anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which of course is today, September 17th.

You will find tweets encouraging your participation: “If you feel that the world is on the right track, stay home. If you know things are bad, Join your local #OWS.”

Others will guide you on how to prepare, be it “Escaping from Zip Ties” or “How to pick your way out of handcuffs” (actually just the Smith and Weston model 100s).

But whatever your level of engagement, there is a message that this anniversary has for us all, a reminder of the real price of inequality.

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Children of immigrants make more progress in Australia and Canada than in the UK or the US

~ MilesCorak ~ 9 Comments

Young children whose families immigrate to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States are as prepared and capable of starting school as their native-born counterparts, with one exception: vocabulary and language development.

But the resulting disadvantages in reading skills are overcome to a much greater degree as they progress through school in Australia and Canada than they are in the United Kingdom and the United States.

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Why there are better ways to measure unemployment

~ MilesCorak ~ 11 Comments

The state of the jobs market is best assessed by a number that is not given enough attention by Statistics Canada, and the many media reports based upon its monthly press release.

The headline attention is all soaked up by the unemployment rate and the level of employment, when it really should be something Paul Krugman—the Princeton University economist and New York Times columnist—calls his “favorite gauge” of the employment situation.

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How the invisible hand points students to a job

~ MilesCorak ~ 5 Comments

They are easy to spot. A certain glaze over the pupils; quick, frequent glances this way and that; puzzled pauses before adjusting course and setting out again in another direction: first year university and college students look so terribly lost during the first few days of school because, in fact, they are.

And quite understandably so: finding the right place to be at the right time is no small matter in a sea of thousands.

But surely the really difficult thing to figure out is not where you should be, but rather what you should be? Engineer or electrician? Anthropologist or accountant? Lab technician or teacher? Make a wrong turn in these hallways and you will pay for years.

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