Don't Quit Your Day Job…

Carnivals DQYDJ articles are featured in for the week of August 10, and select links from around the internet on interesting and relevant topics.

I want to share another fascinating Economic study with you… this one from Brown University. The three authors, J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard and David Weil, were looking for a way to track economic growth in regions which have poor geographic connections, poor statistics, or have other impediments to useful growth tracking. Using light (specifically, light coverage in satellite photos) as a proxy for economic activity (“Consumption of nearly all goods in the evening requires lights”, they state), they show the growth in productivity in remote regions using nighttime satellite pictures.

Our article “On Cigarette Laws and Pigovian Taxes, Part I” was hosted in the Money Hacks carnival for this week. Go check out the carnival, and the Moolonomy site!

The article “Use Irrationality Against Yourself!” is hosted at the Carnival of Financial Planning for this week, over on CashMoneyLife. There are some interesting articles there, check it out.

Go check out “Go Home Already! Congress vs. the Stock Market”, hosted on ChristianPF for this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.

Our article “Know the Signs! Pyramids and Ponzis…” is featured on the 101st edition of the Carnival of Financial Planning! Visit the carnival, and the host, Watson Inc.

Behavioral finance and economics have recently exploded onto the national scene. These two behavioral topics deal with the idea of ‘rationality’; they are concerned with the rationality of the decisions of members of a population and the limits to an individual’s rationality. Studies show that humans have many irrational tendencies which can be shown experimentally.

Nature is a fickle host. Between hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis and other natural disasters, she throws plenty of challenges at mankind. I’ve written previously about the false belief that a public option in health care reform won’t quickly crowd out private companies from the insurance market. I present to you a cautionary tale from the other side of the fence… a Republican Governor (and possible Presidential candidate in 2012) who is playing pickle with nature.

Where did the estimate of 46 million people in America without health insurance come from? You probably have health insurance through your employer or through some other means. However, there are people in this country without insurance. What does it mean, and why is the number’s background not nearly as scary as the number itself? Read on…

Can states default on their debt? The state of California has been in the news recently because of a $24.3 billion gap in funding. Is it possible that we may soon hear of a state actually going ‘bankrupt’? What are the economic and political ramifications if California takes such a step?

One of Milton Friedman’s most influential and revolutionary theories was his challenge to the traditional Keynesian consumption function, which includes simple after-tax income as a variable in the consumption. Friedman countered, however, that those who consume today take future taxes, price increases, salary increases, and other factors into account. This is summarized in his Permanent Income Hypothesis. More specifically, this counters that people consume based off of their overall estimation of future income as well as opposed to only the current after-tax income.

Check out the 210th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. They are linking to the article “Eggs and Baskets”. Find it under the category ‘Bald Bull Does Bull Market Investing.’

Carnival of the Capitalists features the article “The Minimum Wage Mistake.” Check out this week’s edition at the CotC site.

Next month, the minimum wage in America is going to raise from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 an hour. The $6.55 to $7.25 jump is the last of the increases to the minimum wage under the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. The minimum wage is a sexy law; politicians can stand hand in hand with the lowest income workers and say, “I’m fighting for you!”. Unfortunately, the low income workers are holding the hands that hold them down.