Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog

Category: Social Sciences

  • The flaw of libertarian economics

    The flaw of libertarian economics is that it overlooks or discounts the predatory aspects of power. You can say that we should get government off our backs or that taxation is an unjust burden or that the free market provides an optimal creation of wealth. But without oversight or interference, more powerful businesses can easily …

  • Time Magazine Person of the Year should be… the Lone Gunman

    (This was written a few days after the mass killing by a lone gunman at a Connecticut elementary school which claimed 27 lives). For the past few years, my mom and I have been busy guessing who will be picked as person of the year by Time magazine. So far I had selected John Roberts…

  • Tufekci on Twitter, Chilean miners, wikileaks, ipad, etc.

    I am still behind on blogging, but here’s some nuggets from  Technosociety blog, a  fresh blog about the relationship between technology and society by Zeynep Tufekci. Lots of deep thinking here. Here’s her take on the Nobel Peace prize announcement and Twitter: The Internet is not a game-changer in the sense of a cat-and-mouse game…

  • Adjunct Profs, Academic Poverty & the Quixotic Quest for a Tenure-Track position

    Read comments and insights about American education by many unhappy adjunct teachers. Collected by ex-academic Robert Nagle.

  • July Linkdump Social/Political 1

    Why is it standard operating procedure  for beauty pageant contestants to favor world peace & world leaders to favor war? — Constant Weader I’ve become a real fan of Constant Weader whose  realitychex blog covers a lot of the usual liberal haunts for commentary and analysis in a succinct & entertaining way. I found out…

  • Pushback on Social Media

    Mike Phillips on Digg being dead: The biggest problem with Digg in the past was that unless you devoted serious time to it and knew how to work the system, you had little hope of ever making the front page. The only stories that made the front page were typically those voted up by voting…

  • Linkdump: Takedowns, smokers and dying culture

    Tom Slee has a good takedown of the anecdote-based arguments of Clay Shirky. But stories and analogies should be a starting point for thought, and not its terminus. They should be the spark that prompts more analytical, more rigorous investigation and introspection, testing out your idea to see where it fits reality and where it…

  • What percent of Americans have health coverage from their employer?

    Here are some statistics which I found in an October 2009 report from the Economic Policy Institute (available only in PDF).  A cautionary note: a lot of the percentages depend on knowing exactly what category is being spoken abo0ut. All of the statistics are about working-age Americans under 65 unless otherwise specified. In 2008, 62%…

  • Just the facts, Ma’am (Facts to enlighten our political discourse)

    Bruce Bartlett on the actual IRS rates vs. perceived rates: According to the CBO, the highest figure for all federal taxes since 1970 came in the year 2000, when they reached 20.6% of GDP. As we know, after that George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress cut federal taxes; they fell to 18.5% of GDP…

  • Shallowness of Sunday talk shows

    I noticed that mediamatters is now  factchecking the statements made on  the Sunday talk shows. I don’t know how hard this is, but it’s extremely convenient to have this as a reference.  Up until recently, TV commentary was provided only on Sunday talk shows. Now with 24 hour cable, we have news commentary shows that…

  • Dear Mr. Cornyn and Ms. Hutchinson (RE: Health care)

    (Here is a short complaint letter I sent to my US Senators. I have basically given up on writing these people because they seem to have ideological blinders on (especially Mr. Cornyn). Dear Mr. Cornyn and Ms. Hutchinson: I wanted to point out one fact: my Aetna individual health insurance rates skyrocketed 40% in 4…

  • Health Insurance Rate Hikes

    Ironic Postscript: Hours after I wrote this, I received a note from Aetna informing me of another price increase for health insurance.  Until January 2010 my total price for a $5000 deductible health insurance + dental plan  was $148. Starting January 2010, it bumped up to $184. Starting April 2010, the price is $207.  This…

  • Health insurance and mortality

    A few months ago I brought up the question of amenable mortality as it relates to health care and insurance.  While the topic seemed interesting to me, I had to admit that the evidence looked questionable. When talking about public policy, it’s nice and convenient to have a way to quantify the number of corpses…

  • Various things smart people should know

    Business reporters Alex Nussbaum and Meg Tirrell estimate the impact of no health care reform on the US. One in five working-age Americans lacked health coverage during the first half of 2009, the highest in six years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a Dec. 16 report. Health-care spending last year…

  • You do not have the right to waste my time: Ignorance Removal Service

    Introducing the Robert Nagle Ignorance Removal Services. Only $300 per hour to demonstrate why a common climate denialist argument is wrong

  • Maximum family income to be eligible for Medicaid in Texas is $5750

    Here’s some amazing analysis by Alec McGillis that Brown’s victory in Massachusetts may have been triggered by a revolt by people who are sick of helping out states which are stingy about Medicaid (like Texas): Brown’s message underscores a little-noticed political dynamic in a country where rates of the uninsured vary widely, from Massachusetts to…