FerretTelescopeHow being nice can sabotage your dating life.

WB/DC is ramping up its movie-making to compete with Disney/Marvel. I look forward to some of it, but they should focus on TV, though. They’re good at TV.

Michael Kazin is unimpressed with the current crop of independent politicians and candidates. I hope to write more about this, but what I find interesting is that among the electorate you have more defacto Republicans who call themselves independents, while among politicians, you have more defacto Democrats.

Germans do apprenticeships in a way that we don’t. The Atlantic looks at their system, and ours. It even confronts the “tracking” question.

Christopher Flavelle claims that Canada shows that the minimum wage has minimal effect.schoo

Shocker: Dating couples and married couples communicate differently.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry laments that Americans are refusing to learn from international methods of health care delivery.

Kinkisharyo International planned to set up some manufacturing in Palmdale, California. The unions decided to play hard ball, and now Kinkisharyo International will not be manufacturing any more in California than they are required to.

The good news is that if you got one of those flesh-tunnels in your ears, it can be fixed. The bad news is that it ain’t cheap. Business is apparently booming.

As micro-housing starts to take off in Seattle, neighborhood groups are flexing their muscle to put as much a halt to it as they can.

Thirty Americans die every day from the organ shortages. Keith Humphreys and Sally Satel discuss what effect compensating organ donors might have.


Category: Newsroom

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6 Responses to Linkluster 3+2=5

  1. but what I find interesting is that among the electorate you have more defacto Republicans who call themselves independents

    You’re not the only person to have expressed this. From what I’ve seen, Democrats will remain within the party and merely become lukewarm voters or give up on the process, while those upset with the Republican party become independents with Republican values. There’s a reason why I don’t put much stock into reports during election season about “independents”.

    • trumwill says:

      I think it’s pretty well established in polling circles that operational Republicans call themselves independent and operational liberals call themselves moderates. The former gets partially – though not entirely – smoothed out by including leans with their respective parties.

      There is an interesting phenomenon lately where both sides seem to have decided that swing voters are a myth (thus each party should appeal to rallying the base). That’s not exactly what you’re saying, but it’s something I am seeing increasingly. It used to be more a right-side thing. The problem is that it’s demonstrably not true. (They are definitely less in number than polling suggests, but they occupy the fulcrum.)

  2. Germans do apprenticeships in a way that we don’t. The Atlantic looks at their system, and ours. It even confronts the “tracking” question.

    Contrary to what some would argue, in Germany, it’s possible for somebody on a vocational track to attend college, but it would require extra lessons in a special seminar programme to get the Arbitur needed for entry. It’s not exactly the end of the world, and my friend’s husband is an excellent case example of somebody switching tracks.

    FWIW, as the article noted, apprenticeships require firms to want to invest in their workers, and there just aren’t the incentives for American firms to do so. In turn, a sizable chunk of the people that would be entering these programmes in Germany are sitting in directional colleges in the states with the hope of securing a white collar job. There’s a certain contempt for those who enter blue collar work in the States that doesn’t exist in Germany despite our supposedly egalitarian society.

    • trumwill says:

      Yeah, the investment issue is a big problem.

      As is the fixation on white collar employment. I’m not sure how much of it is contempt, though. I think a lot of it is just a hold over from having it pounded into everyone’s head since the 90’s that blue collar employment is dead. There is at once a certain romance with “making things” and the blue collar work that goes with it, and an allergy towards “consigning” anyone to actually work that track.

  3. and now Kinkisharyo International will not be manufacturing any more in California than they are required to

    IIRC, an agreement has been reached with the Mayor of Los Angeles, Kinki Sharyo, and labour unions, so any future orders for “Metro” will be built in that plant. FWIW, Kinki Sharyo has generally used pop-up plants for their orders, as they lack a permanent plant in the US. Their trains have been built for American light rail systems Newark, Boston, San Jose, Dallas, Seattle, and Phoenix, and they’ve built numerous Japanese market units including Shinkansen (high-speed) trainsets. I suspect the plant maybe used as a prop if they along with their Japanese consortium partners decide to bid for the rights to build (and potentially finance, operate, and maintain) trainsets for the California High Speed Rail programme.

    And as a bonus, I’ll note that Siemens which has a large share of the light rail manufacturing market in the US (but not in Europe) builds in Sacramento.

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