PeakTrader.com

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PeakTrader:

If I didn’t pay for a Ph.D Math tutor, in a competitive grad econ program (where most students were failing well into the program, transferred to easier programs, quit, unable to finish in time, etc.), it’s questionable I would’ve graduated (although, I received all “A’s” in undergrad math).

I recall my first grad econ class. The instructor wrote the most detailed equation I ever saw, using all four chalkboards, and towards the end had to write smaller and smaller to finish it.

Also, many intermediate steps were left out.

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Hydra says: “After physical inorganic chemistry, graduate econ was a snap.”

I heard theoretical physics was the hardest field, which seems similar to grad econ, e.g. using math, including the same math physicist use, to deal with (hundreds of major) invisible forces, including their interrelationships and interactions.

My Ph.D math tutor asked me more questions about economic concepts, models, terminology, etc. than I asked him about math.

Without prior knowledge of economics, one page of a grad econ book could be expanded to well over 100 pages when the explanations, definitions, and intermediate math are included.

“Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena.

The advancement of science depends in general on the interplay between experimental studies and theory. In some cases, theoretical physics adheres to standards of mathematical rigor while giving little weight to experiments and observations.

For example, while developing special relativity, Albert Einstein was concerned with the Lorentz transformation which left Maxwell’s equations invariant, but was apparently uninterested in the Michelson-Morley experiment on Earth’s drift through a luminiferous ether.”

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Methinks, partial equilibrium models work well in a vacuum.

Morganovich, University of Colorado. Obviously, you wouldn’t qualify for the program.

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I guess, some people get upset when a limited model doesn’t work. I stated before:

A rise in the minimum wage can increase real economic growth.

The higher wage attracts better workers, with higher reservation wages, to increase productivity.

Minimum wage workers have high marginal propensities to consume. So, a higher minimum wage increases consumption.

Only a portion of the higher minimum wage may be passed along in higher prices, because portions will be absorbed by “excess” wages of other workers and “excess” profits.

Weak or poorly managed firms will lose business or fail. However, stronger or better managed firms will gain their business, and also gain from the increased demand.

Also, I may add, the combined increase in unemployment benefits and higher wages can facilitate a virtuous cycle of consumption-employment.

I suspect, the income effect will be stronger than the employment effect (i.e. layoffs from the higher minimum wage) to have a net positive effect on growth and employment.

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Methinks, we’ve gone over this before. You don’t believe in neither labor standards nor a subsistence wage.

Why waste money on safety cords for workers cleaning windows of skyscrapers?

And if you should go to work riding a 10-speed bicycle, with no teeth, wearing Salvation Army clothes, we’ll, that’s tough, unless your parents or government subsidize you.

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Ron, economic conditions aren’t always the same.

With abundant labor, an employer may not have to invest much on employees, which is supported by history and countries with little or no labor standards.

Moreover, in a competitive market, firms tend to maximize profit, including through labor costs.

I also stated before, it’s not expensive to clean up “after a worker falls from a great height” when there’s abundant labor with no labor standards, including no minimum wage.

So, you believe, it’s tougher for workers when parents or government help pay for their housing, for example, than workers who are forced to sleep in a car or share housing with other workers.

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Also, I may add, Methinks new job:

The hidden downside of Santa’s little helpers
The Irish Times
December 21, 2002

“An investigation into the price of a Mattel Barbie doll, half of which is made in China, found that of the $10 retail price, $8 goes to transportation, marketing, retailing, wholesale and profit for Mattel.

Of the remaining $2, $1 is shared by the management and transportation in Hong Kong, and 65 cents is shared by the raw materials from Taiwan, Japan, the US and Saudi Arabia.

The remaining 35 cents is earned by producers in China for providing factory sites, labour and electricity.

Toy factories hire the least-skilled workers…Sixty per cent are young women between 17 and 23 years old who live cramped in company dormitories, 15 to a room, earning just 30 cents an hour and often inhaling spray paints, glue fumes and toxic dust.”

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I guess, Ron misses the good ol’ days:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lunch-atop-a-skyscraper-c1932.jpg

“The photograph depicts eleven men eating lunch, seated on a girder with their feet dangling 840 feet above the New York City streets. The men have no safety harness, which was linked to the Great Depression, when people were willing to take any job regardless of safety issues.”

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Ron says: “Just think of how much worse these young women’s lives must have been before they went to work for the factories!”

Many of them quit after being exploited.

Nonetheless, if you can get away with slavery, why not?

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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/10/dumbing-down-education-france-wants-to-ends-homework-maryland-county-ends-letter-grades/#comments

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A College Education Without Job Prospects
November 30, 2006

“The job market for Indian college graduates is split sharply in two. With a robust handshake, a placeless accent and a confident walk, you can get a $300-a-month job with Citibank or Microsoft.

With a limp handshake and a thick accent, you might peddle credit cards door to door for $2 a day.

But the chance to learn such skills is still a prerogative reserved, for the most part, for the modern equivalent of India’s upper castes — the few thousand students who graduate each year from academies like the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institutes of Technology.

Their alumni, mostly engineers, walk the hallways of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and are stewards for some of the largest companies.

In the shadow of those marquee institutions, most of the 11 million students in India’s 18,000 colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on obedience and light on useful job skills.

But as graduates complain about a lack of jobs, companies across India see a lack of skilled applicants. The contradiction is explained, experts say, by the poor quality of undergraduate education.

Teaching emphasizes silent note-taking and discipline at the expense of analysis and debate.

“Out! Out! Close the door! Close the door!” a management professor barked at a student who entered his classroom at Hinduja two minutes late.

Soon after his departure, the door cracked open again, and the student asked if he could at least take his bag.

The reply: “Out! Out! Who said you could stand here?” A second student, caught whispering, was asked to stand up and cease taking notes.

“When we are raising our children,” said Sam Pitroda, a Chicago-based entrepreneur who is chairman of the Knowledge Commission and was an adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s, “we constantly tell them: ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that. Stand here, stand there.’

It creates a feeling that if there is a boundary, you don’t cross it. You create boxes around people when we need people thinking outside the box.””

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