Grab bag

A bunch of links that I found interesting:

I hate unions. They may have produced net gains for a while, but now I'm convinced they do more harm than good. New York schoolteachers have given me another reason to hate unions. Update: Here is a news article talking about the same thing.

Spending less on health care is going to require that some people don't live as long. That's hard for some people to accept, but doctors aren't out behind hospitals burning money or anything. We have too few health care professionals in many places, so we can't pay doctors less without having more problems (and less health care) on that front (because if you pay doctors less, some of them will stop being doctors). Reduced health care costs would require not giving expensive medical treatment to some individuals, like heart pumps, which cost more than $500,000 per quality adjusted life year (QALY). More on QALYs here. (Rather economic-y).

Which side would oppose having an econ professor on the jury in a medical malpractice case? I bet the plaintiff (the one suing) was the one who wanted him out. But then again, he would know that economic studies have valued lives at about $3-5 million (if my memory serves me well) so maybe the defendants wanted him out for that. Of course, the prosecution would be explaining that to the jury anyway.

You've probably heard about the controversy over the possibly rigged election in Iran. This article is written by two guys who use statistics to show that it reported numbers were probably made up.