With the skyrocketing cost of fuel and the increasing impact of fuel costs on American workers, I have to ask - Why aren’t more people telecommuting? My comments are specifically for IT-related jobs, since that is where my experience is, but I believe a fairly large number of other jobs could be done via telecommuting […]

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As I was adding accounts and rates for my certificate of deposit site, I began to notice that 3 and 6 month CDs were offering higher rates than 5 year CDs - which seems to be the opposite of what you’d expect. I decided to whip up a quick graph last night, and sure enough, […]

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Much has been said about the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy ruling against Wal-Mart and requiring it to immediately being providing the emergency contraception drug (aka “morning-after” or “Plan B”). Many folks are arguing that such actions are anti-American, new, and unconstitutional. In fact, the ruling is none of these.
Wal-Mart itself is not being […]

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As you probably have already seen, Exxon Mobile posted a record profit the other day, in the amount of $36.2 Billion for 2005. Given the huge increases in prices at the pump recently, there is considerable outrage over such huge profits. It is understandable, then, that executives at Exxon were trying to keep a low […]

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Recently, Maryland became the first state to require big companies such as Wal-Mart to contribute a certain percentage (8% in Maryland’s case) of their payroll toward health insurance for their employees. Even though I am not from Maryland, I am personally interested in this for 3 reasons: I think health care is going to be […]

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A while back, Amazon announced a new service called “Amazon Mechanical Turk“. The basic idea is that anyone can submit a task that would be impossible for a computer, but relatively simple for a human. You could signup to complete these tasks, and would be given a small reward for each task you successfully completed.
And […]

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As a student of Economics (programmer by trade though!), I am interested in wage differences on a macro level. Today, I saw two news stories that are somewhat disturbing - increasing CEO pay, and a substantial increase in poverty.
On a micro level, wage differences and poverty are more easily explained. If I am poor, chances […]

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In a recent Standard Examiner Letter To the Editor advocating the building of a commuter rail system, Richard Gallison claims that:
“Long ago there was a news item published in this paper that stated that cities with a good commuter transportation had 32 percent less traffic on their highways.”
Umm.. Yeah. Long ago in a Galaxy Far, […]

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