Broback's Blog

Ouch. This would appear to handily refute the non-intuitive argument Krugman made (and bloggers parrot) about the imagined efficiency of Medicare and Medicaid. The New York Times reported yesterday: The official in charge of Medicare and Medicaid for the last 17 months says that 20 percent to 30 percent of health spending is “waste” that […]

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@mungowitz before: After:

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Robert Reich laments that workers can no longer purchase the goods they manufacture. “For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling.” Seems to me like the iPad is a poster child for this […]

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We’ve been grappling for weeks with the issue of securing a domain name for our latest venture. After discovering Domize (and many other cool tools) on Steve Blank’s blog, I had two stellar candidates within an hour of playing. One of the neat features of Domize is that it not only reveals what’s taken/not, but […]

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There, was that so hard? Kudos to Amazon. Their latest tablet was announced with a realistic price point. Unlike all(?) of the other competitors hoping to take on the iPad, they realized a basic truth that applies almost (but not quite) universally: If you are up against an entrenched competitor with a higher perceived value […]

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No surprises (at least to me) here. Seems to reflect the imagery and videos I’ve watched. Original here.

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My friend Steve cites a smart, educated, and experienced friend who has sadly been affected by the economic downturn and has now been laid off. She’s been offered a job at a pay scale that’s apparently inconsistent with the residential real estate industry work she’s had in the past (lower) and with hours that are […]

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Just ran across this 2007 report from the Treasury Department. Combine it with this from the Red Cross and World Bank data, and we get a picture of how Americans migrate (from a global perspective) between modes of lowly relative prosperity to the heights of lavish comfort. Key extracts below. (Emphasis mine) There was considerable […]

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Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has created a revealing flow chart that perfectly captures a rant I’ve been making verbally for 20 years. I should probably print it out and carry it around with me it comes up so often. After looking at this, one might wonder why anyone invests at all.

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Among the econ and finance blogger set, there’s been a bit of a tempest in a teacup (IMHO) over an RFP asking vendors to supply the NY Federal Reserve with a bid for a comprehensive social media monitoring solution. Have not seen a similar uproar from the social media set. As someone who for several […]

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