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This article caught my eye. The author, Greg Ferenstein, concludes “it might be wiser to redirect anger towards those who get in the way of new housing, rather than rely on taxes to solve our problems.” Yes, and no.

Back up. What’s the general idea? Well, Matthew Rognlie found that “recent trends in both capital wealth and income are driven almost entirely by housing.” This is not entirely in contrast to the findings of Piketty, rather derived from Piketty’s data: “Also using Piketty and Zucman (2013)’s data, I find that a single component of the capital stock—housing—accounts for nearly 100% of the long-term increase in the capital/income ratio, and more than 100% of the long-term increase in the net capital share of income.”

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Individuals who are forced to spend almost all of their income on housing can’t save any money. We’re talking about people forced…

Cancer drugs. Good stuff cheap?

When Americans talk, pharmaceutical companies listen. And what they’ve heard is that initiatives to contain or regulate medical costs get labeled as “rationing,” a word with very un-American connotations.

While politicians wring their hands, pricing strategists at pharma and biotech companies take action by charging high and rising prices for products for life-threatening illnesses. Cancer is Exhibit A, with many drugs costing more than $100,000 per year of treatment. A JAMA Oncologypaper reviewed wholesale prices for cancer drugs approved over the past five years and found that prices are not correlated with a drug’s novelty or efficacy.

The authors conclude:

“Our results suggest that current pricing models are not rational but simply reflect what the market will bear.”

Now it’s possible that there is a greater correlation between actual negotiated prices and novelty or efficacy that isn’t showing up in the researchers’ data on wholesale prices. Still, the main conclusions…

Robert Reich

The former secretary of labor on the dangers of the sharing economy and our growing intolerance for labor unions

ROBERT REICH, ROBERTREICH.ORG

‘Economist Martin Armstrong warns that the twin attacks in France will be used by world leaders to push for restrictions on Internet privacy and the total elimination of encrypted communications.

Armstrong, who correctly predicted the 1987 Black Monday crash as well as the 1998 Russian financial collapse, writes that, “They are using this latest event precisely as they used 911 to strip us of all rights.”

“David Cameron, PM of Britain, wants to block WhatsApp and Snapchat if he wins the next election, as part of his plans for new surveillance. Britain will lead the charge to outlaw encryption altogether when Britain has been walking hand-in-hand with the NSA. They are using this latest event precisely as they used 911 to strip us of all rights,” adds Armstrong.’

More from Source…

Liyun Chen ’11 (Economics) is Senior Analyst for Data Science at eBay in Shanghai, China. The following post originally appeared on her economics blog in English and in Chinese. Follow her on Twitter @cloudlychen

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Variance is an interesting word. When we use it in statistics, it is defined as the “deviation from the center”, which corresponds to the formula , or in the matrix form (1 is a column vector with N*1 ones). From its definition it is the second (order) central moment, i.e. sum of the squared distance to the central. It measures how much the distribution deviates from its center — the larger the sparser; the smaller the denser. This is how it works in the 1-dimension world. Many of you should be familiar with these.

Variance has a close relative called standard deviation, which is essentially the square root of variance, denoted by // . There is…