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by Dish Staff

Binyamin Appelbaum looks into the causes of the decline in America’s male work force:

Working, in America, is in decline. The share of prime-age men — those 25 to 54 years old — who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. … Many men, in particular, have decided that low-wage work will not improve their lives, in part because deep changes in American society have made it easier for them to live without working. These changes include the availability of federal disability benefits; the decline of marriage, which means fewer men provide for children; and the rise of the Internet, which has reduced the isolation of unemployment. …

The resulting absence of millions of potential workers has serious consequences not just for the men and their families but for the nation as a whole. A smaller work force is likely to…

I recently finished reading Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty  by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. The co-authors who are rockstars in the field of experimental development economics have pioneered the randomized control trials (RCTs) movement, which offers a rigorous evaluation of development interventions. The book draws on the evidence generated from RCTs but complements it with anecdotes, which offer a nuanced rethinking of how we understand poverty and subsequently design anti-poverty policy.

In a nutshell, the book illuminates the multi-faceted economic lives of the poor. What sets it apart from numerous other books on similar topics is the anthropological approach taken by the economists. The book shines in the authors’ visible efforts to engage closely with the poor and understand how they make decisions and adopt certain coping strategies as narrated through stories in the text. They highlight the inherent contradictions in the…

 

You know what’s funny about school shootings?

 

It’s the only time the public still universally loves teachers.

 

We don’t trust them with collective bargaining rights. We don’t think they deserve a decent salary. Heck! We don’t even trust their judgement to design their own teaching standards, lead their own classrooms or be evaluated by their own principals!

 

But when armed assailants show up at school, then we think teachers are just great.

When angry teens arrive rifles strapped to their trench-coated backs, carrying duffel bags full of ammunition – then teachers are heroes.

 

I guess you can’t standardize your way past a bullet.

 

My school district had an outstanding training today. Administration brought in current and retired FBI agents, local law enforcement and EMTs to practice active shooter drills with the teachers.

 

We spent the morning learning about common factors between various school…