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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.’

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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…

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…