The Northern Virginia real estate market of the 1970’s and 80’s helped provide me a comfortable upbringing and a private university tuition.  But, as long as I understood it have I hated the commission model of real estate.  I really came to hate it– even as a buyer, when my real estate agent in Lubbock, TX worked his butt off for us in 2002 but got 1/4 as much money as my dad would have made selling the same house back in Virginia simply because the markets are so different.  And the whole buyer pays 6% or else bit– ridiculous!  But, it’s finally changing.  Leonhardt ..read more

Hey remember the not so good old days when I used to post about Covid all the time?  Me, too.  Obviously, that doesn’t happen so much these days, but I still find the scientific advances (or lack thereof) pretty interesting.  Nice post from Katelyn Jetelina on what progress is being made on future vaccines: NextGen Category #1: Variant-proof vaccines One NextGen solution is a universal coronavirus vaccine that would protect against not only SARS-CoV-2 but also other coronaviruses that might cause future animal outbreaks and pandemics. However, this is a long way away.  ..read more

I’ve been saying for as long as I can remember, imagine when we’re well into the campaign and Biden’s campaign is able to run ads saying that Trump’s former chief of staff, VP, National  Security Advisor, and Secretary of Defense (and others) think  he’s a threat to America’s national security.  Maybe some of them will even agree to appear in ads.  Sure, ads only do so much, but that’s pretty damn damning. I was thus quite encouraged to read just now that anti-Trump Republican pollster/analyst Sarah Longwell sees this as the way to go: For Longwell, the key to changing thi ..read more

A couple weeks ago I presented our latest research on abortion at the Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting.  You can download the paper here.  Rather than just posting the abstract, I uploaded the paper to Claude Pro (I subscribed this month and I am loving it) and asked it to write a blog post for me.  Here it is… Title: New Research Reveals How Personal Experiences Shape Abortion Attitudes in Post-Roe America In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion has become a highly salient and divisive political issue. While genera ..read more

Sorry, been a busy boy.  Hope to provide a lot more good content once I get back in the swing.  Here’s some quick hits for now… 1) These seem good… “10 Impressive Questions to Ask in a Job Interview“ 2) So much, this.  I grew up in the suburb of Springfield, VA and Cary, NC just felt like home to me. “What the Suburb Haters Don’t Understand: The homogeneity of the suburbs has an upside: If strip malls and subdivisions remind you of home, you can feel nostalgic almost anywhere.” Yet the majority of Americans live in this “nowhere.” Being precise about the proportion of the U.S ..read more

1) Jay Caspian Kang, “Online Gambling Is Changing Sports for the Worse: Betting should be legal, but pro leagues and major networks are undermining the value of sports in a bid to get in on the action.” And there’s a much more concerning subset of the integrity problem, one that feels more permanent and specific to the style and ubiquity of online gambling. Sports betting may be a trenchant vice, but the bets themselves have changed dramatically. Single-game parlays, or S.G.P.s, in which a bettor strings together multiple wagers on individual statistical outcomes—how many points, rebounds, tu ..read more

I’ve written time and time again that I think the single most important thing we can do about education, within the education policy area, is simply to pay teachers more.  Alas, we are moving in the wrong direction.  Drum with a couple of charts today: When you see figures for K-12 teacher pay it’s normally an average of all teachers, including those who have master’s degrees and PhDs, or specialized skills such as ESL. But what about your garden variety fourth-grade teacher with a BA? They now make less than the average for all workers: The average base pay for teachers with a BA i ..read more

1) Helen Lewis with a great take on the recent insane, everybody should be trans!, essay: For Chu, the primacy of rights means that evidence is irrelevant to medical decisions—even when children are involved. This view has two logical implications: The first is that, if we are now just letting kids do whatever they want with their bodies, why not let them get married at 12, or drink alcohol at 13, or consent to sex at 14 with an adult partner? “Toddlers have the right to get tattoos” might be the worst political slogan I have ever heard. The alternative argument is that gender—however you def ..read more

Been meaning to write this post for a while and keep not getting around to it. But that’s okay, because I keep finding more good takes to add to it. Short version: if the election were held today, I think Trump would win.  The election will not be held today.  There will be a campaign.  And though campaigns only have modest impact, I think all the fundamentals suggest it will likely serve to benefit Biden and he will be in a notably better position in November than he is now.  As I like to say, presidential campaigns generally don’t matter (it’s so much the economy and pres ..read more

As anybody who consumes any media in North Carolina knows, legalized online sports betting came to the state this week.  To try and hook a new generation of gamblers, many of the online sportsbooks are offering great deals to get you to use their sites.  Last weekend, N&O sports columnist extraordinaire, Luke DeCock, had a great column about his efforts to take advantage of all this free money and I was totally inspired.  Who doesn’t like free money — or, the next best thing, playing with house money? Unless you are completely off social media — and I can’t recommend a Face ..read more