Great moments in real estate
Been meaning to post this for a while. These are neighboring buildings at the intersection of Smith St and Atlantic Av in Brooklyn (40 41’19.2″ N, 73 59’21.6″ W, says the iPhone). The building on the left is a “luxury” high-rise, advertising “prime retail” on the ground floor. The building on the right is a city jail. It was out of use from 2003 to 2008, but the city is gradually filling it up again. One can’t say the same of the condo, which is all empty. It’s one of the disastrous… Read More
Laura Agustín in NYC, tonight. Go!
Wish I could go, but I can’t. If you can, please do. She’s excellent, and needs support in case NOW sends hecklers. Trafficking, migration and the sex industry: Framing the questions, Providing the proofs Wednesday, March 10, 2010 6:45pm – 9:00pm Rockefeller University, Weiss Building Room 305 York avenue at 66th St: Enter the campus at 66th Street Subway: Lexington Avenue Local #6 to 68th Street/Lexington Avenue Station; walk east Buses: M31 (York Avenue/57th St crosstown) and M66 (68th St crosstown) Laura Agustín is author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets… Read More
Tuition piece up
Ok, the promised piece on college inflation is up. As the wage premium for education has expanded, college has gotten a lot more expensive. Why, and what’s this done to access (and with it, class mobility)? From LBO #125, just posted to the web: “I’m borrowing my way through college… Though this sample is free, it costs money to produce LBO. If you don’t already subscribe, please do, and keep this sort of thing alive. It’s not like there’s an excess of critical economic news and analysis, is there? LBO subscriptions. Such a deal!… Read More
Radio commentary, Feburary 6, 2010
[Sorry for the delay. Better late than never, I hope.] suburban poverty In our national imaginary, suburbs are places of affluence, and even a complacent isolation from social problems. As is often the case with received wisdom, this one’s in need of a fact-check. In a new paper, Elizabeth Kneebone and Emily Garr of the Brookings Institution find that suburbs are home to the largest and fastest-growing population of poor people in the U.S. Before continuing, I should note, as I always do when I talk about our official poverty line, that… Read More
Don’t believe the Manhattan Institute
In a few hours, I’ll be posting the piece on how expensive college has gotten and why to the LBO website. In the meanwhile, a dreadful article, “Why the Student Protesters Are Wrong,” published by a Manhattan Institute front called Minding the Campus needs some correction. The author, Daniel Bennett, is a policy analyst at a right-wing think tank with a creepy name: The Center for College Affordability & Productivity. The director of the think tank is Richard Vedder, who wrote a book on how great Wal-Mart is, which gives you an idea… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
Posted on March 13, 2010 by Doug Henwood
Radio commentary, March 13, 2010
Recovery watch In a business cycle update, the grinding slog of a recovery continues. Last week, we learned that the job market looked got a little less bad in February than it was getting for most of 2009. On Friday, we learned that the retail sector had a not-bad February. Broad composite measures of the state of the U.S. economy, like the Conference Board’s Coincident Index and the Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index (CFNAI), are basically getting back to the zero line after deep collapses. Most measures, however, are behaving rather weakly… Read More