| 2007 | 63.0 |
| 2008 | 62.2 |
| 2009 | 59.3 |
| 2010 | 58.5 |
| 2011 | 58.4 |
| 2012 | 58.6 |
"Barry T. Smith, 44, spent most of his life collecting comic books. And he always considered them an investment. “These books would someday be college tuition, or a house down payment,” Smith remembers thinking. “I would lay them all out in my parents’ living room, sorting them, cataloging them, writing down entries on graph paper while cross-referencing them against the Overstreet Price Guide.”
After college he landed a tech job in Silicon Valley but held on to all 1,200 of his comics, including several hundred early issues of Marvel’s X-Men, which his research suggested had grown in value every year. The comics sat in a storage unit, boarded and bagged, for close to two decades. When Smith found himself unemployed and in need of money to support his wife and two daughters, he decided the time was right to cash in on his investment.
The entire collection sold for about $500. “I’m not too proud to admit, I cried a bit,” Smith says.
Frank Santoro, a columnist for the Comics Journal and an avid collector himself, has noticed the same trend. “More and more of these types of collections are showing up for sale,” he says. “And they’re becoming more and more devalued. The prices are dropping.” He recently had to break the bad news to a friend’s uncle, who was convinced his comic collection—about 3,000 books—was worth at least $23,000. “I told him it was probably more like $500,” Santoro says. “And a comic book store would probably only offer him $200.”
Stories like these are a stark contrast to what’s typically reported. To go by media accounts, 2013 has been a huge year for the vintage comic market. A Minnesota man found a copy of Action Comics No. 1—the first appearance of Superman, published in 1938—in a wall of his house and sold it for $175,000 in June. Three decades ago a different copy of the same comic sold for about $5,000, a record at the time.Outlandish claims and tales of amazing windfalls elicit only groans from Rob Salkowitz, a business analyst and author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture. He also happens to be, in his own words, “a guy in his 40s with a basement full of old comics.” He warns that too many people have been deluded into thinking they are sitting on a comic book gold mine.
“There are two markets for comic books,” Salkowitz says. “There’s the market for gold-plated issues with megawatt cultural significance, which sell for hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars. But that’s a very, very, very limited market. If a Saudi sheik decides he needs Action Comics No. 1, there are only a few people out there who have a copy.” And then there’s the other market, where most comics change hands for pennies and nobody is getting rich or even breaking even. “The entire back-issues market is essentially a Ponzi scheme,” Salkowitz says. “It’s been managed and run that way for 35 years.”
On the other end of the spectrum, almost any comic book store owner can supply eye-opening tales of depreciation. Walter Durajlija, an adviser for Overstreet and owner of Big B Comics in Hamilton, Ont., sold a copy of Uncanny X-Men No. 94 in 2010 for a record $26,500. Last year, that same comic sold in his store for only $12,000. “[My] last two sales [of X-Men No. 94] were $9,501 in February of 2013 and $8,089 three short days later,” he says. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “Incredible Hulk No. 181 was getting $20,000; they now trade for $8,000.”
There are many theories for why comic collectibles have stopped being valuable. Some blame readily available reprints. “What drove the collectibility of the old comics was that they were once genuinely rare,” says Salkowitz. Others point to the grading system, which now requires that comics be encased in plastic polymer. “It really is a shady process that’s completely changed the marketplace,” says Santoro. And there’s reason to suspect that the Internet era has yet again worked its magic on prices: “In the ’60s, the only way to read these stories was to own the original issues,” says Salkowitz. “Now you can go on Pirate Bay and download a torrent of anything you want for free.”"
"The whole point of online dating sites was to make matchmaking so easy anyone could do it themselves. Which makes the pitch for a new premium service from dating giant eHarmony seem odd at first: Pay us $5000 and you’ll get a personal counselor to help not only sift through matches, but quietly approach them on your behalf.
So why did they do it? After surveying 15,000 eHarmony members who earn more than $250,000 a year, it was clear there was huge demand for such a perk, says Grant Langston, eHarmony’s vice president of customer experience. The site has one other reason to fast-track the new counseling service: An unexpected marketing opportunity. Ben Stiller’s holiday movie, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” features an eHarmony counselor. eHarmony didn’t pay for the plug or provide such a service — until now. “The counselor is going to have a lot of power,” Langston says. “The service is also designed to minimize the rejection and anxiety that comes with online dating.”
eHarmony’s 29 different dimensions — the company’s famous and sometimes parodied algorithms created by founder Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist — cover personality and character rather than chemistry or physical attractiveness, Langston says. That’s where the counselor comes in. As with the fictional eHarmony counselor in Stiller’s movie, the real ones will talk to members by phone or Skype — or in person for those who live near eHarmony’s offices in Santa Monica, Calif.""China has something similar. See The Price of Marriage in China. Excerpt:
"FROM her stakeout near the entrance of an H & M store in Joy City, a Beijing shopping mall, Yang Jing seemed lost in thought, twirling a strand of her auburn-tinted hair, tapping her nails on an aquamarine iPhone 4S. But her eyes kept moving. They tracked the clusters of young women zigzagging from Zara to Calvin Klein Jeans. They lingered on a face, a gesture, and then moved on, darting across the atrium, searching.
“This is a good place to hunt,” she told me. “I always have good luck here.”
For Ms. Yang, Joy City is not so much a consumer mecca as an urban Serengeti that she prowls for potential wives for some of China’s richest bachelors. Ms. Yang, 28, is one of China’s premier love hunters, a new breed of matchmaker that has proliferated in the country’s economic boom. The company she works for, Diamond Love and Marriage, caters to China’s nouveaux riches: men, and occasionally women, willing to pay tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars to outsource the search for their ideal spouse.
In Joy City, Ms. Yang gave instructions to her eight-scout team, one of six squads the company was deploying in three cities for one Shanghai millionaire. This client had provided a list of requirements for his future wife, including her age (22 to 26), skin color (“white as porcelain”) and sexual history (yes, a virgin).
“These millionaires are very picky, you know?” Ms. Yang said. “Nobody can ever be perfect enough.” Still, the potential reward for Ms. Yang is huge: The love hunter who finds the client’s eventual choice will receive a bonus of more than $30,000, around five times the average annual salary in this line of work."
"A year ago, the price for regular unleaded was $3.50 in San Antonio.
Unless there is a major hurricane or an unexpected disruption in gasoline production and distribution, prices could continue to fall, AAA spokesman Doug Shupe said."
"GasBuddy.com's chief oil analyst, Tom Kloza, said San Antonio likely will see average prices fall below $3.
“Demand is flat, but supplies are quite plentiful, particularly in Texas,” he said.
Cheaper crude oil and cheaper ethanol, which is blended into gasoline, also is helping suppress prices, said Kloza, who expects gas prices to bottom out between Election Day and Valentine's Day.
“People are driving less,” said Ed Hirs, energy economist at the University of Houston, “and the gasoline doesn't have to be processed as much in the fall and winter,” making it less expensive for refiners to produce. That helps lower prices.
Also, “I'd thank the Eagle Ford Shale and the Permian (Basin),” Hirs said, where oil production is soaring.
Refiners are buying “a huge amount of oil from the Permian and the Eagle Ford,” and the crude can be bought at a slight discount to the price on the Gulf Coast.I don't think Kloza actually meant that the demand line for gas is flat. I think he meant that demand is simply not increasing recently (it might eve be going down if people are driving less). If the demand line is not moving and if the supply line is shifting to the right, then the price will fall.
That's also contributing to lower prices at the pump, he said."
"In the convoluted hellscape that novelty dating sites live in, it takes a really unique feature to stand out. Take Carrot Dating. It's an app that incorporates a surface-level, quid-pro-quo-dating model, and might just be ridiculous enough to work. I instantly downloaded the app to find out.
In a piece published by Al Jazeera America yesterday, MIT entrepreneur and app creator Brandon Wade explains the concept of letting users (who may lack confidence, or sociability, or physical attractiveness)bribeincentivize potential dates that are supposedly hot with a wide range of lures. Bribes include:
The Internet erupted, calling Wade's app "thinly veiled prostitution," and shaming him and his carrot-stick concept before ever actually trying it. I think it's fair to say that, even if the app were requiring reciprocity in kind, a coffee isn't going to get me laid. My favorite bribe from this list is a tank of gas, but call me a sucker for indie movie romance.
- Coffee
- Dinner
- Drinks
- Tattoo
- Bouquet of Flowers
- Box of Chocolates
- Tank of Gas
- Piece of Jewelry
- Movie
- Concert
But the Carrot Dating app does make a great point about transactional relationships. We live in a world in which expensive gifts and outlandish dinners are sometimes par for the course for attracting a mate. Whether that's bad or not depends on your own opinion, but is it any worse if the arrangement is laid out in an app?"
"But let's face it, most dates have some form or another of unbalanced reciprocity. Perhaps that's all that Carrot Dating is trying to highlight. Whether or not you've met "the one," you're likely making some sort of compromise. And likely, if you think about it, you're able to assess some type of value to whatever that compromise is. For instance, plastic people can be an unworthy investment of patience. And coffee can range from Dunkin' to artisanal pour-overs."
"The House passed the proposed measure to charge a 5% tax on packaged food that contains 275 calories or more per 100 grams, on grounds that such high-calorie items typically contain large amounts of salt and sugar and few essential nutrients."
"Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, called Mexico a role model, saying that the measures could protect the health of consumers while also shielding the economy from productivity losses and runaway public health costs."
"All that fat has contributed to an alarming rise in chronic illnesses like adult-onset Type 2 diabetes, which afflicts an estimated 15% of Mexicans over the age of 20, the highest rate for any country with more than 100 million inhabitants. Illnesses related to excess weight cost the Mexican public health system more than $3 billion a year, according to the legislation.
On virtually every street corner in Mexico, makeshift stands sell the types of packaged items that will be taxed for the first time: potato chips, cookies, ice cream, fried corn chips, chocolates, candy, puddings and local sweets.
"We're a country of malnourished fatsos," José Antonio Álvarez Lima, a former state governor turned newspaper columnist told Mexican political news website Animal Politico. He pegged part of the blame for Mexico's high consumption of soda and snacks on incessant TV advertisements and poor education."
"Mexican industrial chamber Concamin estimates that processed food companies targeted by the new tax employ thousands of Mexicans and account for 4.1% of GDP. "We can't allow last-minute taxes," said Concamin president Francisco Funtanet, suggesting that companies might cut back on personnel and investment to absorb the tax hit.
Raul Picard, a top official at Concamin and owner of a chocolate company, argued that vice taxes could lead to a proliferation in contraband goods of questionable origin, possibly posing a threat to public health.
"There's no such thing as junk food, just junk diets," said Felipe Gómez, head of a regional food makers' group in Jalisco state. Even so-called junk food has carbohydrates and calories that the body needs, Mr. Gómez argued.
Academics say the move could hurt the poor because they spend a greater percentage of their income on cheap, packaged foods, but added that doing nothing was worse."
"Jed Kolko, chief economist for San Francisco–based real estate website Trulia, says that from 2005 to 2011, 183 Californians moved to Texas for every 100 Texans who moved to California. “Home prices, more than any other factor, cause people to leave,” Kolko says.It doesn't say if the cost of living takes into account quality of life. California might have more amenities like beaches or art museums (I really don't know). A place like San Diego has a great climate, where it rarely gets very hot or cold. But it is not clear how much difference any of this would make.
…the federal government calculated the Texas poverty rate as 18.4% for 2010 and that of California as about 16%. That may sound bad for Texas, but once adjustments are made for the different costs of living across the two states, as the federal government does in its Supplemental Poverty Measure, Texas’ poverty rate drops to 16.5% and California’s spikes to a dismal 22.4%. Not surprisingly, it is the lower-income residents who are most likely to leave California.
On the flip side, Texas has a higher per capita income than California, adjusted for cost of living, and nearly catches up with New York by the same measure. Once you factor in state and local taxes, Texas pulls ahead of New York—by a wide margin. The website MoneyRates ranks states on the basis of average income, adjusting for tax rates and cost of living; once those factors are accounted for, Texas has the third highest average income (after Virginia and Washington State), while New York ranks 36th."
"The federal government shutdown could leave America’s craft brewers with a serious hangover.
Stores will still offer plenty of suds. But the shutdown has closed an obscure agency that quietly approves new breweries, recipes and labels, which could create huge delays throughout the rapidly growing craft industry, whose customers expect a constant supply of inventive and seasonal beers.
Mike Brenner is trying to open a craft brewery in Milwaukee by December. His application to include a tasting room is now on hold, as are his plans to file paperwork for four labels over the next few weeks. He expects to lose about $8,000 for every month his opening is delayed.
‘‘My dream, this is six years in the making, is to open this brewery,’’ Brenner said. ‘‘I’ve been working so hard, and I find all these great investors. And now I can’t get started because people are fighting over this or that in Washington. ... This is something people don’t mess around with. Even in a bad economy, people drink beer.’’The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB, is a little-known arm of the Treasury Department. The agency will continue to process taxes from existing permit holders, but applications for anything new are in limbo."
"The share of people in the developing world who live in extreme poverty has been reduced from 1 in 2 in 1980 to 1 in 5 today..." (so that means the extreme poverty rate fell 60% since 1980)
"In 1990, more than 12 million children died before the age of 5. Now that figure is down close to 6 million."
"When child mortality drops and families know that their children will survive, they are more likely to have fewer babies — and to invest more in them."
"Ancient diseases are on the way out. Guinea worm and polio are likely to be eradicated in the coming years. Malaria has been brought under control in many countries, and a vaccine may reduce its toll even further."
"Poor people used to go blind routinely from disease or were unable to work for want of reading glasses. Now they are much less likely to go blind, and far more likely to get glasses."
"Some of the biggest gains resulted from economic growth in China and India."
"Despite the gains, a Pew poll early this year found that the budget area that Americans most wanted to cut was “aid to the world’s needy.” Perhaps one reason is that aid groups and journalists alike are so focused on problems that we leave the public mistakenly believing that the war on poverty and disease is being lost."
"Over the years, many state-university systems — and even states themselves — have shifted more of their financial aid away from students who need it toward those whose résumés merit it. The share of state aid that’s not based on need has nearly tripled in the last two decades, to 29 percent per full-time student in 2010-11. The stated rationale, of course, is that merit scholarships motivate high-school achievement and keep talented students in state."
"about 1 in 5 students from households with income over $250,000 receives merit aid from his or her school. For families making less than $30,000, it’s 1 in 10."
"After years of state-funding cuts, many recognize that wealthy students can bring in more money even after getting a discount. Raising the tuition and then offering a 25 percent scholarship to four wealthier kids who might otherwise have gone to private school generates more revenue than giving a free ride to one who truly needs it."
"enticing these students also helps boost a school’s rankings."
"“nearly all” of the spending on state merit-based scholarships had little effect on keeping students in state after they graduated."
"A recent study by researchers at Harvard Kennedy School looked at a scholarship program in Massachusetts in which high-scoring students get tuition waivers at in-state public colleges. It found that taking the scholarship actually reduced a student’s likelihood of graduating because they ended up at a school with a completion rate lower than one of the other schools they could have gone to."
"Among needier kids, the six-year graduation rate is 45 percent when grants cover under a quarter of college costs versus 68 percent when they cover more than three-quarters"
"If you look at comparable stats for high-income students, the amount of aid makes almost no difference. Their graduation rates are around 78 percent either way."
"The share of 24-year-olds from families in the top-income quartile who hold college degrees rose from about 40 percent in 1970 to 70 percent in 2011. The share from the bottom quartile, however, remained pretty flat, edging up to 10 percent from 6 percent"
"having a higher density of college-educated workers boosts wages of even those around them without college degrees. Economists refer to the ripple effect as the “positive externalities” of higher education."
"Dorothy, the protagonist of the story, represents an individualized ideal of the American people. She is each of us at our best-kind but self-respecting, guileless but levelheaded, wholesome but plucky. She is akin to Everyman, or, in modern parlance, “the girl next door.” Dorothy lives in Kansas, where virtually everything-the treeless prairie, the sun-beaten grass, the paint-stripped house, even Aunt Em and Uncle Henry-is a dull, drab, lifeless gray. This grim depiction reflects the forlorn condition of Kansas in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when a combination of scorching droughts, severe winters, and an invasion of grasshoppers reduced the prairie to an uninhabitable wasteland. The result for farmers and all who depended on agriculture for their livelihood was devastating. Many ascribed their misfortune to the natural elements, called it quits, and moved on. Others blamed the hard times on bankers, the railroads, and various middlemen who seemed to profit at the farmers’ expense. Angry victims of the Kansas calamity also took aim at the politicians, who often appeared indifferent to their plight. Around these economic and political grievances, the Populist movement coalesced.Now an excerpt from Tucker:
In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Populism spread rapidly throughout the Midwest and into the South, but Kansas was always the site of its most popular and radical elements. In 1890, Populist candidates began winning seats in state legislatures and Congress, and two years later Populists in Kansas gained control of the lower house of the state assembly, elected a Populist governor, and sent a Populist to the U.S. Senate. The twister that carries Dorothy to Oz symbolizes the Populist cyclone that swept across Kansas in the early 1890s. Baum was not the first to use the metaphor. Mary E. Lease, a fire-breathing Populist orator, was often referred to as the “Kansas Cyclone,” and the free-silver movement was often likened to a political whirlwind that had taken the nation by storm. Although Dorothy does not stand for Lease, Baum did give her (in the stage version) the last name “Gale”-a further pun on the cyclone metaphor.
The name of Dorothy’s canine companion, Toto, is also a pun, a play on teetotaler. Prohibitionists were among the Populists’ most faithful allies, and the Populist hope William Jennings Bryan was himself a “dry.” As Dorothy embarks on the Yellow Brick Road, Toto trots “soberly” behind her, just as the Prohibitionists soberly followed the Populists.
When Dorothy’s twister-tossed house comes to rest in Oz, it lands squarely on the wicked Witch of the East, killing her instantly. The startled girl emerges from the abode to find herself in a strange land of remarkable beauty, whose inhabitants, the diminutive Munchkins, rejoice at the death of the Witch. The Witch represents eastern financial-industrial interests and their gold-standard political allies, the main targets of Populist venom. Midwestern farmers often blamed their woes on the nefarious practices of Wall Street bankers and the captains of industry, whom they believed were engaged in a conspiracy to “enslave” the “little people,” just as the Witch of the East had enslaved the Munchkins. Populists viewed establishment politicians, including presidents, as helpless pawns or willing accomplices. Had not President Cleveland bowed to eastern bankers by repealing the Silver Purchase Act in 1893, thus further restricting much-needed credit? Had not McKinley (prompted by the wealthy industrialist Mark Hanna) made the gold standard the centerpiece of his campaign against Bryan and free silver?"
"Gold is always a fascinating story: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was first published in 1900 and this children's tale has been interpreted as an allegory for political and economic events of the 1890s. For example, the Yellow Brick Road represents the gold standard, Oz in the title is an abbreviation for ounce, Dorothy is the naive public, Emerald City symbolizes Washington, D.C., the Tin Woodman represents the industrial worker, the Scarecrow is the farmer, and the Cyclone is a metaphor for a political revolution. In the end, Dorothy discovers magical powers in her silver shoes (changed to ruby in the 1939 film) to find her way home and not the fallacy of the Yellow Brick Road. Although the author of the story, L. Frank Baum, never stated it was his intention, it can be argued that the issue of the story concerns the election of 1896. Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan (the Cowardly Lion) supported fixing the value of the dollar to both gold and silver (bimetallism), but Republican William McKinley (the Wicked Witch) advocated using only the gold standard. Since McKinley won, the United States remained on the Yellow Brick Road."But not everyone agrees with this. Economist Bradley Hansen wrote an article titled The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics in the Journal of Economic Education in 2002. Here is his conclusion:
"Rockoff noted that the empirical evidence that Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an allegory was slim, but he compared an allegorical interpretation to a model and suggested that “economists should not have any difficulty accepting, at least provisionally, an elegant but controversial model” (Rockoff 1990, 757). He was right—we did not have any difficulty accepting it. Despite Rockoff’s warning, we appear to have accepted the story wholeheartedly rather than provisionally, simply because of its elegance. It is as difficult to prove that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was not a monetary allegory as it is to prove that it was. In the end, we will never know for certain what Baum was thinking when he wrote the book. I suggest that the vast majority of the evidence weighs heavily against the allegorical interpretation. It should be remembered that no record exists that Baum ever acknowledged any political meanings in the story and that no one even suggested such an interpretation until the 1960s. There certainly does not seem to be sufficient evidence to overwhelm Baum’s explicit statement in the introduction of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that his sole purpose was to entertain children and not to impress upon them some moral. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a great story. Telling students that the Populist movement was like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz does seem to catch their attention. It may be a useful pedagogical tool to illuminate the debate on bimetallism, but we should stop telling our students that it was written for that purpose."I found a review of the book in the NY Times from 1900 and it does not mention anything about OZ having political or economic meaning. The book was also made into a musical a few years later and none of the reviews of the musical mention any political or economic meaning.
"Seventy-one percent of undergraduates received some form of aid in the 2011-12 academic year, up from 66 percent in 2007-8, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. Their average aid amount also went up, to $10,800 from $9,000 four years earlier..."The article also has some very detailed statistical tables.
"Take the Pell Grant program, the main federal support for needy students. Forty-one percent of undergraduate students received a Pell Grant in 2011-12, up from 28 percent in 2007-8. Some of that increase was probably the result of lower-income adults going back to college in a weak economy and families finding themselves in worse financial positions as they faced the tuition bills for their children.
At the same time, policy changes expanding eligibility for the program also drove some of the increase."
"As for borrowing, the share of undergraduates with federal Stafford loans grew from 35 percent in 2007-8 to 40 percent in 2011-12, while the average amount they borrowed also went up, from $5,000 to $6,400."
"After rising for decades, total vehicle use in the U.S. — the collective miles people drive — peaked in August 2007. It then dropped sharply during the Great Recession and has largely plateaued since, even though the economy is recovering and the population growing."
"... the average number of miles drivers individually rack up peaked in July 2004 at just over 900 per month..."
"By July of last year, that had fallen to 820 miles per month..."
"... the share of people in their teens, 20s and 30s with driver's licenses has been dropping significantly..."
"Researchers are divided on the reasons behind the trends. One camp says the changes are almost entirely linked to the economy."
"The other camp acknowledges that economic factors are important but says the decline in driving also reflects fundamental changes in the way Americans view the automobile. For commuters stuck in traffic, getting into a car no longer correlates with fun. It's also becoming more of a headache to own a car in central cities and downright difficult to park."
"Lifestyles are also changing. People are doing more of their shopping online. More people are taking public transit than ever before. And biking and walking to work and for recreation are on the rise.Social networking online may also be substituting for some trips.""Demographic changes are also a factor. The peak driving years for most people are between ages 45 and 55 when they are the height of their careers and have more money to spend, said transportation analyst Alan Pisarski, author of "Commuting in America." Now, the last of the baby boomers — the giant cohort born between 1946 and 1964 — are moving out of their peak driving years."
"There's also a driving gender gap. In a role reversal, there are now more women than men in the U.S. with driver's licenses"
"There are several economic factors that help explain the trends. Driving declines exactly mirror job losses among men during the recession, when male-dominated industries like manufacturing and construction were especially hard hit, researchers said. But average automobile use has declined recently even among those who have remained employed.Economists say many Americans, especially teens and young adults, are finding that buying and owning a car stretches their financial resources. The average price of a new car is $31,000...""Then there's the cost of insurance, maintenance and parking. The price of gas has gone up dramatically over the past decade.The share of younger workers who can find jobs is at an especially low ebb, while the cost of a college education — and with it student loans — is soaring.""18- to 20-year-olds were three times more likely to have a driver's license if they lived in a household with an annual income above $100,000 than if they lived in a household with an income below $20,000."
"People worrying about having enough money to pay their bills tend to lose temporarily the equivalent of 13 IQ points, scientists found when they gave intelligence tests to shoppers at a New Jersey mall and farmers in India.
The idea is that financial stress monopolizes thinking, making other calculations slower and more difficult, sort of like the effects of going without sleep for a night.
And this money-and-brain crunch applies, albeit to a smaller degree, to about 100 million Americans who face financial squeezes, say the team of economists and psychologists who wrote the study published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
If you are always thinking about overdue bills, a mortgage or rent, or college loans, it takes away from your focus on other things. So being late on loans could end up costing you both interest points and IQ points, Mullainathan said.
The study used tests that studied various aspects of thinking including a traditional IQ test, getting the 13 IQ point drop, said study co-author Jiaying Zhao, a professor of psychology and sustainability at the University of British Columbia."
"But that alone doesn’t tell you that college is causing those earnings differentials. Maybe it’s just that naturally smart people tend both to get a lot of education and to earn a lot, but the two aren’t actually related. For example, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates both went to Harvard and became billionaires, the theory goes, because they were smart. Harvard didn’t cause their riches. They dropped out before earning degrees, in fact. Their smarts caused both Harvard and the riches."And
"There’s another strand of criticism that alleges that whatever effect college has on wages is an effect of signaling. It’s the degree that matters, as a way to tell employers you’re smart and accomplished, rather than what you learn in pursuit of the degree, under this theory. Note, first of all, that this doesn’t really negate the finding that college causes higher earnings. It just presents a slightly cynical explanation of how it is that college causes that earnings bump."But then the article goes on further to describe some research that shows that, yes, the extra education does cause incomes to rise, over and above what you might expect even when you take the above issues into account.
"If we understood the true role of money in our lives, writes philosopher Jacob Needleman, we would not think simply in terms of spending it or saving it. Money exerts a deep emotional influence on who we are and what we tell ourselves we can never have. Our long unwillingness to understand the emotional and spiritual effects of money on us is at the heart of why we have come to know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Money has everything to do with the pursuit of an idealistic life, while at the same time, it is at the root of our daily frustrations. On a social level, money has a profound impact on the price of progress. Needleman shows how money slowly began to haunt us, from the invention of coins in Biblical times (when money was created to rescue the community good, not for self gain), through its hypnotic appeal in our money-obsessed era. This is a remarkable book that combines myth and psychology, the poetry of the Sufis and the wisdom of King Solomon, along with Jacob Needleman's searching of his own soul and his culture to explain how money can become a unique means of self-knowledge. As part of the Currency paperback line, it includes a "User's Guide" an introduction and discussion guide created for the paperback by the author -- to help readers make practical use of the book's ideas."
"the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion."
"...in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially."
"...the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago."
"In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race."
"...the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points."
"...15 percent of high-income students from the high school class of 2004 enrolled in a highly selective college or university, while fewer than 5 percent of middle-income and 2 percent of low-income students did."
"The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor"
"The income gap in academic achievement is not growing because the test scores of poor students are dropping or because our schools are in decline. In fact, average test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called Nation’s Report Card, have been rising — substantially in math and very slowly in reading — since the 1970s. The average 9-year-old today has math skills equal to those her parents had at age 11, a two-year improvement in a single generation"
"...there is no evidence that average test scores have declined over the last three decades for any age or economic group."
"The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, and Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites have been narrowing slowly over the last two decades..."
"If we look at the test scores of white students only, we find the same growing gap between high- and low-income children as we see in the population as a whole."
"...schools don’t seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school"
"The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students."
"Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and...access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves."
"But rising income inequality explains, at best, half of the increase in the rich-poor academic achievement gap."
"High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources — their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school — on their children’s cognitive development and educational success'
"But even though middle-class and poor families are also increasing the time and money they invest in their children, they are not doing so as quickly or as deeply as the rich."
"...from 1972 to 2006 high-income families increased the amount they spent on enrichment activities for their children by 150 percent, while the spending of low-income families grew by 57 percent over the same time period. Likewise, the amount of time parents spend with their children has grown twice as fast since 1975 among college-educated parents as it has among less-educated parents."
"The economists Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey of the University of California, San Diego, call this escalation of early childhood investment “the rug rat race,"
"But it turns out that trying to make a profit in this business is harder than expected. When grown and sold legally, marijuana can be an expensive proposition, with high startup costs, a host of operational headaches and state regulations that a beet farmer could never imagine. In Colorado, for example, managers must submit to background checks that include revealing tattoos. The state also requires cameras in every room that has plants; Mr. Klug relies on 48 of them.
Prices for pot, meanwhile, have plummeted, in large part because of growing competition."
"A major drag on earnings for marijuana growers is the labor-intensive nature of the business. Payroll can make up more than a third of production costs, says Jason Katz, chief operating officer of Local Product of Colorado. Managing workers is challenging too, he adds, in an industry where many learned their trade by growing clandestinely. His company went through six growers in three years before one worked out. "They aren't used to being part of regular society," he says.
Costs and management issues aside, the biggest shock to most marijuana growers has been pot prices. As the industry becomes more competitive and there is more pot available, the price for a pound of high-quality weed in Denver has slid from $2,900 at the beginning of April in 2011 to $2,400 in the same period in 2012 to $2,000 this year, according to Roberto's MMJ List, a service that connects wholesale sellers and buyers. At the height of summer demand in 2011, a pound sold for as much as $3,900.
To be sure, some experts say it is possible to do well. Roberto Lopesino Seidita, who runs the price list and consults for the industry, says some growers are pulling in double-digit margins by focusing on price, not just quality. They have developed ways to produce large amounts of pot cheaply, and offer it at unbeatable prices, driving hundreds of customers through the door every day. "It's run like Wal-Mart, he says."
"Offering an assortment of marijuana varieties with different flavors and prices, Mr. Klug says, has been key to building a client base. In the wood-and-metal displays at one of his stores, Mr. Klug offers high-end strains such as Phantom OG for $70 a quarter ounce, and cheaper ones such as Andy's Blue Dream, at $50 a quarter ounce."
"His advice for anyone who wants to become rich by legally dealing pot: "Start with lots of money.""
"Students are next up for cutbacks, most intended to get them in the work force faster. Currently, students are entitled to six years of stipends, about $990 a month, to complete a five-year degree which, of course, is free. Many of them take even longer to finish, taking breaks to travel and for internships before and during their studies."There is even a man known as “Lazy Robert”
"Robert Nielsen, 45, made headlines last September when he was interviewed on television, admitting that he had basically been on welfare since 2001.
Mr. Nielsen said he was able-bodied but had no intention of taking a demeaning job, like working at a fast-food restaurant. He made do quite well on welfare, he said. He even owns his own co-op apartment.
Unlike Carina, who will no longer give interviews, Mr. Nielsen, called “Lazy Robert” by the news media, seems to be enjoying the attention. He says that he is greeted warmly on the street all the time. “Luckily, I am born and live in Denmark, where the government is willing to support my life,” he said"
"D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) didn't work. Long-term studies have shown overwhelmingly that the program produced no meaningful reduction in drug use and in some cases actually made kids more likely to use drugs. Yet the nonprofit survives, having consumed an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion in donor and taxpayer funds over the past decade."I wonder what Adam Smith would say. Although he said people were motivated by self-interest and that is how things got done in the market place, he also thought people could be motivated by sympathy. See this earlier post: Adam Smith vs. Bart Simpson.
"From one-person startups to powerhouses like the Red Cross, charities have plenty of good intentions, slick fundraisers and promotional "happy sheets," but they often fail to solve the social problems they are intended to address. As an example, Mr. Stern highlights fashionable water charities that drill wells in Third World countries with much fanfare but are then unable to maintain them."
"The charitable sector is also plagued by corruption and fraud. Even when nonprofits obey the letter of the law, many defy the spirit of their tax-exempt status, differing in no meaningful respect from for-profit enterprises. Among the more laughable examples are the nation's college-football bowl games, which defend their charitable status by pointing out that they donate some of their proceeds to other nonprofits."
"The IRS approves more than 99.5% of all charitable applications, creating more than 50,000 new charities each year. Once a nonprofit is started, the IRS and state regulators exert negligible oversight; even charities exposed as scams can be nearly impossible to shut down."
"According to one survey, 65% of donors don't research the effectiveness of the organizations to which they contribute; the remaining 35% tend to make only a cursory effort."
Researchers found "...young people who live through recessions tend to doubt their control over their careers. Unlike people who have lived through sweeter economic circumstances, the youth of recessions tend to look at career success as luck rather than a result of personal action."Another article, Birth date, business cycles, and lifetime income says:
"Beyond family pressures, unemployment among 16-to-19-year-olds is at an extraordinarily high level of more than 26 percent. Students finishing college face difficult job prospects, with hiring of this year's graduates down 22 percent, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers."
[when] "...individuals have had low stock market returns for many years, they don't want to take risks in stocks. And bad experiences with stocks early in life "have significant influence even several decades later."
"...Americans aged 22 years to 33 years have shifted toward more conservative financial behavior too. It's influencing everything from investing to job choices: More are seeking job security and strong benefits rather than opting to jump from job to job to further their careers."
"...a one percentage point increase in the national unemployment rate is associated with a 6 to 7 percent loss in initial wages. The annual wage loss declines over time, but is still statistically significant 15 years later. Comparing the wages earned by the class of 1982 (a peak unemployment year) with the wages of the class of 1988 (a peak employment year) over the first 20 years of a career, the wage difference resulted in a difference of nearly $100,000 in cumulative earnings in net present value."
"The decline of two-parent households may be a significant reason for the divergent fortunes of male workers, whose earnings generally declined in recent decades, and female workers, whose earnings generally increased, a prominent labor economist argues in a new survey of existing research.
David H. Autor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that the difference between men and women, at least in part, may have roots in childhood. Only 63 percent of children lived in a household with two parents in 2010, down from 82 percent in 1970. The single parents raising the rest of those children are predominantly female. And there is growing evidence that sons raised by single mothers “appear to fare particularly poorly,” Professor Autor wrote in an analysis for Third Way, a center-left policy research organization.In this telling, the economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households. Men who are less successful are less attractive as partners, so some women are choosing to raise children by themselves, in turn often producing sons who are less successful and attractive as partners.“A vicious cycle may ensue,” wrote Professor Autor and his co-author, Melanie Wasserman, a graduate student, “with the poor economic prospects of less educated males creating differentially large disadvantages for their sons, thus potentially reinforcing the development of the gender gap in the next generation.”The fall of men in the workplace is widely regarded by economists as one of the nation’s most important and puzzling trends. While men, on average, still earn more than women, the gap between them has narrowed considerably, particularly among more recent entrants to the labor force."
"...one study finding that single mothers spent an hour less per week with their sons than with their daughters. Another study of households where the father had less education, or was absent entirely, found the female children were 10 to 14 percent more likely to complete college. A third study of single-parent homes found boys were less likely than girls to enroll in college."
"Employers increasingly are looking to lower their health care costs by using incentives such as cash rewards to persuade workers to make better lifestyle choices, according to survey findings released Monday.
But the survey, by Aon Hewitt, a human resources consulting company, also found that employers aren't always so benevolent: A growing number also are penalizing workers who do not make healthy changes, such as quitting smoking or losing weight.
The survey, of 800 large and midsize employers in the United States, found that 84 percent use some kind of carrot or stick to try to nudge employees to improve their health. Of those, 79 percent offer rewards, while 5 percent imposed penalties. Sixteen percent used a mix of both."
"CVS Caremark, the large pharmacy and drug-benefit provider, recently said it would require its employees to report their weight, blood sugar and cholesterol or be forced to pay an annual penalty of $600. It also will require that smokers try to quit."
"I [Chapman] asked Harvard economist Claudia Goldin if there is sufficient evidence to conclude that women experience systematic pay discrimination. "No," she replied. There are certainly instances of discrimination, she says, but most of the gap is the result of different choices. Other hard-to-measure factors, Goldin thinks, largely account for the remaining gap -- "probably not all, but most of it."This issue came up recently in the San Antonio Express-News. See Texas wage gap 12th-lowest. The problem with saying women make 77 cents for every dollar that men make is that it does not take things like occupation and years of experience into account. In 2007 the American Association of University Women issued a report. One of the things it says is:
The divergent career paths of men and women may reflect a basic unfairness in what's expected of them. It could be that a lot of mothers, if they had their way, would rather pursue careers but have to stay home with the kids because their husbands insist. Or it may be that for one reason or another, many mothers prefer to take on the lion's share of child-rearing. In any case, the pay disparity caused by these choices can't be blamed on piggish employers.
June O'Neill, an economist at Baruch College and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has uncovered something that debunks the discrimination thesis. Take out the effects of marriage and child-rearing, and the difference between the genders suddenly vanishes. "For men and women who never marry and never have children, there is no earnings gap," she said in an interview."
"Ten years after graduation, women fall further behind, earning only 69 percent of what men earn. Even after controlling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors known to affect earnings, the research indicates that one-quarter of the pay gap remains unexplained and is likely due to sex discrimination."I emailed them the following question but never heard back:
"So the 69 percent means that women earn 69 cents for every dollar that men make ten years after college. That makes the gap 31 cents. But when these other factors are accounted for, one-quarter of the gap remains. Since one-quarter of 31 is 7.75, that means when all other factors are held constant, women earn 92.25 cents for every dollar that men make. Is my interpretation correct? How does this compare to what other studies have found? Is this gap changing over time? Were any other causes for the remaining 7.75 cents examined besides sexual discrimination?"The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis just issued a report that says Gender Wage Gap May Be Smaller Than Many Think. Excerpts:
"...the gap between the median earnings for men and women was 16.5% in the second quarter of 2011, a historical low and down from 30% in 1989. ... the gender wage gap is very likely affected by the disparity of men in higher paying professions. That disparity, while troublesome all on its own, may be skewing the data.
“Research suggests that the actual gender wage gap (when female workers are compared with male workers who have similar characteristics) is much lower than the raw wage gap,” the authors write.
... after having children many women prefer jobs that have lower pay but better benefits — either better health-care coverage or other perks like a more flexible work schedule.
Economists Eric Solberg and Teresa Laughlin applied an index of total compensation, which accounts for both wages and benefits, to analyze how these benefits would affect the gender gap. They found a gender gap in wages of approximately 13%. But when they considered total compensation, the gender gap dropped to 3.6%,” the authors write."
it "...has, in the past 18 months, imposed taxes on salt, sugar and the ingredients in energy drinks, hoping both to raise revenues and force those who are eating unhealthy foods to pay a little more toward the country’s underfinanced health system"Other excerpts:
"Hungary has one of the lowest life expectancy rates at birth in the European Union: in 2011 it was just 71.2 years for men and 78.7 for women. In 2009, the most recent statistics available for all 27 members of the bloc, life expectancy in the group averaged at 76.6 years for men and 82.6 years for women."
"But critics point out that the new interest in food taxes just happens to coincide with tough economic times in Europe. Some say the taxes are as much about raising revenues in a politically acceptable manner as they are about promoting healthy habits. And they worry that the taxes do, in fact, hit the poor the hardest.One effort to raise taxes on saturated fat has already failed spectacularly. In October 2011, Denmark became the first country to institute such a tax, raising the price of meat, dairy, edible oils and fats, margarine and other blended spreads, among other items. Fans of the effort thought Denmark was perfectly positioned to make such a tax work, because it already had rigorous labeling requirements, an efficient administration and companies used to making these kinds of adjustments.But barely a year later, Denmark gave up on the tax. In the end, experts say, the effort was undermined by political battles, pressure from the food industry and a population that quickly learned to go over the border to Germany to buy the products it wanted.""The move to institute food taxes in Hungary began ambitiously. It was first nicknamed the “hamburger tax” and included the idea of a tax on fast food. But the effort was later renamed a “chips tax,” skirting the issue of fat altogether, a change that many people attribute to lobbying by multinational corporations. And in the end, the taxes were applied only to packaged foods, making it easier to carry out. The rates vary depending on the food group: adding, for instance, about 13 cents to the cost of a 100-gram, or nearly 4-ounce, chocolate bar, or about 20 cents to a small bag of potato chips.But many Hungarians just do not think the taxes are working and see the effort primarily as a revenue-raising instrument..."
"Sales of salty and sugary foods have dropped in the last year, officials said. But it is hard to tell if the taxes had much to do with it. Hungarians, struggling with high unemployment and a dismal economy, bought less of all kinds of foods last year"
many "...customers were not particularly aware of the special taxes on products like powdered soup mixes, jams and chocolate, because the government had raised sales taxes at roughly the same time, making many purchases more expensive."
"The government hoped to collect 20 billion forints, about $88 million, from the food taxes last year and fell 3 billion forints, or about $13 million, short. One reason was that energy drink makers quickly changed their products to duck the tax."
An industry rep said "...taking salt out of a product can have serious technical consequences. In many cases, it serves as a preservative.""
and "...much of the salt that Hungarians consume is not actually from prepackaged foods but from salt added to food cooked at home."
"We propose that, instead of the current maze of rules and formulas, the U.S. should sell the right to become a citizen. Setting a price of perhaps $50,000 would attract those who place the highest value on citizenship."
"...the U.S. system currently gives much lower preference to workers with skills than do countries like Germany."
"...the sale of immigration slots could be coupled with a loan program that allows people to borrow the fee and to pay it back out of their earnings over an extended period."
"There are several benefits to a market-based immigration system. First, it would attract skilled, productive, entrepreneurial people..."
Second, current citizens could provide loans or pay the fee of immigrant relatives who matter the most to them. This would encourage the best kind of family reunification.
Third, because the current system for legal immigration favors relatives of those already here, immigrants tend to come from relatively few countries. Opening immigration up to the rest of the world is fairer and would be of greater benefit to the U.S.
Finally, selling the citizenship right would bring in much-needed revenue for the government. About one million immigrants arrive legally each year. That is $50 billion in the system we propose."
"People who are now here illegally could become legal by paying the fee."
"Of course, some illegal immigrants might choose to stay underground to avoid paying the fee. For that reason, the sale of slots must be coupled with strong enforcement of the laws."
"A point system requires that the government choose the number of points to award to skills, family ties, age, time living in the U.S., and other factors that are extraneous to economic growth. This means politics will influence the points awarded."
Yes, the price of a slot may also be subject to politics. If it is high, the U.S. will have fewer and more skilled immigrants. This probably means Republicans would favor a higher price and Democrats a lower price—each wanting immigrants they believe would vote for them. Still, selling slots won't create major misallocations among those who come in, once the price is determined."
"...allow people to pay an annual fee, renewable for up to three years, at the end of which time they would leave the U.S. or commit to pay the citizenship fee."
Mr. Becker, a Nobel laureate, is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Mr. Lazear, former chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers (2006-09), is a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Both are fellows at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
"...60 percent of American college students graduate in the red, owing an average of $25,300..."
A male stripper said about his saturday night gigs: "I'd walk out with maybe $600 or $700 a night,"
"The sale of bodily goods or services—"body commodification"—is nothing new among college students. But strides in medical technology, the encroachment of market values on all facets of life, and the reach and culture of the Internet have combined to create a fertile environment for people who want or need to exploit the value of their skin or what lies beneath it..."
"Students sell plasma, take requests to perform custom erotic acts on Web cameras, or offer themselves as guinea pigs in paid drug trials. A master's student in Penfield, N.Y., says she was kicked out of her social-work program last June for snuggling with strangers—no sex allowed—for $60 an hour. A handful of Web sites, like SeekingArrangement.com, promise introductions to young and attractive men and women—often students—for "mutually beneficial relationships." An advertisement in campus newspapers at three elite colleges offers $35,000 for the eggs of a young woman with an SAT score above 1400."
"A 27-year-old woman in a suburban mid-Atlantic area dropped out of community college two and a half years ago to pay off bills and save up for a degree in graphic design. We'll call her "J." She had been eking out a living as a waitress when she decided to take a turn on the stage of a local strip club that paid $500 to the winner of its weekly amateur night. She remembers little about that night, except that she won the contest and brought home $700 in prize money and tips."
"The manager offered her a job on the spot, and she began dancing one or two nights a week, bringing home $200 to $700 per shift, ..."
""Students who strip can alleviate some of the stigma from their occupation by rationalizing their work," the two scholars wrote (Mary Nell Trautner & Jessica L. Collett). "Whether or not they rely on their earnings for tuition, these women believe that stripping is supporting a series of positive life choices they have been making," in contrast to "what they see as negative life choices of 'other' dancers." But there is a downside. Student strippers typically keep the job secret from family members, classmates, and professors, Ms. Trautner and Ms. Collett wrote, an arrangement that can leave them feeling alienated and estranged..."
"College newspapers and Craigslist carry advertisements seeking women and men, particularly students with high GPAs and SATs, who are willing to "donate" their gametes."
"Egg donors in the United States are typically paid $5,000 to $10,000, a voluntary ceiling established by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Sperm donors get about $100 per donation;..."
Is all of this degrading? "Economic sociologists such as Ms. Almeling, at Yale, and Viviana A. Zelizer, at Princeton University, believe that the reality is more complex. A transaction that many would see as corrupting might be viewed less judgmentally if it creates the potential for a positive result.
For example, says Ms. Zelizer, if a student exchanges sex for cash to cover her college expenses, she will regard that decision differently. "By saying, 'I'm doing it for tuition,' it kind of cleanses the money," says Ms. Zelizer, author of The Purchase of Intimacy (Princeton, 2005). "Prostitutes themselves differentiate between the money they earn from prostitution and the money they earn from clean sources, and they spend it differently.""
"The United States has become the world's biggest supplier of plasma in part because, unlike Britain and Canada, that part of its blood supply has remained a for-profit system. Mr. Healy says the poor, not college students, continue to be the largest proportion of plasma donors. But many students are on the lower end of the economic spectrum, and the proximity of plasma-donation centers to many colleges hardly seems coincidental." (one student got $25-$30 per donation)
"Much more so than in past years, the 2012 Best Picture Oscar contenders have collectively put up strong box office numbers in the six weeks since nominations were announced.I had a similar post last year. See What’s an Oscar Really Worth? One thing the article I quoted said was: "Oscar winners bring in 7.6 percent higher box office return on average than nominees that don’t win."
From nomination day (January 10th) through the Thursday before Oscars (February 21), the nine Best Picture nominees have grossed over $305 million at the domestic box office. That's a new record ahead of 1997's $260.9 million in the post-nomination, pre-awards period (over half of which came from Titanic).
There are a handful of factors that help explain this phenomenon, many of which simply have to do with scheduling. This year the nominations were announced earlier, giving a full 12 days more in the post-nomination, pre-awards period than there was the last two years. Also, seven of the nine Best Picture nominees opened in November or December, which is noticeably more than the five from 2010/2011 and the four from 2009. Finally, this is only the fourth year in the modern era in which there were more than five Best Picture nominees, which gives 2012 a major advantage."
"Bee brokers, beekeepers and almond growers around the state say there's a shortage of healthy honeybees for this year's pollination, especially after colony collapse disorder took a higher toll this winter. The disorder, in which honey bees suddenly disappear or die, wipes out thousands of colonies each year.The shortage has some growers scrambling for bees — even sub-performers — as trees are about to bloom, driving up bee prices again this year, to an all-time high of more than $200 per colony.
"There's definitely a shortage of strong bee colonies," said Joe Traynor, owner of Scientific Ag, which connects growers with beekeepers. "There is a problem covering all the acres of almonds in the state.""
