Chickens for Checkups
Sue Lowden, Republican senatorial candidate from the state of Nevada suggests that the solution to the health care problem can be solved by barter. The DSCC has facilitated this by offering Ms Lowden’s services as a health care clearing house. If you are low on cash and wish to barter for health care services, visit this site.
Texas High Court Hears Strip Club “Pole Tax” Case
Texas high court hears strip club ‘pole tax’ case.
Is it proper or not for the state to have the position that live nude dancing should be discouraged?
Government uses its power to promote and discourage all sorts of behaviour through taxation and subsidisation. Is this a different application of that power, or is it somehow different? Are the social effects of strip clubs a negative externality that lead to sexual abuse, or is this an abuse of power to promote a moral agenda and restrict freedom of expression?
How to Graph a Production Possibilities Frontier in Excel 2003
Here is a step-by-step tutorial showing how to create a Production Possibilities Frontier (Curve) in Excel 2003. The concept carries forward to creating a PPC in Excel 2007, too.
If you are reading this, I presume you know what a PPC is; you just want to know how to chart it. For those who somehow just stumbled here, I provide a concise definition.
A Production Possibilities Frontier is a graphical depiction of opportunity costs; given two competing possibilities, you must choose how you wish to allocate resources to make a determination of output, but as you move to increase one item, you must trade off some amount of the other item. The maximum (optimally efficient) production possibilities are captured by the (typically) concave curve, beyond which you do not have the resources to acheive and inside the curve. The actual combination of outputs depends on preferences, a decision beyond the scope of this example.
Open a blank Excel worksheet, and enter your data in separate columns for the two possibilities. Feel free to name the data in the top row. Note that one of your columns needs to be in ascending order, whilst the other needs to be in descending order. You may enter as few as 2 data points per item and as many as Excel allows. When you are done, highlight the data range, and invoke the Chart Wizard.
Newsweek: To Work or Not?
A new study finds that children of privileged families fare worse when the mother works outside the home. But what does the research really tell us?
By Mary Carmichael | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Sep 11, 2008 | Updated: 8:23 p.m. ET Sep 11, 2008
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