Your phone is spying on you. It’s sometimes a blabbermouth that reveals more secrets about you than you want to admit even to yourself. It tells advertisers when you Google health conditions you’d rather not share with others. It knows where you go, when you speed, and which locations you spend time at. It knows when you waste time at work texting friends or looking for a new romantic interest on dating websites. If your phone is stolen it will sometimes tell thieves how to steal money from your bank account or credit cards. I use mine to locate the aisle where an item I need is at Walmart and Kroger.
Category: Policy & Legislation
Saturday Links
- Despite President Biden’s commitment to being the most pro-union president in history and despite Secretary of Labor Julie Su’s calm that 2023 was a “banner year for labor actions and unions,” the share of US workers who actually belong to a union is shrinking – and has been shrinking for decades.
- How Covid lockdowns affected learning: a decrease in average scores for eighth graders, losing nearly half of the gains made in the previous 30 years.
- The government’s mandatory health care spending now exceeds its entire discretionary budget.
- Women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. This is also true internationally.
- FREOPP reviews Modernizing Medicare.
Record-Breaking 2024 Open Enrollment Period Under the Affordable Care Act
21.3 million Americans with high (and likely unaffordable) deductibles and narrow access to doctors and drugs. The vast majority of whom are having their premiums paid, in whole or in part, by taxpayers. It’s worth pointing out that many of the new enrollees are likely people who did not enroll when the premium was 2-4% of their income but do when coverage is given to them for free. The data below does not yet have 2024 (breakdown by income has not been released yet), but I’d bet the trend holds.
Thursday Links
- Can medical expenses be crowdfunded?
- Study of treatment facilities for adolescents with opioid use disorder: nearly 40 percent had no beds immediately available or offered a waitlist, with a mean wait time of 28.4 days. Only 57 percent accepted Medicaid. We are becoming more like Canada every day.
- David Frieman on historical “facts” you have probably heard about (and even seen depicted in movies) that are actually myths. Fun reading.
- The Geothermal energy solution: “There’s 41 times more heat energy in the earth’s crust than that of all known petroleum and nuclear fuel reserves. What’s more, the energy of that sun beneath our feet is carbon-free and potentially available all day, every day.”
- More on abolishing the FDA.