Some years ago I wrote two reports for the New Mexico Department of Health about the economic costs of teenage pregnancy in the state. (Here’s a link to the second report from 2006.)

A recent article in the Atlantic online magazine makes the excellent point that the biggest cause for teenage pregnancy and childbirth is the one least likely to be mitigated by the common responses to teen pregnancy. Rather than issue teenagers with condoms, or make them attend abstinence programs, the solution lies in the lack of alternatives many teenagers have, or think they have, to bearing a child. Data from New Mexico shows that about 56% of teenage women who gave birth intended to have the baby, another 34% wanted a baby but would have preferred to wait until they were older. Why would teenage girls choose to have babies, given what we know, and they can easily find out, about the negative outcomes that follow? Why is having a baby as a teenager a better alternative than continuing at high school, or going on to complete a college degree, or even getting a job and waiting to have a baby later in life? 

New Mexico continues to hold the rank of having the second highest teenage birthrate in the country (2010 data.) The birthrate has fallen, (from 65 per 1000 in 2000 to 53 per 1000 in 2010,) but it continues to be highest in the poorer states. When young girls have mothers, and sometimes fathers, who are struggling in poverty, and see more of the same around them, and see little in their futures other than the same fate, having a baby now may not seem such bad decision. The opportunity cost is not high, and for many, having a baby opens up doors to assistance and support they were not receiving before. 

Girls who live in poverty, and who engage in risky behaviors are more likely to get pregnant and give birth as teenagers. There are many reasons that have little to do with economics, but economics can provide some understanding, especially when it comes to finding solutions. Should we spend more money on abstinence programs, or more on programs that expose girls to alternatives, and a path to breaking the vicious circle they find themselves locked in? 

Take a look at this beautiful “reimagined” Porsche 911 by Singer.

Buy a pre-owned 911, give it to Singer along with $250,000 to $500,000 and this is what you get back. Rebuilt, redesigned, modern, safe, and yet true to its origins. I can only imagine it’s wonderful to drive and better to own.

There’s a short article about Singer in the Ralph Lauren magazine with some nice information.

Having just recently testified in an arbitration between a union and an employer (in the grocery store sector,) I was thinking about the “right to work” and the current trend for states to introduce right to work laws. According to Wikipedia (the oracle,) the right to work refers to laws in states that effectively prevent a union from collecting a fee from employees working in businesses in which the union has a collective bargaining agreement. Presumably, if a union is present, it is negotiating on behalf of all employees, and should be allowed to levy a fee from each in return for that representation. In Right to Work states, a worker should have the “right to work, free of coercion to join the union, or at least pay the union fees.” As noted in the Wikipedia entry, a right to work law does nothing to ensure workers have any rights to work…

Unlike the right to life, or the right to choose, or the right to be wrong, the right to work doesn’t seem to be self-explanatory. Here’s a great Slate article on the origins of right to work laws.

I know I keep posting about wine snobbery, but this is about as good as it gets:

“…the 2010 Chateauneuf du Pape Les Origines. A blend of 50% Grenache, 30% Syrah and 20% Mourvedre (45- to-95-year-old vines) aged in small oak, it exhibits an opaque purple color as well as a sweet bouquet of blackberries, espresso roast, ink and graphite. While clearly a modern-styled Chateauneuf du Pape, it retains plenty of the region’s typicity and authenticity. It should drink well for 15+ years” (from a Robert Parker review)

The sweet bouquet of ink and graphite? As this blog says so well, this is Wine Bullshit at its best! (I have previously blogged about wine experts, among other topics on wine, here.)

Bokeh (pronounced bow-kuh): Japanese for really cool out of focus backgrounds in photos!

The background of a photo is out of focus because of the aperture chosen. A large aperture will cause most of the background to be out of focus. This is true for every lens, but some lenses give the out of focus background a special character–bokeh. No one talks about the bokeh of a 50f1.8 lens other than to say it’s crap. You will hear people talk about the bokeh of a 200f2, or one of the most famous Canon lenses, the 85f1.2LII, which was used to make the sample photo above.
Don’t expect to see much out-of-focus background when using a small sensor camera, such as a cell phone or a point-and-shoot. The physics/optics of these cameras mean that almost everything is in focus, much as in a pin-hole camera photo. (As an aside, there is much irony in the use of f64 with a large view camera of the kind used by Ansel Adams–although the format lends itself to producing massive bokeh, the members of the f64 club used incredibly small apertures in order to increase the depth of field when making landscape images.)
Bokeh is not something you have much control over, other than buying a lens with good bokeh. It’s also not something to get worried about. Most people who view your photos are not going to get all critical about the average bokeh your lens displays!

I read this article on tipping from an ex-waitress. (I thought it was politically correct to refer to them as servers nowdays, but I guess it’s OK for an ex-waitress to call herself whatever she wants to.)

I have a simple rule on calculating the tip that I’ll share. Take the first digit (the 2 of $24.50) and double it, to get a $4 tip. This is 20% for a $20 bill, but only 15% for a $29.99 bill. So you can either still closely to it, and hope the over- and under- tips average out with repeated visits, or you can do some rounding ($29.99 is really $30, so tip $6.)

I agree with the ex-waitress that 20% has become the norm for tipping and it’s easier to calculate than the old 15% tip.

But the point she makes that I agree with most is that if you cannot afford to tip 20% or thereabouts, don’t go out to dinner! The tip is part of the expected cost of dining out, so don’t skimp on it claiming that somehow it breaks your bank. Go out less, or go to less expensive places.

So Merriam-Webster Online recognizes incentivize as a word. BFD. That doesn’t make it right. Why don’t we just rid ourselves of all verbs, and take all the nouns and add “ize” – or some other suitable postscript – to them to create all the verbs we need? 

There’s a long tradition of forming verbs from nouns, so why am I so upset by incentivize? Maybe it just sounds too contrived, too stupid. As an economist, incentive is part of the discipline’s jargon, so it has special meaning to me. I also believe that language is not fixed, but must change with the times. Yet, egregious verbization of nouns just irks me.