Month: September 2012

Prices have information – they drive buyers and sellers

I can’t explain all the economics lessons in the following joke, but can tell there are many.  Funny thing about prices is that they motivate buyers and sellers.  Prices contain a lot of information.  We need to interpret them well.  Here’s an insight on pricing and human behavior:

today’sFUNNY===========================

A woman walks into a butcher shop and asks the butcher how much a pound of tenderloin is.

“$12 per pound,” replies the butcher.

“Are you sure? That can’t be,” says the lady.

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One possible reason your benefits package at work might be shrinking

In this economy, it is difficult for employers to keep providing great benefits.  Check out this email from Mikey’s Funnies. It just might explain why the benefits package from your employer isn’t really great and might even be shrinking.

today’sFUNNY===========================

A woman, searching for a job, inquired about the benefits. The Personnel Manager informed her they had group health and life insurance, but the costs were deducted from the employee’s pay.

She said, “My last employer had full health coverage, as well as five years salary for life insurance and a month’s sick leave AND they paid the full premiums.”

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Higher Ed revolution is well underway – Marginal Revolution University opens its electronic doors.

I’ve been wanting to start commenting on the big changes in on-line education. Wanted to introduce the ideas as a part of a big series of posts I have in mind, but change is running far faster than my limited time to write. So I’ll start commenting before having chance to introduce the overarching idea….

Two economists, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, have started an on-line college. Marginal Revolution University will offer their first class on Development Economics starting October 1st.

The professors are structuring their curriculum for the online environment from scratch. Videos will be recorded uniquely for the course and will be structured in short, five-minute blocks.

Here is a short description of the course:

Continue reading “Higher Ed revolution is well underway – Marginal Revolution University opens its electronic doors.”

Count of drilling rigs end of August 2012 – 192 and 270 for combined total of 462

192  – Bakken – from the current active drilling rig list at the N.D. Department of Mineral Resources website on 8-31-12.

270 – Eagle Ford – from EagleFordShale blog.

Continue reading “Count of drilling rigs end of August 2012 – 192 and 270 for combined total of 462”

2nd Blogiversary

(cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update with minor changes.)

August 29th marked the 2 year blogiversary of my blog Nonprofit Update, which talks about nonprofit issues. I split off posts of interest to CPAs to this blog (Attestation Update) on October 14, 2010 and started this blog, Outrun Change , on October 3, 2011.

Nonprofit Update is my lead blog and I consider its start to be the birth of all three blogs. So, this is also the blogiversary of Outrun change .

Thanks so much to those who have stopped by.  I hope it has been a blessing to you.  In case you can’t tell, I’ve been having a blast.

Most visitors and page views are coming in from internet search engines. That is really cool.

One of the best things in the last year is a growing number of people interested enough is my musings to follow by e-mail or Google RSS feed.  Thanks very much for stopping by.

For the second year, I will report some stats for my sites.  Here’s some stuff for those interested in such things. I will adjust this time around to an August 31 cutoff instead of the 29th.  I’ll list stats for this year with the prior year in parentheses.

I’ll provide this data for two reasons. First, to let those who may be interested in blogging see what data looks like for a really small blogger. Second, since I am active on three sites with different topics, it provides a test bed to see what different sites may look like for different blogs from the same author.

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The technology revolution has just begun – part 2

What will develop next after the astounding technology changes of the last 30 years? We have no idea.

Previous post described my brain stretch from an article, The Next Great Growth Cycle, by Mark Mills.

His main point is we can no more tell today where technology will be in 30 years than we could predict in 1980 where we are today.

He then points out three major technology transitions that are already here and will have a huge impact in the future:

Continue reading “The technology revolution has just begun – part 2”