Court Says Unions Can't Force State to Properly Fund Pensions →

Quoted in full:

There is a widely circulated story in policy circles that public sector unions are to blame for underfunded public pensions. The story is that the unions effectively make deals with politicians they support to get generous pensions and leave the funding for people to deal with in the future.

In fact, there is little evidence to support this story, as many states with weak or no public sector unions rank near the bottom in pension funding, while some states with strong unions, like New York and Wisconsin, have pensions that are near full funding. Nonetheless, the story is still widely believed.

A ruling by New Jersey's Supreme Court yesterday should help to kill this story once and for all. The basic issue was whether the unions could hold the governor to an agreement where he had agreed to make payments into the pension funds in exchange for concessions from the workers. The court said no, the governor and the legislature could not be bound by any deal.

In other words, whether or not required payments are made to pensions, at least in New Jersey, is entirely up to the legislature and the governor. The unions have no voice in the matter. 

It should be pretty hard to blame the unions in this situation, but that doesn't mean folks will stop doing it.

I'm a professor. My colleagues who let their students dictate what they teach are cowards. →

When I read about professors being afraid of their own students and changing what they teach in response to that fear, I'm struck by two things. First, I understand why they're afraid. After my decade and a half in the classroom, I can confidently add to the chorus suggesting that universities increasingly treat students like consumers. As administrators seem more concerned with enrollment dollars than students' learning, instructors receive a clear message: "The customer is always right."

Carly Fiorina, and the conservative case for feminism →

After all, feminism is a word that could apply to most Americans. A March Vox poll found 78 percent of Americans believe in the "social, political, legal and economic equality of the sexes," yet only 18 percent consider themselves feminists. For a large number of Americans, it seems, the word is unwelcoming, not the concept. Part of that is political -- a 2013 Huffington Post-YouGov poll found Democrats were more likely than Republicans to consider themselves feminists -- but there's also concern the word is extreme, and something that pits women against men, as we've seen from some of the answers female pop stars and actresses have given when asked if they're feminists.
Fiorina's definition of a feminist is "a woman who lives the life she chooses." It's a more nonpartisan definition -- liberals would say a watered-down one -- and might be more welcoming at a time when a majority don't identify with the word but believe in equality for women.

Reassessing Airport Security →

News that the Transportation Security Administration missed a whopping 95% of guns and bombs in recent airport security "red team" tests was justifiably shocking. It's clear that we're not getting value for the $7 billion we're paying the TSA annually.
But there's another conclusion, inescapable and disturbing to many, but good news all around: we don't need $7 billion worth of airport security. These results demonstrate that there isn't much risk of airplane terrorism, and we should ratchet security down to pre-9/11 levels.

Big Abortion Rate Drops Seen in States That Didn't Restrict Access to Abortion Clinics →

The U.S. has seen a 12 percent decrease in its abortion rate since 2010, a survey by the Associated Press found. Among the states that saw the greatest drops were Hawaii (30 percent), New Mexico (24), Nevada (22), Rhode Island (22) and Connecticut (21). Notably, none of these states have recently passed laws limiting access to abortion clinics or medical practitioners who provide abortion services.
...
The exact reason for the overall U.S. decrease in abortions is unclear. Anti-abortion advocates assert that the country has experienced a cultural shift against abortion, whereas abortion rights advocates believe it is a sign of improved access to contraceptives and sex education, leading to fewer pregnancies to begin with. 
Tamar noted that Planned Parenthood nationwide has seen a 91 percent increase in the use of long-term contraceptives, like implants and IUDs, at its health centers since 2009.

Once again: police work is NOT getting more dangerous →

Because policing in America has become a hot topic, anything related is more likely to be published, including of violence against police. But it's only a perceived trend, not a real one:

We’re continuing to see stories alleging that police work is gettingincreasingly dangerous. I suspect we’ll see even more of this as the search foraccused Pennsylvania cop killer Eric Frein continues, and then again as the year winds down. December usually brings a slew of stories about police officers killed over the last 12 months, and this year, unfortunately, we’ll see an increase in that figure over last year.
But as I’ve written at length (and generally in vain),  it’s important to include context when reporting these figures. Policing has been getting safer for 20 years. In terms of raw number of deaths, 2013 was the safest year for cops since World War II. If we look at the rate of deaths, 2013 was the safest year for police in well over a century. At the current pace, we can expect to see a 17 percent increase in on the job law enforcement fatalities this year over last year. That would put the total number of police officers who die on the job this year at 117, making 2014 the second safest year for cops in terms of raw fatalities since 1959. It would also put 2014 as the safest year for fatality rates in over a century. You’re more likely to be murdered simply by living in about half of the largest cities in America than you are while working as a police officer.

NIMBYism Is a Huge Drag on America's Economic Growth →

Fascinating. Of course, some amount of this is perfectly fine; not everything should be a purely economic decision, but about our values as well (which we have to be careful with; see also: redlining).

Silicon Valley enjoys sky-high labor demand and soaring wages. Yet for such a significant global nexus of economic activity, the population density in San Jose and San Francisco is incredibly low. Incumbent homeowners don’t want to share the wealth, so they enact housing policies that keep new workers out.
Protectionist housing policies are bad for people who’d like to work in Silicon Valley, of course. But NIMBYism is also bad for the nation as a whole. Even though labor productivity has grown the most over the last few decades in three specific U.S. cities—New York, San Francisco, and San Jose—that local growth hasn’t translated to greater national growth at all, thanks to a lack of housing.
In fact, NIMBY policies that restrict the supply of housing in those cities are a drag on the national economy. That’s the finding in a new paper by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The researchers show that increased “wage dispersion” from 1964 to 2009 has held back U.S. GDP growth by a whopping 13.5 percent of what it could be.
“This amounts to an annual wage increase of $8,775 for the average worker,” the paper reads.