Category Archives: Econ & Money

A reader writes:

“America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.”

      – Evan Esar (1899 – 1995)

But we do tend to have longer careers.

Anyway, it depends on the sport. And whether by “average” person you mean the median person, or if you really want to average the salaries.

And for the ones with bigger teams, do you look just at the stars, or the median player? After all the average (not median) baseball player ‘only’ made $2,476,589 in 2005, and I bet the median player made less than that. That’s under $47,626 per week on a 52-week basis. There definitely are professors in the humanities who make more than that, and the professional schools are loaded with them. (The 52-week comparison isn’t as unfair as it seems since many professors have 9-month contracts, which is only a little longer than the baseball season, if you count spring training.)

Update: I think as regards baseball at least, this isn’t quite accurate, although it’s close: Median baseball salaries on a team range from $ 322,500 on the Colorado Rockies to $ 5,833,334 on the NY Yankees. The median salary on the median team is either the Seattle Mariners’ $ 800,000 or the Minnesota Twins’ $ 750,000 depending if you round down or up. Which puts it just under 12 times the average professor’s salary!

Of course, if you throw in other professional sports, who knows, it might be true…

Today I received an email request from a person who described herself as “the human resources manager for a mid-sized law firm in downtown Miami.” She named the firm, but I’m not going to. She wondered if I might have information on “finding quality legal staff candidates from universities in India (i.e., paralegals, legal assistants, word processors, etc.)”. Or maybe I know “the best universities in India producing good candidates for these types of position”

In short, she’d like me to help her figure out how to outsource local jobs to India.

I Don’t Think So, thank you.

However, in what is undoubtedly a sign of advancing age and who knows maybe even incipient maturity, I have deleted each of the replies which have come to mind, and thus have yet to email a reply. (Yes, I know this contradicts my previous post on giving offense.)

Berkeley J-School students are in for a treat: Brad DeLong is going to explain to them how not to get snowed by politicians spouting economic statistics See Covering the Economy for a taste of what he’s up to.

Just a few basic rules — understanding trends, comparing like with like, doing everything in real dollars would be a good start.

And, Brad, I know you are mainly intersted in public data from federal sources, but may I mention one of my pet peeves? I hatehatehate the way the business section reports corporate profits. Neither I nor anyone else cares if profits were up or down twelve million percent over last year. That depends so much on what last year was like. We want to know how much it grew in real dollars, or maybe the ROI compared to last year, to other players in the industry, or the industry as a whole. Or anything else standardized and meaningful. BUT NOT % CHANGE OVER LAST YEAR. (Please?)

The cost this year alone of the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 comes to $225 billion. In other words, the revenue lost because of tax cuts going through this year without any congressional action would more than pay the costs of Katrina recovery.

Source: E. J. Dionne Jr.

It’s not too early to think about how to pay for the rebuilding of New Orleans and the other area communities that have been devastated. Indeed, a firm long-run plan will give the people who live(d) there more hope, and help discourage flight of the most mobile professionals that a city depends on for its economic health.

The government has already appropriated $10.5 billion for immediate relief, but that’s a drop in the bucket. And that, plus every other cent going forward, is just added to the deficit. So it’s time for Democrats to step up to the plate and propose an emergency surtax — like we used to do in wartime — to rebuild all the damaged areas. And to do it right, with coastal, wetland and barrier island reconstruction, so the next storm surge will not be so dangerous. It’s an expensive undertaking, but it’s the least we owe the people of the area after the hideous treatment they are now experiencing.

I don’t know exactly how big the tax would need to be, but I’m certain we could design one that’s suitably progressive. Ideally it would be focused on the people who’ve benefitted the most from the last five year’s growth, i.e. top 1% of the wealthy would pay the most, the next 20% would pay a share, and the rest (who have seen no benefit as a class, or even lost ground) would make NO more token payments. It’s especially important for Democrats to get out in front on this issue given the GOP leadership’s trial balloon, via House Speaker Dennis Hastert, if the idea that this national cultural landmark (and Democratic stronghold) should be left to rot.

Corrected: I had left out a key “NO” above.

Update: and how about a windfall profits tax for the oil refining business, now looking forward to much higher margins.

One of my favorite UM staff people has a new blog, and she offers a hot stock tip:

pssst…hey you…wanna hear a great stock tip?

Peanut butter.

Yeah, that’s what I said. Peanut butter.

Why?

Well it’s not insider information, that’s for sure. It’s common sense.

I paid $10 this morning to put 3.76 gallons of regular unleaded into my car so I could get to work. $10 used to be just below the full line. Now it’s barely to 1/2 a tank. So I used to have more money to spend on eating out at lunchtime. No big fancy restaurant or anything, just away from work and the work crowd. I would do that once a pay period, sometimes twice. So, that was $20 or $30 a month I spent to keep the economy rolling.

Now I put that $20 or $30 into my gas tank to keep OPEC and George W. Bush’s oil pals well fed while I eat in the building.

As I said, peanut butter is the coming thing. The stock in peanut butter should be going through the roof soon because I am not the only one who is cutting back on lunch expences. Right now I am still able to afford lunchmeat, but as transportation costs and energy costs rise I will be looking for alternate foods that don’t cost an arm and a leg to refrigerate and transport. Lunch meat is perishible. Peanut butter is not.

So, if I wanted to make a killing in the stock market equal to the killing the oil barons are making I have to do it soon. Investing in peanut better may be the wave of the future. Get in now on the ground floor before the prices of it go up too and you’re priced right out of the market

Investors (and politicians), take note.