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Chart of the Day: The Job Market For College Grads is Tougher Than Ever

by TGEGreggjbxsfx Posted on January 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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A new report from the New York Fed offers a grim take on the job prospects of recent college grads. It finds that underemployment (i.e., working at a job that doesn’t require a college degree) has averaged around 40 percent for the past two decades, going down a bit during economic expansions and up a bit during recessions.

But if the rate of underemployment itself hasn’t changed very much, the nature of underemployment sure has. It’s gotten worse. Take a look at the thick lines in the chart on the right. They show what happens to recent college grads who can’t get college-level jobs. The number who get good non-college jobs has plummeted from 50 percent to 35 percent. The number in low-wage jobs has risen from 15 percent to 20 percent. And needless to say, these grads also have quite a bit more student loan debt than grads from the early 90s.

Getting a college degree is still worth it. But there’s not much question that today’s college grads have it tougher than previous generations did. And the 40 percent who don’t find good jobs have it the toughest of all.

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Chart of the Day: The Job Market For College Grads is Tougher Than Ever

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Unemployment Bill Moves Closer to Inevitable Defeat in House

by LynnePilkington Posted on January 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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A couple of hours ago, the Senate voted 60-37 to move forward on a bill extending unemployment insurance benefits. If those same 60 senators continue to vote the same way, the bill will pass sometime in the next day or two.

But that will require making some concessions to Republicans, and this is getting a ton of ink. But why? Am I missing something here? Does this bill have even the faintest chance of getting a vote in the House, let alone passing? I haven’t read anything that suggests John Boehner plans to bring it up no matter what concessions Democrats make in the Senate.

Help me out here. I could use some good news. Does this bill have a prayer of passing the House, or is this just another round of Capitol Hill game playing, with poor people as the pawns?

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Unemployment Bill Moves Closer to Inevitable Defeat in House

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Congress Set to Decide Whether It Cares About Poor People or Corporations

by kx93z6g Posted on January 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Brad Plumer lists seven things that Congress needs to do this month. Two of them amount to “don’t be stupid and shut down the government.” One is just miscellaneous stuff. And another is confirmation of Janet Yellen as Fed chairman, which is uncontroversial and should take only a day or two. So really, we’re left with three things:

  1. Decide whether to extend emergency unemployment insurance.
  2. Pass a farm bill.
  3. Decide whether to extend 55 different tax breaks.

Unemployment insurance is a social safety net program. The farm bill is stalled over whether to enact cuts to food stamps. The 55 tax breaks mostly benefit corporations and campaign donors.

Any guesses about which of these urgent priorities will produce adamantine opposition from Republicans and which will get broad support and pass without too much trouble? Did you guess that #3 would be the easy one, despite the fact that it costs about five times more than the other two combined? Congratulations! You too can be a political pundit.

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Congress Set to Decide Whether It Cares About Poor People or Corporations

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Planet Likely to Warm by 4C by 2100

by Leon51tt8 Posted on January 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk initiative.

Temperature rises resulting from unchecked climate change will be at the severe end of those projected, according to a new scientific study.

The scientist leading the research said that unless emissions of greenhouse gases were cut, the planet would heat up by a minimum of 4°C by 2100, twice the level the world’s governments deem dangerous.

The research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, meaning less sunlight is reflected back into space, driving temperatures up further still. The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery surrounding future climate change.

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Planet Likely to Warm by 4C by 2100

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Friday Cat Blogging – 3 January 2014

by LynwoodDaigle Posted on January 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Domino is exhausted from an entire year of posing with quilts, so she’s upstairs taking a well-deserved nap. Instead, we have a guest cat to kick off the new year. This is a friend’s feline furball, cleverly named Grayson. Handsome little beast, isn’t he?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 3 January 2014

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Halftime Report: Chrome Out, Firefox In

by JeffreyCole Posted on December 22, 2013

Mother Jones

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Well, my switch to Chrome didn’t go well after all. It turned out that the MoJo tech team had an excellent reason for not supporting it: For some reason, when you paste text into our blog software, Chrome copies over every last bit of HTML formatting from the source document. Why? Beats me. But it doesn’t really matter, because Chrome lacked so many handy features that I’ve gotten used to in Opera that I would have given up on it anyway. So I tried Firefox again, and so far it’s been great. It had most of the features Chrome didn’t, and the few it lacked could be easily added via extensions. Performance is fine, and it mostly works well with the MoJo web software.

It doesn’t have a built-in email client, which is one of the Opera features I like best, but that was eliminated in the most recent Opera update anyway. Given all this, there’s really not much reason to stick with a browser that’s supported by nobody and that merely produces shrugs (or worse) when you complain about their site not rendering properly.

But before I make the switch permanently, I have a question for the hive mind. I don’t really recall why I gave up on Firefox a couple of years ago, but my recollection is that it had gotten slow and crash-prone. Anyone have any comments on that? Has it gotten better? Or does it still tend to crash at inopportune moments?

Also: Are there any add-ons that are so fabulous I should check them out immediately?

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Halftime Report: Chrome Out, Firefox In

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 December 2013

by ClemmieSwenson Posted on December 20, 2013

Mother Jones

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This is the second of Marian’s watercolor heart quilts. (You saw the other one in August, and yet another heart-themed quilt on Valentine’s Day.) It’s machine pieced and machine quilted. It’s also nearly our last quilt of the year. There’s one more to go next Friday, which will make for a grand total of 23 quilts if I’ve counted correctly, and then in 2014 we’ll return to garden-variety catblogging. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend and watch out for the shopping mobs.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 December 2013

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Are You An Atheist at Heart? Take This Simple Test to Find Out!

by Lavern49Swiybx Posted on December 20, 2013

Mother Jones

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Chris Mooney writes today about research from Ara Norenzayan that isolates some of the cognitive traits that seem to be associated with atheists:

Less “mentalizing.” One of the most surprising scientific findings of the research on the causes of religiosity (or the lack thereof) involves a trait called “mentalizing.”….On a social level, mentalizing helps you connect with and relate to others….As for atheists? Norenzayan’s research suggests they tend toward less mentalizing, which makes religious beliefs less intuitive to them.

….Analytical thinking style. In addition to mentalizing, a number of other basic cognitive traits have also been shown to promote religiosity. One very important one is having an intuitive style of thinking, as opposed to an analytic, contemplative style that favors in-depth, effortful thought.

Well, he sure has me pegged. A third (non-cognitive) trait that Norenzayan thinks promotes atheism is material security: “Again and again in Norenzayan’s research, societies that are existentially secure—meaning that people have access to health care and a strong social safety net, that there is a strong rule of law, but also that they are not facing deadly diseases or natural disasters—tend toward less religion and also more tolerance of atheism.” So maybe those crazy conservatives are right after all. Maybe Obamacare really is a secular plot.

More at the link.

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Are You An Atheist at Heart? Take This Simple Test to Find Out!

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Obamacare Enrollments Are Starting to Surge

by CarmonRoy Posted on December 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over the past 24 hours, I have managed to say not a single word about either Duck Dynasty or Pajama Boy. So what do I get for my reward? This:

HORSEBACK GUESSTIMATE WARNING: Unless it’s hidden away somewhere, California hasn’t released weekly enrollment numbers. But they’ve released numbers for October, and for the first two weeks of November, and then for October+November. Then today they released numbers for the first three days of this week: 13K on Monday, 19K on Tuesday, and 20K on Wednesday. If you put that all together and then take a reasonable swag at filling in the gaps, you get the chart above. It’s not official or anything, but it’s probably not too far off.

And what it shows is that with deadlines finally looming, all those people who have been shopping for the past month or two are finally enrolling at a furious pace. Other states are reporting a similar surge. Obamacare still has a long way to go, but things are definitely starting to perk up.

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Obamacare Enrollments Are Starting to Surge

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Most Americans Have No Clue How Health Insurance Works in America

by IndiaDeloach Posted on December 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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EBRI has released its annual workplace benefits survey, and for the most part it’s a triumph of status quo bias. Most people are fairly satisfied with their benefits and not especially eager for change. But there’s one particular question that produced a different response. Here it is:

I’m scratching my head a bit over this. The thing is, employer health insurance is the gold standard of American health insurance. Sure, every year employee cost sharing rises and copays go up, but it’s still great compared to nearly all individual plans. Deductibles are small and out-of-pocket maxes are low. Plus it’s nontaxable. If you have a choice between employer insurance and individual health insurance, about 99 percent of the time you’d be crazy not to take the employer plan.

And yet, 66 percent (!) of respondents wanted to go out and choose a plan on the open market and then get reimbursed in one way or another. The only thing I can figure is that this demonstrates just how little most people know about health insurance. They have no idea that the full value of employer health insurance is free of income tax, which makes it a great deal compared to spending your own money. Nor, as so many people are suddenly discovering about Obamacare, do they realize that individual plans usually have large deductibles and stratospheric out-of-pocket maxes. For those reasons, buying an individual plan on the open market and then getting reimbursed for it is almost certainly a losing proposition.

Maybe I’m missing something here, and people understood the question differently than me. But on the surface, this sure seems to indicate that most Americans simply have no clue about how health insurance works in this country.

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Most Americans Have No Clue How Health Insurance Works in America

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