Some consumers looking for traditional standards of journalism have given up on the New York Times, but reform is still possible at the newspaper. That’s because the Gray Lady’s modern habit of catering to a fiercely ideological slice of the reading public seems to be driven more by its employees than by its customers. This week brings another in a series of recent examples in which readers are trying valiantly to pull the Times toward the reasonable center. Why such readers are still subscribing is a question for another day, but as long as they’re paid up they might be able to exert a positive influence.
David Henderson catches Jeopardy repeating a popular myth about the Great Depression.
Stephen R.C. Hicks tweets: (HT Humanprogress.org)
Norway in the late 1800s:
Women doing laundry through a hole in the ice. Painting by Jahn Ekenæs, 1891.
Before capitalism and technology destroyed the beautiful simplicity of indigenous life. 😎
Here’s what I found more interesting: relative prices. A hospital charged $26.00, I think for my aunt’s delivery of one of her sons. Adjust for inflation and you get $335.00. And remember that few people in Canada at the time, just as in the United States, had health insurance. What would $335.00 buy you today at a hospital? Not much. There are three contributors to the high price now: much higher quality–they can do more things to help you, third-party payment, and higher real doctors’ and nurses’ salaries. Oh, and add a fourth: the permit process to build new hospitals.
There is a field that calls itself misinformation science, but that is a misnomer. They are, first and foremost, propagandists. Ironically, the title of the field itself misinforms.
