CUBA

Josh posted a nice little thing on my Facebook wall about how Cubans make only $20 a day and have less than 2% unemployment. He related it back to the minimum wage, though I'm pretty sure a minimum wage has very little to do with it. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a satisfactory answer in the 15 or so minutes I searched for one. But since I did invest so much time and effort into it, I figured I might as well reproduce here what I wrote to Josh:

Well, Cuba "was" a centrally planned economy. One nice characteristic of those is that there normally is little or no unemployment because the state employs everyone. Wikipedia says that around 3/4 of Cubans are employed by their government. Cuba is also a developing economy. As such, they are poor as fuck (though doing better than a lot of other places, it seems). Then there is this from nationsencyclopedia.com: "The minimum wage varies (in Cuba), depending on the type of employment. As of 2002, the monthly wage was $8.25 for a maid, $9.50 for a bilingual office clerk, and $10.75 for a gardener."

I found a short, but pretty good paper about the minimum wage in Poland that is pretty damning. It is here:http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/asce/cuba6/14melnyk.fm.pdf

The best part about Poland is that the minimum wage is high and applies to everyone's monthly wage (as opposed to the US where it's hourly and state by state and thus excludes a lot of workers), and the labor force is rather immobile and divided up into regions with very different average wages. So Poland is a pretty nice place to look at the effects from a minimum wage.

Also, it's important to note that the minimum wage usually hurts younger, unskilled workers the most. So instead of being a "poverty reducing" tool, it actually might help make the poor poorer.

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In other news, I'm sick of snow. But I think we all are, now. And I'll be in Bloomington this weekend for... only God knows why. I told Declan I'd drive him. Actually, it seems kind of fun. I'll get to see IU, and Bloomington is in a very pretty area. As long as the roads are snow free, there'll be smooth sailing ahead.

A Couple Movies

During the past couple of nights, I saw District 9 and Crazy Hearts. Since I have nothing else to do right now (except write up some HW), I suppose I'll write about them.

District 9 was the first anti gun control movie I think I've ever seen. The message was very subtle; so subtle that I doubt it was intentional. The movie depicts these aliens that, as the movie progresses, are shown to be very sympathetic. They are almost human in temperament, but way smarter. The humans, while in the beginning trying to be humane, wind up sticking all the aliens in a ghetto. To control the alien population, the humans monitor the aliens by not allowing them to reproduce (unless they have a license) or own weapons of any sort. The message is right there: if you want to completely control a population, take their guns away and restrict their reproduction abilities. The only problem I saw with the movie was that they tried to help the aliens. If a giant alien spaceship showed up over my town, I'd want to blow the living daylights out of it. A historical parallel to this is the Europeans showing up on the shores of America. If the natives killed off the more advanced Europeans, the native Americans would probably still exist. Instead, they have small pieces of land designated to them by the US government. That is what they get from being helpful and welcoming the incoming Europeans. I would hope that humans would learn from history and not make the same mistake the Native Americans did.

As for Crazy Hearts, that was just good acting. Both Harry and Chris thought the story was formulaic and overdone. It may be overdone, but I thought there were enough differences to say that it wasn't formulaic. I also don't really know what they mean when they say formulaic - but I don't care enough to try defining it. I think they meant that after Ray and Walk the Line, there were enough movies about country/southern musicians and their drug problems. To quote Mark: "Screw you!" It was a good movie and enjoyable (though uncomfortable at times) to watch. You really feel for Bad Blake (played by Jeff Bridges). I also thought the end wasn't very predictable, mostly because I was waiting for a twist and there really wasn't one (a twist in itself? who knows...).

So that's what I've been doing with my life. And eating Skyline. I've got to get as much Skyline as possible before I leave next August. Since I have a place to go, I can legitimately say that. :)

Grad Schools

I am officially accepted at Rutgers. Since I haven't actually ranked the schools to which I've applied, I have no real way of figuring out if I'll accept Rutgers invitation. It's nice to know there's a school that will take me.

There are fourteen schools to which I've applied/am still in that damned process of applying. They are: MSU, Texas, Georgetown, Rutgers, BC, BU, Rice, Iowa, UCSC, Arizona, UCSB, UVa, Purdue, and OSU. The order is roughly the due dates for the applications.

I know Rutgers is good in economic history. UVa has an up and coming international and development economics program. Arizona seems good in experimental (behavioral) economics. Purdue has a very mathematically based program and a guy who knows monetary economics. Michigan State has a very respectable econometrics program. UCSC is a little weird, but the location is great and they specialize in international economics.

Those are the ones that I know something of the research conducted there. What I really have to do is sit and wait. And finish the Purdue and OSU applications. I'm not fond of either. But it could be worse. I might've had to wait without knowing if I'll have a place to go.

Spring Break (part 1)

Seems like everyone are writing blogs.

As for me, I've gotta go to sleep in a couple hours. Walking to work at 6:30 in the morning in the Winter is just so much fun. I can barely describe the chill that runs down my spine when I think of it.

Oh, and Destin for spring break. Now that should be fun. Somehow I manage to avoid Florida for 22 years and then all of a sudden I'm going there twice in a year.

So Maybe I'll Continue Writing

I figure, since I have a blog I might as well write something. I don't plan on consistently posting, but who knows what'll happen. Last semester was so hectic I didn't have time to post or even think about posting.

Since I got back from Europe, I've mostly been studying with a bit of traveling thrown in the mix. I went to Dallas, Fayetteville, St. Louis, nearly to the other side of PA and back, and Florida. I'd never been to Florida before and it was great! I was expecting some sort of weird prefab place (my expectations weren't very well defined) and instead I had a lot of fun in an atmosphere very different than the Midwestern one. Plus, instead of freezing my ass off in OH, I went golfing in 85 deg fahrenheit temps.

So. Since this is the new, I guess I'll kick it off with a post of Good Things.

Good thing numero uno: Jake is doing well. I hear that he just about has a job. And it's not fuckin' freezin' in Florida no more. Apparently iguanas were freezing and falling out of trees. Jake called them iguanacicles - he said they were yummy.

Good thing numero dos: I got into Rutgers only 3 weeks after I applied. This means I don't have to have anymore nightmares about not having a place to go next semester. And Rutgers is definitely an acceptable place to go (ie it's not in the midwest and only an hour's train ride to NYC). They're not ranked incredibly high, but I know of at least three people who have recently graduated from their econ program and have decent jobs. Maybe more acceptance letters will come so I can have a choice.

Good thing numero tres: My credit from Vienna final got transferred here and processed. Now I can graduate with both degrees! WaHoo!

Well, there are three Good Things. Hopefully, more will come. Alles wird gut, eh?