From the Harvard Book Store, a window into the thinking of our nation’s cognitive elite:
The #2 hardcover bestseller during my April 2025 visit was Muskism:
Elon Musk isn’t a glitch in the system—he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you.
If Fordism defined the capitalism of the twentieth century, Muskism may define the twenty-first. Fordism helped build the welfare state. Musk undoes it. He thrives on dependence while preaching freedom. His cars run on subsidies; his satellites run the battlefield; his social networks train the AI that trains us.
Muskism sells itself as the future but entrenches age-old hierarchies. It offers autonomy for some and exclusion for others. It’s pro-natalist but anti-immigrant, futurist but reactionary. It speaks of humanity but warns against empathy.
The authors:
Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at Boston University
Ben Tarnoff is a writer and technologist based in Massachusetts … He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the New Republic,
These giant credentialed academically-inclined brains say that Elon is pernicious. He’s our “dependent”, which means he is costing us money. What’s worse, this spending has resulted in Musk “owning us” rather than vice versa.
Elon Musk is pernicious and we’d certainly be better off without him. But it is also bad to be “anti-immigrant”, according to the authors, and we thus can’t use our ICE thugs to denaturalize Musk and deport him. Maybe we could persuade him to leave voluntarily? Hardly likely, given the U.S.’s massive exit tax on those who renounce U.S. citizenship. Elon would have to pay 20% capital gains tax plus 3.8% Obamacare tax (NIIT), albeit not the 13.3% California state income tax since he moved to Texas rather than pay his fair share to Gavin Newsom. This tax rate would be assessed against substantially all of Musk’s assets since nearly all of his wealth is unrealized capital gains.
What if we offered our most toxic citizens, the ones who contribute the least to our prosperity (since they don’t pay their fair share of taxes) and contribute the most to our problems (all of the above-cited, plus their presence in our society exacerbates inequality), a reasonable cost way out? If they leave in 2026, for example, they wouldn’t have to pay the exit tax.
Let’s say that someone needs a minimum net worth of $200 million to make the rest of us truly sick with envy. Anyone under $200 million, therefore, would still have to pay for expatriation.
(Separately, one of our neighbors has taken to parking his or her fairly new Rolls-Royce on the street (to make room for a truly valuable car in the garage?). I often walk Mindy the Crippler (our golden retriever) with a physician across the street and his dogs. In response to the Rolls-Royce sighting, the doctor and I have agreed that anyone richer than us should have to pay a 100% wealth tax.)
(Department of Trust Official Sources: SpaceX has a 98% launch success rate over its corporate life. The authors and HarperCollins (publisher) have chosen to feature on the cover a photo of one of the 2% unsuccessful launches.)
Young readers: it’s almost the end of your semester. Here are some of the messages from students in our FAA Ground School class at MIT (back in January) that would have warmed my heart if engineers had hearts…
[ Sloan executive MBA track; Chinese] It was wonderful to be your student. Thank you for teaching us.
[Chinese] Thank you to you and Tina again for the wonderful ground school over the past three days! I really enjoyed it and learned a lot. … Safe travels back to Florida, and thanks again!
I really enjoyed the ground school this past week.
[European] I would like to express my sincere appreciation for your guidance during the Private Pilot Ground School. The course was fun, insightful and has left me well-prepared for the upcoming FAA knowledge test.
Thank you for this class. Genuinely, I enjoyed everything that I learned.
Thank you all for this class. Really appreciated it.
Now that we live in the email age, don’t forget that it is easy to thank a teacher! I recommend copying the first example! It’s Mother’s Day and this is definitely the kind of thing that most moms would like to see a child do!
Cambridge, Maskachusetts turned down a fiber-to-the-home deal with Verizon FiOS roughly twenty years ago. Rumor had it that Comcast was funding some pet projects for politicians and, therefore, Verizon couldn’t get authorized to compete with Comcast (not yet “Xfinity”).
As part of the process of unloading my old condo in Harvard Square, I tried to figure out if fiber-to-the-home had become available without me noticing. The answer is “sort of”. More than 90 percent of the city is remains a Comcast-only (Xfinity) territory. But the city has provisioned symmetric gigabit fiber to city-owned public housing apartments. Those entitled to public housing pay $35/month for Internet that those who pay property tax could only dream of having. (It might actually be free for those who refrain from working; there is a Digital Equity Plan to relieve people of this $35/month and multiple full-time “digital navigators” get paid to help those who don’t work maximize their enjoyment of free or near-free Internet.) Jesus pointed out, “The last will be first, and the first last” (Matthew 20:16). This translates to “gives [public housing] residents access to the highest internet speeds available in Cambridge at the lowest cost.”
The person who pays $100/month in rent (including utilities) gets faster and more reliable Internet than the person who lives in a $10 million house on Brattle Street and pays property tax. The taxpaying chumps will get hit for $100/month by Comcast for comparatively terrible service.
What does a person who hasn’t worked for four generations do with Gigabit fiber? Streams multiple movies and sports games in 4K:
What do Cambridge officials work on besides keeping their tax cattle in an Xfnity ghetto? Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui was born in Pakistan and might have enjoyed fiber-based Internet there if her family hadn’t chosen to enrich us here: “Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) internet is growing rapidly in Pakistan, with over 2.6 million subscribers as of February 2026.” (Google AI). City Hall was hosting a “Sexual Assault Awareness Month” event instead of a “Escape the coax ghetto” event:
Here are some of the shirt-based messages:
The one with the Star of David was almost next to a sign showing that future Cambridge residents will be, like the current mayor, primarily Islamic:
Why would the mayor highlight sexual assault instead of the monthly assault of residents paying high prices for inferior Internet? Wikipedia says that her family never got out of taxpayer-funded housing (Rindge Towers and Roosevelt Towers; sometimes enrichment by migrants means native-born taxpayers have to pay for the migrants’ apartments for 20, 40, 60, or a few hundred years (multi-generational)). So, from her family’s perspective, Xfinity’s monopoly and decades-old infrastructure is irrelevant.
(Note that folks in Maskachusetts don’t seem to be serious about discouraging what we now regard as sexual misconduct. Age of consent is 16, which means that everything Jeffrey Epstein is established to have done would have been legal in Boston. (He admitted to some sort of sex act with a 16-year-old.) It would be almost impossible to prosecute an Epstein imitator in MA because he could raise the “she consented” defense.)
The 11-year-old high-end Carrier system at our old Harvard Square place failed in the hot summer of 2024. It was probably some sort of leak in the outdoor unit, but it was tough to say for sure. In Florida, this would have been repaired for about $6,000 via installation of a new outdoor unit and recharge. In Maskachusetts I got estimates from $24,000 to around $40,000 to replace both air handler and the outdoor unit. (This might have been a $12,000 project in Florida for top-of-the-line variable-speed gear.)
The company that quoted $24,000 was rated 4.9 stars in Google Maps. They’re an authorized Carrier dealer. They said that they needed to do $thousands in additional items in order to satisfy the building inspector. My suggestion that a building permit wasn’t needed because they were just replacing existing equipment was laughed off. They ran new coolant lines and, despite me begging them not to, decided to monkey with the hydroair system that sends hot water up from a basement gas-fired boiler into the attic where the air handler lives. Because the attic is technically unconditioned space, even though it never gets very cold (poor insulation in the old wooden house underneath allows heat to rise), the circulating water must have some antifreeze in it.
When the winter arrived, the hydroair system didn’t work. The only heating was from the heat pump, ruinously expensive at some of the nation’s highest electric rates. The company came back and said that we needed about $10,000 of work. The circulation pump was failed, which is why fluid wasn’t circulating. The boiler was from 2003 and should be trashed. At a minimum, everything attached to the boiler needed to be replaced. I called the plumber who’d installed the boiler. He came by and said “Your HVAC people are idiots. They filled the pipes with 100% glycol, which is too viscous for the pump to move. I drained it and refilled it with 50% glycol like it is supposed to be and everything works fine now. Your boiler doesn’t need any service and is working perfectly.” He sent me a $1300 bill (would have been $500 in Florida, but this guy is kind of a genius and Massachusetts is truly a paradise for anyone competent in the trades).
It’s finally time to sell the old unit. The market for short-term rentals in Cambridge never recovered to its 2019 level. I was never going there except to fix stuff. The family wasn’t interested in spending time in Maskachusetts. What did the lawyers working on the closing find? The HVAC company never closed the building permit that they pulled in 2024 and for which they said that thousands of dollars of extra work were required. (Ultimately, it did get closed, but not without multiple follow-up emails and calls from me. The HVAC company called the inspector and he actually did come by within a week, but he marked it as a “rough inspection”. The permit wasn’t closed and the HVAC company never checked to see if it was closed.)
(Note that the cost to heat and cool this 1400 sqft. condo, thanks to high utility rates in Massachusetts and low quality construction, is actually higher than the cost to heat (one week per year!) and cool (to 72 degrees; no Jimmy Carter austerity here) our 5400 sqft. house in Palm Beach County.)
Loosely related… this lamppost sticker from Harvard Square would make a good tagline for an HVAC business:
Also, a friend’s daughter got into a summer math program at Boston University. She is required to live in a BU dorm as part of this program. Faculty, staff, and students at BU are such experts on Climate Change that there are 31 pages of results from Google when searching for this string on the BU site:
How did the climate change experts prepare their own campus for the brutal heatwaves that are now hitting Boston regularly? (example) They failed to install air conditioning in their dorms.
Just as GLP-1 drugs hit the mainstream, the last of us Baby Boomers hits the minimum Social Security retirement age (1964+62=2026).
Working-age slaves pay taxes to fund Boomers’ Medicare. These costs will increase because GLP-1 drugs are expensive. Working-age slaves pay taxes to fund Boomers’ Social Security (our beloved Ponzi scheme). Boomers will now live 10 years longer because they’ll all be back to their design weight via GLP-1. A Boomer who lives longer will drain Social Security, thus forcing those of working age to pay higher tax rates and/or receive lower benefits themselves (maybe those of current working age will become eligible for Social Security at age 85?). A Boomer who lives longer in a state such as California will hog prime real estate due to Proposition 13 that caps property tax increases on long-held real estate (we have the same thing in Florida, but it is limited to a primary residence). Boomers who are mostly blind will inflict massive traffic jams on those of working age by going for jaunts in their self-driving cars, thus stealing time from the working age Americans who support the comfortably retired.
Here’s the latest expensive drug (Retatrutide) that the working age slaves will have to buy for us Boomers:
Google AI: “Experts estimate the monthly cost could range between $1,000 and $1,500+ once available. … Phase 3 trials are expected to conclude in Q3 2026, with potential commercial release following afterward.”
Happy Middle of Hurricane Preparedness Week for those who celebrate…
Conventional insurance companies such as State Farm have mostly walked away from insuring coastal South Florida due to a combination of litigation risk (“Prior to the reforms, Florida accounted for more than 72% of the nation’s homeowners claim-related litigation in 2023, despite representing only 10% of US homeowners claims.”) and hurricane risk. Our house is about 2.5 miles from the ocean, but it is still redlined by the insurance companies most people have heard of. Here are the options for insurance:
a Florida-only carrier that turns most of its premium over to reinsurance
a “non-admitted” specialty company that isn’t regulated by the state and that may have unfavorable terms, including penalties for early cancellation and even a “wind exclusion” (i.e., they pay nothing in the event of the most obvious risk: hurricanes). (This option is so expensive and dumb that I won’t cover it here.)
a “high-net-worth” (HNW) carrier such as Chubb (mostly rejects additional Florida risk; famous for a low loss ratio (payments as a percentage of premium collected)), Vault, PURE, and Berkley One (despite the name, these are available to peasants whose house is worth less than a Palm Beach starter home ($10 million))
The cost of HNW insurance is 2-4X what a Florida-only company might quote.
Nearly all Florida insurance includes at least a 2% wind exclusion. If the dwelling value is $1 million, in other words, the homeowner pays the first $20,000 of any hurricane-related loss. Thus, the vast majority of customers with hurricane damage will receive nothing from their insurer because the typical hurricane damage might involve only some blown-off roof tiles or shingles. The band of likely serious damage from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane making landfall is 20-60 miles, e.g., for Hurricane Andrew in 1992 that resulted in major changes to the Florida building code or Hurricane Michael in 2018 that damaged Tyndall Air Force Base. Note that this exclusion results in the HNW policies paying less after what would be typical hurricane damage because HNW companies write for 2X the dwelling value on the same house.
The Florida-only carriers are typically unrated by AM Best, the standard rater for insurers. It has been historically rare for an insurer rated A or better by AM Best to fail. Florida insurers get rated by Demotech. How well does it work for an insurance company to have all of its customers in Florida? According to ChatGPT, nearly all of the Florida-only companies that have gone insolvent had A ratings from Demotech (i.e., the ratings were worthless in terms of distinguishing the vulnerable carriers from the solid ones or, perhaps, the solvency of a carrier simply depended on their luck regarding how many customers were in a hurricane destruction zone).
Insolvency after a major hurricane doesn’t work the way that one would think, with the failed insurance company realizing that it is doomed to failure and going into a bankruptcy-style process where every claimant gets paid a percentage of his or her full claim amount. Instead, the insurance company, even after a major hurricane, pays claims as they’re made and adjusted at 100%. When the company runs out of money they turn out the rest of the claims to the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association (FIGA), which will pay up to $500,000 for a destroyed house. So… the customer with a major loss either gets 100% or a fixed $500,000. The more complex the claim, the less likely it is to be paid. ChatGPT says that it is reasonable to assume a 10 percent chance of insolvency for a Florida-only carrier in the event of a major hurricane. The most recent insolvency that triggered a FIGA payout was of United Property & Casualty Insurance Company in February 2023. That’s three hurricane seasons ago. Since then we’ve had some hurricanes, but none anywhere near as costly within Florida as 2022’s Hurricane Ian. Let’s use a 20 percent risk of insolvency if a house is damaged to policy limits and a 10 percent risk of insolvency if a house is damaged to half of the limits.
What is the risk of a total loss or serious damage? Gemini starts off by saying that it is pretty high, with 300,000-400,000 single-family homes in South Florida either substantially damaged or destroyed by hurricanes over the past 50 years. That’s out of about 2.7 million homes in South Florida today, but only an average of 1.7 million homes over the 50-year period. (ChatGPT estimates this number as only about half of Gemini’s figure; our future AI overlords are smarter than humans, but equally inconsistent?) So a homeowner’s insurance company has about at least a 1 in 7 chance of making a big payout? Not exactly. First, we have to separate out the houses that were damaged by flooding or storm surge, between 120,000 and 180,000. Homeowner’s doesn’t pay for flood damage. Now we’re down to a risk of about 1 in 10 over 50 years. What about the fact that Florida established a strict statewide building code in 2002, hoping to avoid a repeat of the Hurricane Andrew aftermath, roughly 25,524 homes destroyed and 101,241 damaged (Insurance Information Institute). Gemini:
In major storms like Hurricane Michael (2018) and Hurricane Ian (2022), structural engineers found that homes built to the 2002 code (or later) suffered roughly 80% to 90% less wind damage than their older neighbors.
IBHS evaluated 3,646 single-family homes, 327 light commercial buildings, and 230 multifamily structures [after Hurricane Ian] using aerial and street-level imagery. … Homes built before 2002 had structural damage levels nearly 2x higher, and 2.3x higher in areas with peak winds above 130 mph.
It looks as though no post-2002 house actually lost the plywood sheathing supporting the roof, but at least some had exposed sheathing and, presumably, water damage as a result. A companion report from the same organization says that asphalt shingles were the weak point, metal roofs were the best (12% damaged), and tile roofs weren’t significantly damaged except those more than 20 years old (“no tile roofs assessed that had greater than 50% roof cover damage” and “the small number of roofs with greater than 25% cover damage … These roofs were all 20 years or older”). Our 2003 house has a one-year-old tile roof with two layers of “peel and stick” underneath. If the tiles are blown off, but the peel-and-stick underlayment survives then we’re looking at a $120,000 insurance claim to put a new tile roof on the house (maybe less if the underlayment isn’t too old and can be retained).
ChatGPT says that 4-6 Cat 4/5 hurricanes hit the Miami-to-Stuart coastline every 100 years. Let’s take this distance as 108 miles. If you assume that the zone of total destruction is 20 miles wide then a typical house gets destroyed roughly every 110 years. If the destruction zone widens to 40 miles, the interval between destruction is 55 years. The most recent major hurricane to hit Palm Beach County was in 1949, 77 years ago, but we could use the 55-year estimate to make the high-net-worth companies look more attractive.
[We’ll ignore tornado risk. A tornado could destroy or seriously damage a house, of course, but it wouldn’t affect an insurer’s solvency because a tornado is local. This is a 1 in 100,000-year event for a typical South Florida house, according to AI.]
As noted above, one quirk of the HNW policies is that they force buyers to pay to insure the full rebuild cost of a house, which for a 2003 house like ours is much more than the house is worth. Imagine if we insured our five-year-old Honda Odyssey for the cost of a brand new Honda Odyssey. Why would we want to do that when what is actually at risk is only about half that number? A neighbor has Chubb and they would pay him over $4 million for the house and contents in the event of a total loss (maybe $5 million if we add “loss of use”). His house has a Zestimate of $1.8 million, has its original roof and non-impact windows, and sits on a lot that should be worth at least $500,000 if the house were razed. The contents of the house aren’t valuable. So he has perhaps $1.5 million that could conceivably be lost under his $4+ million policy. (Note that the neighbor won’t get the high dwelling value unless he actually does rebuild, an irrational choice to make compared to simply moving to a similar house and letting a professional real estate developer deal with the wreck. If the family moves to a $1.8 million house a few blocks away, he gets paid only about $1.3 million (the depreciated value of the structure).
Let’s have a look at a couple of quotes. Below is one from Olympus, a Florida-based company that was founded in 2007, i.e., 19 years ago. Whoever started the company should buy lottery tickets because it was founded right at the beginning the 2006-2015 “no hurricanes making landfall” period. That said, the company has survived the following hurricanes that did make landfall in Florida:
Hermine (2016)
Irma (2017)
Michael (2018)
Ian (2022)
Idalia (2023)
Helene (2024)
Milton (2024)
Furthermore, Olympus is unusual in being rated by KBRA, which is significantly more stringent than Demotech. Olympus is rated BBB+ by KBRA (over the minimum BBB accepted by Fannie Mae; it’s ironic that the enterprise that generated the largest insolvency in U.S. history, requiring $150+ billion in tax dollars as a bailout, closely scrutinizes insurance companies). For the handful of companies that are rated by both KBRA and AM Best, the ratings seem to be similar.
Could they survive a repeat of the 1949 hurricane that came right into Jupiter? (the most recent major hurricane to make landfall in Palm Beach County) There doesn’t seem to be any way to find out. An insurance company with 50,000 customers, each of which is on its own square mile within the 53,625-square-mile state of Florida is going to be much less stressed by a hurricane that hits Fort Lauderdale than one whose 50,000 customers are all in Broward County, for example. (Broward County was last hit by a major hurricane in 1947, though Hurricane Wilma, Category 2, did about $4 billion in insured damage in 2005.) The information on risk concentration by company is nowhere to be found. In theory, the reinsurers who agree to do business with the companies are looking at this and maybe the regulators.
It is difficult to have faith in regulation when one hears about Florida-based Slide Insurance. The founder and his wife siphoned off $50 million in compensation out of a total profit of $288 million in 2023-4 (source). Based on this, it seems that an insurance company could pay out all of its profits to employees and shareholders during 15 lucky years without major hurricanes affecting its territory and then fold up its tent after a Hurricane Andrew-type event occurs. ChatGPT: “There’s no strict statutory cap tying executive pay to solvency. … As long as they stay above minimum surplus requirements, they’re compliant. But those minimums may not cover a true tail event (e.g., Andrew-scale).” People with inexpensive-by-Florida-standards houses will still do okay with $500,000 from FIGA, of course, so this is a great example of privatized profits and socialized losses.
What did the high-net-worth companies have to offer?
Notice the PURE quote with a 5% wind exclusion. If our roof were destroyed, but didn’t leak, and we lost 7 or 8 of our impact glass windows they would still pay nothing because the wind deductible would be $195,000. In a “medium bad” event, the Olympus policy at less than one third the cost could easily pay 2X because of the deductible being only 2% of a much lower dwelling value.
It’s beginning to get hot here in South Florida. Rich people without kids generally stay in Florida for 4-6 months per year, 183 days/year if they’re anxious to preserve Florida as their primary residence/tax domicile. If that’s how people with infinite money live we can presume that it is a good way to live, I think (perhaps the Jeffrey Epstein and friends situation is a counterargument to that principle).
Carl G. Fisher created Miami Beach and, for his second act, wanted to build out Montauk on Long Island as the summer home for all of his customers.
What if we adapt Fisher’s idea for families with K-12-age kids? We set up a school that operates mid-October through mid-April (183 days/year or a little more) in Florida and then shuts down for a week while everyone moves up to New Hampshire. The kids can finish their school year up there and then the enterprise segues into summer camp mode, with activities all day every day for the same kids. The family can enjoy the best weather/seasons in the two states. The family won’t have to pay any state income tax (constitutionally barred in Florida so that should remain the state for 183+ days; NH could have an income tax, but presently does not), even if work is done in both places. The kids and adults will have built-in social circles in both places. If a great teacher doesn’t want to move, he or she can stay in Florida year-round and do the beginning and end of the school year virtually while the in-classroom students are organized by someone who is primarily a camp counselor.
The New Hampshire operation would run like a “family camp” in which everyone could meet for meals 3X/day if desired. Florida already has tons of restaurants and recreational facilities, so it would be more of a standard family life during the winter.
The main objection that I can see to this idea is the difficulty of scaling immediately to a sufficient size. A school with fewer than 200 students would presumably be overwhelmed with regulatory compliance costs and classes of fewer than 18 students would likely seem lame. Rich people are drawn to elite schools and it would be tough for an upstart traveling school to compete with The Greene School in West Palm Beach (founded by a billionaire; gifted students only) for quality, actual and perceived.
Also, there’s the question of where in New Hampshire to locate. Portsmouth has a fantastic airport, a beautiful river and ocean access, but it is expensive. Lake Winnipesaukee has a good airport (KLCI) and is in a traditional area for summer camps, but it is more isolated. The border towns with Maskachusetts could work because they provide quick access to Logan Airport for summer vacation trips, etc.
Obviously this wouldn’t work for most of the parents of the 3.4 million-ish school-age children who live in Florida, but why couldn’t it work for the parents of about 200 children?
As part of cleaning out my old Harvard Square condo, I learned that the City of Cambridge has embarked on a plan to increase population density, a rare situation in which the people who advocate for open borders also do something about accommodating the new arrivals and their kids and grandkids.
Starting in 2025, the city began allowing developers to build 6-story apartment buildings/condos in neighborhoods that had formerly been restricted to single-family houses:
There is no requirement that the new apartment buildings be anywhere near public transit or that they make any provision for parking (i.e., competition for street parking spaces is about to hit Olympic Team levels, though maybe the Tesla Robotaxi will ameliorate the issue?).
I talked to a lady who lives in West Cambridge, which has a suburban feel. “A developer bought an 1890 Victorian house and is putting up a 54-unit building,” said said. “It’s 1.2 miles from the nearest T stop. There’s hardly any bus service except at rush hour. There won’t be any off-street parking built as part of this.” How do the Biden-Harris voters in the neighborhood feel about living next to people receiving subsidized housing (20 percent of the units must be “inclusionary”, i.e., rented or sold at below-market rates to the fortunate few)? “They’re fighting the project tooth and nail by claiming that the old house is historic and can’t be demolished.”
I remain mystified as to how those who decry “inequality” can support these programs in which a handful of people are selected to pay nothing or almost nothing for housing while the vast majority of others who are equally situated in terms of income, etc., are doomed to pay market rates (i.e., live 45 minutes away from anywhere that is considered nice).
Most of Cambridge is poorly served by public transit. The subway stations are widely separated. The subway itself doesn’t run fast or go most of the places that people need to go. Bus service is slow and infrequent, though the former “Dudley bus” was renamed in 2020 to “Nubian Station bus” (background). Google AI:
Nubian refers to an indigenous ethnic group and the ancient civilization from the Nile valley region spanning southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It describes people, languages, and cultures originating from this area, which is known for a history dating back to 3100 BC. It is also used informally to describe Black culture, people with dark skin, or specific livestock breeds.
Can anyone think of an example of a portion of an American metro area, population 2 million or larger, that has been built up to an average 6-story height, or higher, that doesn’t have horrific traffic jams? The advocates for higher density seem to assume that everyone in young, healthy, fit, childless, and happy to walk 1.2 miles through slush and/or in 10-degree temps. Or perhaps that the fit young parents will bundle their young children up like Eskimos and load them into $7,000 Dutch cargo bikes that get stolen every six months.
Trying to get to a friend’s house in Brookline from practically on top of the Harvard Square T station at 7:14 pm, i.e., after rush hour:
It was 54 minutes by public transit and add another 15 minutes for a more typical Cambridge location that wasn’t so close to the T. This should be a 15-minute drive, which shows you how much the mobility of people in the Boston area has been reduced by roads being narrowed, more people getting cars, population growth, etc.
U.S. News ranks the school between 708 and 944 in Maskachusetts, out of a total of 1543 elementary schools:
Mattahunt Elementary School is a public school located in Mattapan, MA, which is in a large city setting. The student population of Mattahunt Elementary School is 512 and the school serves PK-6. At Mattahunt Elementary School, 22% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 22% scored at or above that level for reading. The student-teacher ratio is 10:1, which is the same as that of the district.
It’s interesting that an elementary school can be mid-pack with 22% proficiency (i.e., 78% of students can’t handle grade-level work).
Niche says that the school deserves a C+ because it earned an A- in “Diversity” and that only 19-20% of students can handle grade-level math or English:
A- in Diversity means 2% white:
Recommended listening for today: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor‘s Toussaint L’Ouverture, Op. 46 (1901).
How does a large unconditional increase in salary affect employee performance in the public sector? We present the first experimental evidence on this question in the context of a unique policy change in Indonesia that led to a permanent doubling of base teacher salaries. Using a large-scale randomized experiment across a representative sample of Indonesian schools that accelerated this doubling of pay for teachers in treatment schools, we find that the doubling of pay significantly improved teacher satisfaction with their income, reduced the incidence of teachers holding outside jobs, and reduced self-reported financial stress. Nevertheless, after two and three years, the doubling in pay led to no improvements in measures of teacher effort, and had no impact whatsoever on student learning outcomes. Thus, contrary to the predictions of various efficiency wage models of employee behavior (including gift-exchange, reciprocity, and reduced shirking), as well as those of a model where effort on pro-social tasks is a normal good with a positive income elasticity, we find that large unconditional increases in salaries of incumbent teachers had no meaningful positive impact on student learning.
ChatGPT: “Individual reported salaries for experienced Boston Public Schools teachers (15+ years) are commonly in the $120k–$130k range.” (keep in mind that a teacher with 15 years of experience would be 37 years old because the job starts after receiving a bachelor’s degree and any additional degrees that boost pay can be obtained via online/afternoon/evening classes)
