The Census has a new release with findings on what it calls "extended measures of well-being." Among the results: "the number of households with cell phones increased from 36 percent to 71 percent between 1998 and 2005." Also, "the number of households with a personal computer increased from 42 percent to 67 percent between 1998 and 2005." And, "among all households, 96 percent reported having a microwave oven." A microwave oven, cellphone, or personal computer may not be much consolation if you are unemployed and your house is being foreclosed on, but amid all the gloom and doom it's worth pausing to assess some of the progress and technological innovation that takes place under capitalism.

From a Bloomberg News article on Senator Reid's health care overhaul bill: "Reid also took steps to keep the costs down in the CBO estimate in part by delaying many elements of the bill to 2014 from 2013, including establishment of the insurance exchanges and their subsidies for the poor." If health care is in such bad and urgent need of "reform" as so many Democrats say it is, why wait so long -- five years -- before fixing it? The answer, as the Bloomberg article implies, relates to budget constraints and the desire to game President Obama's promise that the overhaul be deficit-neutral on a decade-long basis. Ten years of taxes and five years of services may equal a deficit-neutral decade, but it doesn't amount to a long-term solution.

The New York Times's longtime labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse, has a terrific article about what one worker calls a "creepy, cultlike" method of union organizing.

The National D-Day Memorial is erecting a bust of the murderous Soviet Communist dictator Josef Stalin in Bedford, Virginia, my former New York Sun colleague Alex Storozynski reports: "Congress authorized the D-Day Memorial and private donors raised $19 million to honor soldiers that fought in the invasion of Normandy. Now McIntosh is lobbying Congress to make his museum part of the National Park Service so that it can receive federal tax dollars."

There may be good reasons to get off oil -- environmental, national security -- but the notion that we are about to run out of it suddenly and immediately isn't one of them, according to a new report from Cambridge Energy Research Associates (link via the Browser). Says the report: "frequent claims—that 'half of global oil reserves have been produced,' 'global reserves are not being replaced on an annual basis,' and 'deepwater exploration is essentially exhausted'—are questionable." It goes on to explain that "Hydrocarbon liquids—crude oil, condensate, extra heavy oil, and natural gas liquids—are a finite resource; but based on recent trends in exploration and appraisal activity, there should be more than an adequate inventory of physical resources available to increase supply to meet anticipated levels of demand" until 2030. After that, "supply may well struggle to meet demand, but an undulating plateau rather than a dramatic peak will likely unfold....the view that oil supply will plummet after the inflection point and oil will run out, like the gasoline in an automobile, is misleading for the layperson."

A marvelous quote from a former counsel to the Republicans in the New York State Senate, Kenneth Riddett, as reported by the New York Times, which unfortunately buries it at the bottom of an inside-the-paper story. A prosecutor asked Mr. Riddett "to explain a memo in which members of the Senate were advised to always hand-deliver their annual ethics disclosure forms to the Legislative Ethics Committee, rather than send it by mail." The prosecutor asked why? "We had concerns about federal mail fraud statutes, to be honest," Mr. Riddett replied. Well, that's one way of dealing with those statutes. More evidence for the "both parties are rascals" theory of politics.

Yesterday's New York Times had a remarkable account of the inner workings of Historic Hudson Valley, a non-profit group founded by John D. Rockefeller, that we shouldn't have let pass without comment. The Times reported that the group can barely afford to keep a historic house that it bought open to the public (the group is scratching around for $100,000 gifts to do so), but that it nevertheless "recently broke ground on a regional history center in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., on nine acres donated by Laurance Rockefeller." Says the Times, "Although the group does not yet have the $15 million it needs to build the center, it began construction last month because it would otherwise lose a $6 million grant from a state financing agency." With New York state practically broke, it's hard to see why the state's taxpayers, most of whom are poorer than the Rockefellers, should be subsidizing the family's history hobbies. It's another reverse Robin-Hood. The Rockefellers probably figure if they can get away with taking farm subsidies, why not try for a history subsidy? How far the mighty have fallen.

More evidence that David Brooks and Michael Porter got it wrong when they complain that immigration hurts native American workers: a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research that says, "We find no evidence that immigrants crowded-out employment and hours worked by natives." NBER is charging $5 for the paper but a free earlier version seems to be available from the author, Giovanni Peri.

The Wall Street Journal has an article that attempts to defend New England Patriots football coach Bill Belichick's decision to go for a first down rather than punt at the end of Sunday night's game against the Colts:

Brian Burke, a statistician who has studied the results of fourth-down situations in the NFL, says a team in the Patriots' situation had a 79% chance of winning by going for it (either by converting the fourth-and-two or stopping the opponent thereafter). That compares favorably to a 70% probability of preventing a foe from driving down the field for a touchdown following a punt.

Those trying to understand how we got into the financial crisis and how we might get out of it have no shortage of books to choose from as we head into the holiday season, but one fine place to start would be with the new offering by a veteran of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, George Melloan, issued under the title, "The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism."

The Obama administration is claiming that the "stimulus" spending is creating jobs in congressional districts that don't even exist, like Arizona's 15th, and Connecticut's 42nd, ABC News reports.

That 50% tax rate touted by David Brooks and some of our most loyal commenters isn't working out too well over in Britain. Via the Club for Growth blog comes news of a survey of 300 British entrepreneurs that found 20% of them are planning to leave the country before the tax rate is implemented:

Popular locations for redomiciling include Monte Carlo, Guernsey, Liechtenstein, and the Cayman Islands.

Andy Raynor, Chief Executive of Tenon Group, noted that entrepreneurs are showing their disapproval of the tax measures by "letting their feet do the talking."

The Associated Press and its distributors at Yahoo! News are going wild over a new AP/Stanford University/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/GfK Roper poll that, as an AP headline over the article by my estimable Harvard classmate and Crimson colleague Erica Werner puts it, says, "AP POLL: Tax the rich to pay for health bill." You have to go to an obscure page of the AP Web site and download the actual poll data to find out that only 16% of those who answered the poll were college graduates -- hardly representative of the overall American population, where 29% of those older than 25 have a college diploma, according to the Census Bureau. The poll gave people a bunch of unpalatable ways to pay for health care reform and asked the question in a way that respondents probably felt that they had to pick the least unattractive one. There's a bunch of other information in the poll that tends to support more free-market ideas. For example, 40% of respondents described themselves as conservative, while only 19% described themselves as liberal. The poll also asked "If you had to choose, would you favor a smaller government providing fewer services, or a bigger government providing more services?" Fifty-five percent favored smaller government against 39% who favored bigger government. A basic element of ObamaCare is opposed by majorities of respondents -- 64% oppose an individual mandate to purchase insurance. The polls indicates that 49% of respondents think the proposed health care changes are going to make their own health care more expensive, while only 12% think it will reduce their costs; 34% said their health care would get worse with the changes, while 22% said it will get better. The changes will cause the overall American economy to get worse, 42% of respondents said, while only 28% said the overall economy would get better because of the health care overhaul. The AP somehow manages to sift through all that data and come up with a headline and article mainly about taxing "the rich," which the AP and its poll define as families making more than $250,000 a year.

The New York Times's attempt at a right of center columnist, David Brooks, has a column today referring readers to an October 30, 2008 essay by Michael Porter in the October 30, 2008 issue of Businessweek. Among Professor Porter's suggestions: welfare for universities and their students. He doesn't call it that, but here's the key language: "U.S. colleges and universities are precious assets, but we have no serious plan to improve access to them by our citizens. ... Instead of mounting a serious program to provide access to higher education, like the G.I. Bill and National Science Foundation programs of earlier years, Congress grandstands over the rate of endowment spending in our best universities." With all respect to Mr. Porter, who is a professor at Harvard, the federal government has been pouring money into colleges and universities, and the colleges have been using it to build fancier dormitories, pay their presidents and professors higher salaries, and build bigger parking lots for the students and their parents to park their BMWs in, all while raising the sticker price of tuition. One assessment, provided by the Heritage Foundation, found that federal financial aid programs for college stu­dents grew to $63 billion in 2000 from $19 billion in 1990, with little impact on enrollment. Another study, by the Urban Institute, found, "State and local educational officers have an incentive to raise tuition in order to capture the increased financial aid, attenuating or possibly eliminating the expected positive effect of aid on enrollment." The Urban Institute estimated 2003 federal spending on aid to college and graduate students at $20 billion, with an additional $11.8 billion in tax expenditures on things such as Coverdell accounts and Section 529 plans. That doesn't include the billions more in research funding for colleges and universities.

"GE Means 'Government,' 'Stimulus'" -- FutureOfCapitalism.com headline, October 15, 2009.

"General Electric Pursues Pot of Government Stimulus Gold" -- Wall Street Journal front page news article, November 16, 2009.