STEM or LAS?

This article seems to lament the low rankings the US brings in on STEM education. At first blush this seems serious. But, is STEM really the future? Is STEM a comparative advantage worth pursuing (assuming we don't already posess it)? It seems like it would be, but it may only be part of the story. The other part of the story is here (Alex Tabarok, Marginal Revolution) and here (Catherine Rampell, Economix). From Tabarrok:

Law #1: People will get jobs doing things that computers can’t do.

As Tabarrok points out, a lot of jobs in STEM sectors may eventually be replacable by computers. As Rampell Some Liberal Arts disciplines (and certain disciplines in Business) that emphasize problem solving and people skills may be better-positioned for high value-added jobs 20 years from now than purely quantitative disciplines. I think this partially bodes well for economics majors (except maybe for the people skills part).

Some links on teaching Principles of Economics

We're not out to get our students (Art Carden).

Property rights are probably the most important economic concept ignored by most principles courses. An interesting piece on property rights and karaoke (NPR).

Sometimes economists get principles of economics questions wrong (Tabarrok); sometimes economic researchers claiming that economists get principles of economics questions wrong write the question wrong (Cowen); sometimes there's more than one answer (Decker via Depken). Lesson: we have to be thoughtful about writing the questions we ask students.

Finally, a couple of unrelated random hits: Does the Current Account Still Matter? (Mehrling); some facts about Obama's first-term record - the right and left are both wrong (Sullivan).

Selection Bias Chart of the Day

Unobservable individual heterogeneity?

Unmanned Commercial Air?

From Freakonomics. I can explain why I don't like this idea in one sentence: I want the person flying and controlling my plane to have his ass to lose just as much as I have mine - it's called incentive compatibility.

Links

Favorite shows by political persuasion (Entertainment Weekly). A little surprised R's dislike South Park so. It's pretty strongly libertarian, but I guess Jesus trumps liberty.
Job market advice for academics from UW (Econbrowser).
Moneyball (Grantland). Maybe they shouldn't of published all their secrets.
Higher speed limits? Probably not (MR). The first comment is amusing, albeit not very aware of forensic economics.
The video game business (Economist). I suspect gaming has been profitable through the recession because it is an inferior good.
A couple of more serious links on political unrest, recessions and inequality (Economist), and the impacts of offshoring on inequality and education (VoxEU).

Higher Top Tax Rates = Higher Productivity?

From Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva, via VoxEU:

...while standard economic models assume that pay reflects productivity, ...top earners might be able to partly set their own pay by bargaining harder or influencing compensation committees. Naturally, the incentives for such ‘rent-seeking’ are much stronger when top tax rates are low.... increases in top 1% incomes now come at the expense of the remaining 99%.

...there is no correlation between cuts in top tax rates and average annual real GDP-per-capita growth since the 1970s.

Of course, raising income taxes on the rich might lead to more income being diverted into stock options and capital gains, but would that be a bad thing? Wouldn't that increase total investment and strengthen incentives for managers?