Life, Inc.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/04/life-inc.html

Most Lucrative College Degrees

The July 24, 2009 CNN Money article "Most Lucrative College Degrees" by Julianne Pepitone demonstrates how supply and demand influence prices. Because the number of students majoring in math and science is relatively small (and thus the supply of those workers is relatively small), they tend to earn higher incomes than students majoring in humanities and social sciences (where the supply of workers is relatively large).

Hint: Grab a pencil, calculator, protractor ... or a drill. Engineering majors snag most of the top spots.

Math majors don't always get much respect on college campuses, but fat post-grad wallets should be enough to give them a boost.

The top 15 highest-earning college degrees all have one thing in common -- math skills. That's according to a recent survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which tracks college graduates' job offers.

"Math is at the crux of who gets paid," said Ed Koc, director of research at NACE. "If you have those skills, you are an extremely valuable asset. We don't generate enough people like that in this country."

This year Rochester Institute of Technology hosted recruiters from defense-industry firms like Lockheed Martin (LMT, Fortune 500) and Northrop Grumman (NOC, Fortune 500), as well as other big companies like Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ, Fortune 500).

"The tech fields are what's driving salaries and offers, and the top students are faring quite well," said Emanuel Contomanolis, who runs RIT's career center.

Specifically, engineering diplomas account for 12 of the 15 the top-paying majors. NACE collects its data by surveying 200 college career centers.

Energy is the key. Petroleum engineering was by far highest-paying degree, with an average starting offer of $83,121, thanks to that resource's growing scarcity. Graduates with these degrees generally find work locating oil and gas reservoirs, or in developing ways to bring those resources to the Earth's surface.

"Exploration for new energy sources is high," Koc said. "The oil and gas industry has done relatively well the past year, even though oil prices are off right now."

Other highly-paid engineering majors include chemical engineers, who employ their skills to make everything from plastics to fuel cells and have an average starting offer of $64,902.

Mining engineers start at $64,404 on average, while computer engineers, who have an expertise in both coding and electrical engineering, pocket roughly $61,738 their first year out of school.

Left behind. Of course, not every student with an engineering degree will score a fat paycheck. RIT's Contomanolis noted that "average" graduates are feeling the pinch of fewer job offers. Still, in a tough job market, graduates with technology degrees have an advantage.

"It's a tech-driven world, and demand [for engineers] is only going to grow," said Farnoosh Torabi, employment expert and Quicken blog editor. "You can't say that about many fields, especially in a recession."

Perhaps that's why more and more college students are picking their majors based on a field's earning power, ultimately "choosing a major that pays," Torabi said.

Top non-engineering fields. Only three of the 15 top paying degrees were outside the field of engineering -- but they each still require math skills.

For computer science majors, who specialize in programming and software, the average salary was $61,407. Graduates with degrees in actuarial science took home about $56,320; and jobs for students in construction management paid about $53,199. Each of these fields has paid well throughout the years, Koc said.

What happened to well-rounded? There are far fewer people graduating with math-based majors, compared to their liberal-arts counterparts, which is why they are paid at such a premium. The fields of engineering and computer science each make up about 4% of all college graduates, while social science and history each comprise 16%, Koc noted.

As a result, salaries for graduates who studied fields like social work command tiny paychecks, somewhere in the vicinity of $29,000. English, foreign language and communications majors make about $35,000, Koc said.

"It's a supply and demand issue," he added. "So few grads offer math skills, and those who can are rewarded."

Five freedoms you would lose in health care reform

Do not misunderstand me. The U.S. needs to reform its health care system. It spends more on health care than any other country, but only ranks 37th in outcomes. Yet, many of the current reform proposals may make things worse, not better. Simply requiring individuals to buy health insurance in the corporate marketplace (with subsidies for some people) is an effective way to shift the costs from the older, wealthier, and more intensive users of health care to the younger, poorer, and healthier members of society. (The rich and powerful win again.)

According to "5 freedoms you'd lose in health care reform":

If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you'll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.

By Shawn Tully, editor at large
July 24, 2009: 10:17 AM ET
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan

The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.

Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.

The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.

Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.

Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.

Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.

Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.

The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.

The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.

The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.

But read on.

The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.

The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.

The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.

Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.

The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.

In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.

Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms.

Find this article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/economy/health_care_reform_obama.fortune

Minimum wage hike: More money or fewer jobs?

According to "Minimum wage hike: More money or fewer jobs?", a July 24, 2009 CNNMoney.com article by Aaron Smith:

On Friday the federal minimum wage jumps to $7.25 an hour from $6.55. Economists differ as to whether that will hurt or help low-income workers.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- On Friday, the federal minimum wage rises for the third year in a row, sparking the perennial argument among economists: Will it help workers at the bottom of the ladder, or will it kill their jobs?

The U.S. minimum wage goes to $7.25 an hour, from $6.55, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Most states have their own minimum wage, and employers are required to pay whichever is higher. That means minimum wage workers will get a raise in 29 states. In the remaining 21 states and Washington, D.C., they'll see no change.

In some states, the increase will be more modest. In New York, the state minimum wage is $7.15 an hour, so workers there will be paid an extra dime an hour, which means another $4 for a 40-hour week. But in states like Georgia, Virginia and Texas, workers are paid the current federal minimum of $6.55, so they'll get the largest raise of 70 cents, which translates into a $28 bump for a full-time week, or more than $1,400 a year.

Injecting money into the economy?
Kai Filion, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, estimated that more than 2.8 million workers will have their wages lifted to $7.25 an hour on Friday. More than 1.6 million workers will also be indirectly affected, according to Filion, meaning their above-minimum wages will increase as the rising tide lifts all boats.

That adds up to nearly 4.5 million workers who would get a raise. The impact varies widely from state to state, depending on state minimum wages and population. In New York, with its $7.10-an-hour state minimum, 63,000 workers would be directly impacted, according to the EPI, compared with 632,000 workers in Texas.

"Because it's not a big increase, any impact will be modest, but it will be good," said Heidi Shierholz, a minimum wage expert with the EPI. "You're seeing people say this is a wrong time to do this, but I think that is entirely wrong-headed. They could not have planned this for a better time."

Based on Filion's estimates, the wage increase will inject $5.5 billion worth of extra spending into the economy over the next year.

"It gets additional money to low-wage workers," said Shierholz. "These are workers who are mostly struggling to get by and will spend that extra cash. This is actually stimulus."

Or fewer jobs for low-wage workers?
Back in 2007, before the current recession began, Congress passed a bill to increase the minimum wage, which was then $5.15 an hour, three times over three years.

Some economists believe that the Friday increase couldn't be happening at a worse time. The U.S. economy lost nearly 3.4 million jobs in the first half of 2009, which is more than the 3.1 million lost in all of 2008.

Suzanne Clain, professor and living wage expert at the Villanova School of Business in Pennsylvania, said that increasing the minimum wage would create additional financial hardships for employers, driving the nationwide unemployment rate above its current 9.5%.

"My feeling is that increasing the minimum wage is going to put additional strain on the economy," she said. "Additional jobs will be lost as a result. It puts stress on employers who are currently having very small profit margins."

Clain conducted an analysis showing that the 13 states with the highest minimum wage -- exceeding the upcoming federal minimum of $7.25 an hour -- experienced higher unemployment levels than the other 37 states. She said the unemployment rates were higher by an average of between 1.75% and 2% in those 13 states during the three-month period ending in May.

"Raising minimum wage rates will generally discourage businesses from employing people," Clain said. "We're already suffering from a downturn phase."

What about the waitresses?
Regardless of whether Friday's increase has a beneficial or negative effect on minimum-wage workers, there is one group that it always seems to leave behind, according to the National Employment Law Project: waiters, waitresses and other workers who rely on tips.

NELP, a New York and Washington-based advocacy group for low-wage workers, released a recent study highlighting the fact that the minimum wage for tip workers has remained frozen at $2.13 an hour since 1991. According to NELP, the buying power of this wage has fallen 36% over the last 18 years.

"This disproportionately affects women," said Raj Nayak, a lawyer with NELP. "Waiters around the country have three times the poverty level of other workers. It's hard to depend on tips."

To NELP, the solution is obvious: Raise the minimum wage for tipped workers. In the study, the group said the federal government could follow the lead of some 13 states that guarantee tipped workers 60% of the minimum wage, which was actually a federal policy until 20 years ago.

Better yet, the study suggests, the government could extend the same federal minimum wage to tipped workers as to any other wage earners, noting that this is already practiced in seven states, including California and Nevada.

A Brief History of the Minimum Wage

"A Brief History of the Minimum Wage" by Laura Fitzpatrick was published in TIME magazine on July 24, 2009:

With the U.S. trillions of dollars in the hole, 70 cents an hour sounds like chump change. But it's a big boost for the millions of workers who earn that much extra as of July 24. The increase is the third and final uptick in a hike that has since 2007 boosted the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25. In total, the extra $2 and change translates into a yearly raise of some $4,400 for a full-time minimum-wage worker, nosing his or her family of four above the poverty line.

The minimum wage was first instituted in Australia and New Zealand in the 1890s in response to frequent, bitter strikes and was adopted by Massachusetts in 1912 to cover women and children. With voters seeking a bulwark against the Great Depression, wage-hour legislation was an issue in the 1936 Presidential race. On the campaign trail, a young girl handed a note to one of Franklin Roosevelt's aides asking for help: "I wish you could do something to help us girls," it read. "Up to a few months ago we were getting our minimum pay of $11 a week...Today the 200 of us girls have been cut down to $4 and $5 and $6 a week."

Roosevelt rode back into office in part on a promise to seek a constitutional way of protecting workers; in 1923, the Supreme Court had struck down a Washington, D.C., minimum-wage law, finding it impeded a worker's right to set his own price for his labor. The first federal minimum-wage law, the Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938, with a 25-cent-per-hour wage floor and a 44-hour workweek ceiling for most employees. (It also banned child labor.) Outside of Social Security, said Roosevelt, the law was "the most far-sighted program for the benefit of workers ever adopted." Wages must ensure a "minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being," the act stipulated, "without substantially curtailing employment."

Ever since, however, critics and supporters have slugged it out over the minimum wage: some say it destroys jobs by making it too expensive to keep workers. University of California professor David Neumark estimates that the July 24 hike will end up costing some 300,000 jobs for young adults and teens by making their employment prohibitively expensive for enterprises already facing rapidly eroding profit margins.

Other economists note, however, that because a majority of minimum-wage earners work in outsourcing-resistant service jobs, businesses will have a hard time handing out pink slips en masse. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley found that after an 80-cent New Jersey minimum wage hike in 1992, employment in the state's fast-food restaurants rose slightly faster than in Pennsylvania, where the minimum wage did not change. (The law's effects showed up, instead, in prices: the tab at New Jersey fast-food restaurants grew about 4% faster than at greasy spoons in Pennsylvania.) Instead of killing jobs, minimum wage supporters argue, the wage floor increases productivity and boosts consumer purchasing power. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the July 24 hike to $7.25 will, over the course of the next year, pad consumer spending by more than $5.5 billion.

As a result of the sparring, the value of the minimum wage in real dollar terms has risen and fallen on political tides, peaking in 1968 when an hour's pay bought nearly 5 gal. (19 L) of gas. By 2006, it paid for less than 2 gal. (8 L); meanwhile, some states raised their own standards (Washington mandates $8.55 an hour). Thirty-one states will have to increase their minimum wages as a result of the July 24 increase, while 19 states and Washington, D.C. already had a minimum wage of $7.25 or higher.

Supporters of the boost say it will help the country's neediest at a time when they have been falling further and further behind. From 1973 to 2007, as the minimum wage fell 22% in real dollars, domestic corporate profits jumped more than 50%—bloating the gap between rich and poor and fueling calls for a $10-an-hour "living wage" by 2010. For now, though, an extra 70 cents is as good as it gets.

Annual Rates of U.S. Economic Growth

...

U.S. Economic Growth Percentage Change in Real Gross Domestic Product ...
Year	Percentage Change in Real GDP
2008	...
2007	2.0
2006	2.8
2005	2.9
2004	3.6
2003	2.5
2002	1.6
2001	0.8
2000	3.7
1999	4.5
1998	4.2
1997	4.5
1996	3.7
1995	2.5
1994	4.0
1993	2.7
1992	3.3
1991	-0.2
1990	1.9
1989	3.5
1988	4.1
1987	3.4
1986	3.5
1985	4.1
1984	7.2
1983	4.5
1982	-1.9
1981	2.5
1980	-0.2
1979	3.2
1978	5.6
1977	4.6
1976	5.3
1975	-0.2
1974	-0.5
1973	5.8
1972	5.3
1971	3.4
1970	0.2
1969	3.1
1968	4.8
1967	2.5
1966	6.5
1965	6.4
1964	5.8
1963	4.4
1962	6.1
1961	2.3
1960	2.5
1959	7.1

Source: Economic Report of the President, Table B-4.

Minimum wage hike could threaten low earners' jobs

According to "Minimum wage hike could threaten low earners' jobs," a July 23 article by Associated Press writer Dionne Walker, the upcoming increase in the U.S. federal minimum wage may increase unemployment:

A federal minimum wage increase that takes effect Friday could prolong the recession, some economists say, by forcing small businesses to lay off the same workers that the pay hike passed in better times was meant to help.

The increase to $7.25 means 70 cents more an hour for the lowest-paid workers in the 30 states that have lower minimums or no minimum wage. It also means higher costs for employers who feel they've already trimmed all their operating fat.

"How will they absorb the increase?" said Rajeev Dhawan, director of Georgia State University's Economic Forecasting Center. "They will either hire less people or they will do less business."

More than in any period before, businesses are likely to lay off employees and reduce hours, further fueling the economic slump in states seeing double-digit unemployment rates, fiscal conservatives and some economists say.

Minimum wage advocates counter the wage bump will keep more working poor afloat, and say more increases are needed to help stimulate consumer spending and strengthen businesses in the long run.

It's an old policy debate that resurfaced when Congress passed the increase two years ago and has taken on urgency as the nation's fiscal funk has deepened.

In the end, it's the workers and their employers who find themselves caught in the middle.

At Bench Warmers Bar and Grill in the southeast Kansas farming town of Chanute (pronounced sha-NOOT), owner Cathy Matney has decided to let some of her dishwashers go rather than pay all 22 of her employees more.

"It's bad timing," said Matney, whose waitresses and cooks will have to pitch in with scrubbing pots and pans. "With the economy like this, there's a lot of people who are out of work and this is only going to add to it."

Ryan Arfmann, who owns a Jamba Juice shop in Idaho Falls, Idaho, will be cutting hours to his staff, which is made up largely of college students, high schoolers and homemakers who want to make a few bucks.

"Am I going to fire anybody, no," Arfmann said. "But kids understand there's going to be hours cut."

Arfmann said he wishes the increase was spread out over a few more years, to make it easier for him to absorb the costs. He also is concerned that he'll end up having to give everybody raises just to maintain pay differentials between employees.

"People who are already getting paid above $7.25 are going to feel like they need raises as well," he said. "It's harder for me to reward employees that are doing well because of minimum wage being so high."

Backers of the increase say it's long overdue for millions of the nation's working poor. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., authored the 2007 minimum wage legislation, which increased pay for the first time in a decade.

"A higher minimum wage helps working families' budgets and results in increased spending on local business, which is good for everyone," Miller said in an e-mail. He did not say whether he would have pushed to raise the minimum wage in an economic climate like the current one, and he did not immediately respond to a message left Thursday with his spokesman.

Miller's view is a tough sell to employers of minimum wage workers — from hotels to daycares to burger chains — who find themselves having to cut larger paychecks as their revenues continue to shrink. The effects could be especially harsh in the seven states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee — where the pay increase coincides with double-digit unemployment.

"Wherever you have the higher unemployment rates, that's where the business conditions are bad — and that's where a minimum wage increase will have an impact on the negative side," said Dhawan, the economist at Georgia State.

Dhawan said the strain could be felt equally in metropolitan areas, where fast-food chains and franchises employ large numbers of minimum wage workers, and in smaller towns where the bulk of the work force may be concentrated in one, low-earning sector.

Fewer workers employed, meanwhile, reduces the amount of money in circulation — dampening any consumer spending spike the wage boost could have created, Dhawan said.

"The increasing power from the higher wages will be swamped by the losses from the people who lost jobs," he said.

Marilynn Winn, an Atlanta woman who earns $6.75 an hour — a couple of dimes more than the current $6.55 federal minimum — driving cars between auto auctions, worries the pay boost could lead her boss to make cuts, especially to older workers like herself.

Still, she said she'd be grateful for the raise if she gets to keep her job.

"We could use more, the more the better," said Winn, 58.

Sara Campbell, who earns roughly $786 a month cleaning event spaces in Atlanta, said she's unlikely to spend any money she gets from the minimum wage increase, especially since she worries her hours will get cut.

"You never know," she said. "You might lose your job. They might start laying off and if they lay off, I'll have something saved up."

Played out across enough businesses, that pattern could stunt economic recovery nationwide, said Moody's economist John Lonski.

"You're going to get fewer jobs created," said Lonski, who predicted national unemployment would peak at 10.5 percent in the first quarter of 2010. "It's not a backbreaker for the U.S. economy, but it doesn't help stabilize employment, especially since most businesses now suffer from much lower than expected sales."

It's hardly the first time a wage increase has prompted doom and gloom predictions from economists, who point to conventional business thinking that supports the idea that higher costs plus lower revenue equals a shrinking work force.

More upbeat predictions suggest the wage increase could actually play a role in turning around the nation's finances. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Thursday that the wage increase will generate an extra $5.5 billion in consumer spending over the next year.

Economists have largely overlooked the positive effect on consumer buying power, according to Holly Sklar, senior policy adviser for Let Justice Roll, a national campaign aimed at increasing the minimum wage to $10 by 2010.

A further wage increase could eventually become a reality: One of President Barack Obama's campaign promises included raising the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011.

"You can't have an economy that's based heavily on consumer purchasing power, and at the same time, not pay the consumer enough to live on," Sklar said.

Jacksonville's Mayor Lobbies for Solutions to its Budget Crisis

Mayor John Peyton presented his proposed budget to the Jacksonville, Florida City Council in July 2009 and faced strong opposition, primarily because it called for increases in the property tax rate. Peyton, a conservative Republican, advocated the tax increase because Florida citizens voted on January 29, 2008 to increase the amount of property excluded from taxation. (With less property subject to taxation, the tax rate needs to increase to generate the same level of revenues.) This seems to be part of a broader issue in which U.S. citizens clamor for tax reductions, yet do not want government services reduced either.

A Message From Mayor John Peyton

Dear Friends,

Jacksonville is facing a financial crisis. Cuts from Tallahassee, global economic instability and an unsustainable pension system have created a $170 million budget problem. On July 13, I presented my proposed fiscal year 2009-2010 budget to the Jacksonville City Council.

It includes a three-part plan to solve Jacksonville’s budget crisis by making $40 million in operational cuts, taking on important pension reform and implementing a modest revenue increase. A millage rate increase of 1.02 mills will simply bring the property tax rate back to where it would’ve been before Tallahassee meddled in local government affairs.

As part of this year’s budget process, I will be hosting a series of community conversations about city finances. Please visit the Bulletin Board section of this Web site to see dates and times of town hall meetings, brown bag lunches and live media appearances.

I encourage you to explore this Web site, read my budget address , and ask yourself what kind of city you want to live in. Is it one without cultural events, museums or recycling? Is it one that lacks vital services for the most vulnerable members of our community like the hungry, homeless and those who are crime victims? I don’t want to live in that kind of city, and I don’t think you do either.

If you support my budget plan, I urge you to make your voice heard. Join the Fix It Now! movement and make your City Councilmembers aware of the kind of city you want for yourself and your children.

John Peyton
Mayor

For an in-depth analysis of the city’s finances, please read a report recently released by the Jacksonville Community Council, Inc. (JCCI). The report is called “Our Money, Our City: Financing Jacksonville’s Future” and provides a comprehensive overview of our current budget crisis.

Producing Ohio: Creating Our Economy

"Producing Ohio: Creating Our Economy is an interactive multimedia economics curriculum for fifth through eighth grade students. These dynamic and entertaining cross-curricular lessons give students the knowledge and tools necessary to succeed on Ohio's academic tests."

Its Economics in Action section illustrates the Circular Flow Model and contains an exercise to learn how to draw supply and demand curves.

Jacksonville's budget crisis

Across the United States, federal, state, and local governments are struggling to generate sufficient revenues to fund the services citizens expect. Jacksonville, Florida is struggling to pay for city services after state initiatives to reduce property taxes have lowered revenues.

The Jacksonville Community Council, Inc. (JCCI) published a study, "Our Money, Our City: Financing Jacksonville's Future" that reports:

the City of Jacksonville is facing significant financial issues which threaten its future financial sustainability. Managing these problems is particularly difficult because Jacksonville lacks a shared community vision of what the proper role of government should be… Jacksonville has not defined the core services citizens expect our local government to provide.

Solutions include building community confidence in local government by increasing transparency and creating benchmarking and measurement systems to assess our effectiveness. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Increased public involvement in the process is important as the city faces the hard choice to increase revenues and/or cut services. These decisions must be made in an environment in which Jacksonville already spends less than the state average on nearly all services…and Florida ranks near the bottom nationally on its funding of services.

Click here for the full Spring 2009 pdf report.

The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933

Read Wikipedia's summary of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 .

20 Ways to Waste Your Money

According to "20 Ways to Waste Your Money" by Erin Burt in a July 23, 2009 article on Kiplinger.com:

Whether a newbie or seasoned budgeter, nearly everyone has spending holes -- leaks in your budget that drain money with you hardly noticing.

These small drips can add up to big bucks. Once you find the holes and plug them, you'll keep more money in your pocket. That spare cash could be the ticket to finally being able to save, invest, or break your cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.

Here are 20 common ways people waste money. See if any of these sound familiar, and then look for ways to plug your own leaks.

How to waste your money

1. Buy new instead of used. Talk about a spending leak -- or, rather, a gush. Cars lose most of their value in the first few years, meaning thousands of dollars down the drain. However, recent used models -- those that are less than five years old -- can be a real value because you get a car that's still in fine working order for a fraction of the new-car price. And you'll pay less in collision insurance and taxes, too.

Cars aren't the only things worth buying used. Consider the savings on pre-owned books, toys, exercise equipment and furniture. (Of course, there are some things you're better off buying new, including mattresses, laptops, linens, shoes and safety equipment, such as car seats and bike helmets.)

2. Carry a credit-card balance. If you have a $1,000 balance on a card charging 18%, you blow $180 every year on interest. That's money you could certainly put to better use elsewhere. Get in the habit of paying off your balance in full each month.

3. Buy on impulse. When you buy before you think, you don't give yourself time to shop around for the best price. Resist the urge to make an impulse purchase by giving yourself a cool-off period. Go home and sleep on the decision. If you still want to make the purchase a day or so later, do your comparison shopping, check your budget and go for it. Oftentimes, though, I bet you'll decide you don't need the item after all.

4. Pay to use an ATM. A buck or two here and there may not seem like a big deal. But if you're frequenting ATMs outside your bank's network, the surcharges can add up quickly. Put that money back in your pocket by using ATMs in a surcharge-free network such as Allpoint or Money Pass.

5. Dine out frequently. A habit of spending $10, $20, $30 per person for dinner can be a huge drain on your wallet. Throw in a $6 sandwich for lunch and a $4 latte in the morning, and you've got quite a leak. Learn to cook, pack your lunch and brew your coffee at home and you could save a couple hundred bucks each month.

6. Let your money wallow. If you are stashing your savings in your checking account or a traditional bank account, you are wasting money. You could put it in a high-interest online savings account and get paid to save. You can even get an interest-bearing checking account through such reputable companies as Everbank, Charles Schwab, E*Trade and ING Direct.

7. Pay an upfront fee for a mutual fund. Selecting no-load funds can save you more than 5% in sales charges. Of course, no matter how well a fund has done in the past, you can't be sure how it will perform in the future. But if you pay a load, you'll begin the performance derby in the hole to the tune of the load. See the Kiplinger 25 for our favorite no-load funds.

8. Pay too much in taxes on investments. Are you investing in a tax-sheltered 401(k) or Roth IRA? If you're not maxing out those accounts before you invest in a taxable account, you're spending too much.

9. Buy brand-name instead of generic. From groceries to clothing to prescription drugs, you could save money by choosing the off-brand over the fancy label. And in many cases, you won't sacrifice much in quality. Clever advertising and fancy packaging don't make brand-name products better than lesser-known brands (see Similar Products, Different Prices).

10. Waste electricity. Of the total energy used to run home electronics, 40% is consumed when the appliances are turned off. Appliances with a clock or that operate by remote are typical culprits. The obvious way to pull the plug on your energy vampires is to do just that -- pull the plug. Or buy a device to do it for you, such as a Smart Power Strip ($31 to $44 at www.smarthomeusa.com, which will stop drawing electricity when the gadgets are turned off and pay for itself within a few months.

11. Pay banking fees. Overdraw your checking account and you'll pay $20 to $30 a pop, so it pays to keep tabs on your balance. Plus, are you still paying for a checking account? Free deals abound -- but make sure they're really free. For instance, will the bank charge a fee if your balance drops below a certain level or if you download your info into a personal-finance software program? That's not free.

12. Buy things you don't use. This sounds like a no-brainer to avoid, but how many times have you seen something on sale and thought you couldn't pass it up? Even if something is 50% off, you're spending too much if you don't use it. href=Couponing, for instance, can be a great way to save on your grocery bills. But if you buy things you wouldn't have purchased in the first place simply for the sake of using the coupon, you're wasting your money. The same goes for buying in bulk. A bargain is no bargain if it sits unused on your shelf or gets thrown away.

13. Own an extra car. Okay, so a car is a necessity for most people. But face it -- cars are a huge drain, from their loan payments to insurance fees to gas and maintenance costs. Own more than one car and you'll double or triple those expenses. Ask yourself if that second or third car is really necessary. Are you holding on to an old car for sentimental reasons? Can you or your spouse carpool, take public transportation or bike to work?

14. Ignore your local dollar store. Shopping at the dollar store can be hit-and-miss, but it's not all kitsch or junk. If you know what to buy, you can find some real bargains. For instance, my local dollar store charges 50 cents for greeting cards versus the $3-plus at a drug store or gift shop. (I have a big extended family so I figure this saves me more than $100 per year.) You can also score a deal on cleaning supplies, small kitchen tools, shampoos and soaps, holiday decorations, gift wrap and balloon bouquets.

15. Keep unhealthy habits. Smoking is not only bad for your health, it burns up your cash. A pack-a-day habit at $6 a pack costs $180 a month and $2,190 a year. A junk-food or tanning-bed habit can be costly as well. Not to mention the money you'll waste on medical bills down the road.

16. Be complacent about insurance. Your bill arrives and you pay it without a second thought. When was the last time you shopped around to determine whether you're getting the best deal? Rates vary widely from insurer to insurer and year to year. Reshopping your auto, home or renters insurance might save you hundreds of dollars.

It also pays to evaluate your insurance needs. For instance, upping your out-of-pocket deductible from $250 to $1,000 can save you 15% or more on your car insurance. Consider using the same insurer for your home and auto insurance -- you could snag up to 15% off for a multiple-line policy. And make sure you're not paying for insurance you don't need. For instance, you need life insurance only if someone is financially dependent upon you (such as a child).

17. Give Uncle Sam an interest-free loan. If you get a tax refund each April, you let the government take too much money in taxes from your paycheck all year long. Get that money back in your pocket -- and put it to work for you -- by adjusting your tax withholding. With a little discipline, you can use that extra cash each month to get started saving or pay down debt (or make ends meet to avoid going into debt in the first place). You can file a new Form W-4 with your employer at any time.

18. Pay for something you can get for free. Dust off your library card and check out books, music and movies for free (or dirt-cheap). Don't pay to receive your credit report when you're allowed to get it at no charge by law. Take advantage of kids-eat-free promotions. And dial 1-800-FREE-411 for free directory assistance.

19. Don't use a flexible-spending account. Your employer may allow you to set aside pretax dollars to pay for medical costs not covered by insurance. You can use the money for expenses such as therapy, contact lenses, insurance co-payments and over-the-counter drugs. You may be able to do the same for child-care costs.

20. Pay for unnecessary services. How many cable channels can a person watch? Do you really need all those extra features for your cell phone? Are you getting your money's worth out of that gym membership? Are you taking full advantage of your subscriptions (such as Netflix, TiVo or magazines)? Take a look at what you're paying for and what your family is actually using. Trim accordingly.

COULD YOU SURVIVE WITHOUT MONEY? MEET THE GUY WHO DOES.

The article COULD YOU SURVIVE WITHOUT MONEY? MEET THE GUY WHO DOES on men.style.com tells the story of a man in Utah who has spent almost a decade living in a cave:

In Utah, a modern-day caveman has lived for the better part of a decade on zero dollars a day. People used to think he was crazy
By Christopher Ketcham; Photograph by Mark Heithoff

DANIEL SUELO LIVES IN A CAVE. UNLIKE THE average American—wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office—he isn't worried about the economic crisis. That's because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.

His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He's either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. Suelo's blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library, suggests that he's both. "When I lived with money, I was always lacking," he writes. "Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present."

On a warm day in early spring, I clamber along a set of red-rock cliffs to the mouth of his cave, where I find a note signed with a smiley face: CHRIS, FEEL FREE TO USE ANYTHING, EAT ANYTHING (NOTHING HERE IS MINE). From the outside, the place looks like a hollowed teardrop, about the size of an Amtrak bathroom, with enough space for a few pots that hang from the ceiling, a stove under a stone eave, big buckets full of beans and rice, a bed of blankets in the dirt, and not much else. Suelo's been here for three years, and it smells like it.

Night falls, the stars wink, and after an hour, Suelo tramps up the cliff, mimicking a raven's call—his salutation—a guttural, high-pitched caw. He's lanky and tan; yesterday he rebuilt the entrance to his cave, hauling huge rocks to make a staircase. His hands are black with dirt, and his hair, which is going gray, looks like a bird's nest, full of dust and twigs from scrambling in the underbrush on the canyon floor. Grinning, he presents the booty from one of his weekly rituals, scavenging on the streets of Moab: a wool hat and gloves, a winter jacket, and a white nylon belt, still wrapped in plastic, along with Carhartt pants and sandals, which he's wearing. He's also scrounged cans of tuna and turkey Spam and a honeycomb candle. All in all, a nice haul from the waste product of America. "You made it," he says. I hand him a bag of apples and a block of cheese I bought at the supermarket, but the gift suddenly seems meager.

Suelo lights the candle and stokes a fire in the stove, which is an old blackened tin, the kind that Christmas cookies might come in. It's hooked to a chain of soup cans segmented like a caterpillar and fitted to a hole in the rock. Soon smoke billows into the night and the cave is warm. I think of how John the Baptist survived on honey and locusts in the desert. Suelo, who keeps a copy of the Bible for bedtime reading, is satisfied with a few grasshoppers fried in his skillet.

HE WASN'T ALWAYS THIS WAY. SUELO graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in anthropology, he thought about becoming a doctor, he held jobs, he had cash and a bank account. In 1987, after several years as an assistant lab technician in Colorado hospitals, he joined the Peace Corps and was posted to an Ecuadoran village high in the Andes. He was charged with monitoring the health of tribespeople in the area, teaching first aid and nutrition, and handing out medicine where needed; his proudest achievement was delivering three babies. The tribe had been getting richer for a decade, and during the two years he was there he watched as the villagers began to adopt the economics of modernity. They sold the food from their fields—quinoa, potatoes, corn, lentils—for cash, which they used to purchase things they didn't need, as Suelo describes it. They bought soda and white flour and refined sugar and noodles and big bags of MSG to flavor the starchy meals. They bought TVs. The more they spent, says Suelo, the more their health declined. He could measure the deterioration on his charts. "It looked," he says, "like money was impoverishing them."

The experience was transformative, but Suelo needed another decade to fashion his response. He moved to Moab and worked at a women's shelter for five years. He wanted to help people, but getting paid for it seemed dishonest—how real was help that demanded recompense? The answer lay, in part, in the Christianity of his childhood. In Suelo's nascent philosophy, following Jesus meant adopting the hard life prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount. "Giving up possessions, living beyond credit and debt," Suelo explains on his blog, "freely giving and freely taking, forgiving all debts, owing nobody a thing, living and walking without guilt . . . grudge [or] judgment." If grace was the goal, Suelo told himself, then it had to be grace in the classical sense, from the Latin gratia, meaning favor—and also, free.

By 1999, he was living in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand—he had saved just enough money for the flight. From there, he made his way to India, where he found himself in good company among the sadhus, the revered ascetics who go penniless for their gods. Numbering as many as 5 million, the sadhus can be found wandering roads and forests across the subcontinent, seeking enlightenment in self-abnegation. "I wanted to be a sadhu," Suelo says. "But what good would it do for me to be a sadhu in India? A true test of faith would be to return to one of the most materialistic, money-worshipping nations on earth and be a sadhu there. To be a vagabond in America, a bum, and make an art of it—the idea enchanted me."

THERE ISN'T ENOUGH SPACE IN SUELO'S cave for two, so I sleep in the open, at the edge of a hundred-foot cliff. No worries about animals, he says. Though mountain lions drink from the stream, and bobcats hunt rabbits under the cottonwoods, the worst he's experienced was a skunk that sprayed him in the face. Mice scurry over his body in the cave, and kissing bugs sometimes suck the blood from under his fingernails while he sleeps. He shrugs off these indignities. "After all, it's their cave too," he says. I hunker down near a nest of scorpions, which crawl up the canyon walls, ignoring me.

The morning ritual is simple and slow: a cup of sharp tea brewed from the needles of piñon and juniper trees, a swim in the cold emerald water where the creek pools in the red rock. Then, two naked cavemen lounging under the Utah sun. Around noon, we forage along the banks and under the cliffs, looking for the stuff of a stir-fry dinner. We find mustard plants among the rocks, the raw leaves as satisfying as cauliflower, and down in the cool of the creek—where Suelo gets his water and takes his baths (no soap for him) —we cull watercress in heads as big as supermarket lettuce, and on the bank we spot a lode of wild onions, with bulbs that pop clean from the soil. In leaner times, Suelo's gatherings include ants, grubs, termites, lizards, and roadkill. He recently found a deer, freshly run over, and carved it up and boiled it. "The best venison of my life," he says.

I tell him that living without money seems difficult. What about starvation? He's never gone without a meal (friends in Moab sometimes feed him). What about getting deadly ill? It happened once, after eating a cactus he misidentified—he vomited, fell into a delirium, thought he was dying, even wrote a note for those who would find his corpse. But he got better. That it's hard is exactly the point, he says. "Hardship is a good thing. We need the challenge. Our bodies need it. Our immune systems need it. My hardships are simple, right at hand—they're manageable." When I tell him about my rent back in New York—$2,400 a month—he shakes his head. What's left unsaid is that I'm here writing about him to make money, for a magazine that depends for its survival on the advertising revenue of conspicuous consumption. As he prepares a cooking fire, Suelo tells me that years ago he had a neighbor in the canyon, an alcoholic who lived in a cave bigger than his. The old man would pan for gold in the stream and net enough cash each month to buy the beer that kept him drunk. Suelo considers the riches of our own forage. "What if we saw gold for what it is?" he says meditatively. "Gold is pretty but virtually useless. Somebody decided it has worth, and everybody accepted this decision. The natives in the Americas thought Europeans were insane because of their lust for such a useless yellow substance."

He sautés the watercress, mustard leaves, and wild onions, mixing in fresh almonds he picked from a friend's orchard and ghee made from Dumpster-dived butter, and we eat out of his soot-caked pans. From the perch on the cliff, the life of the sadhu seems reasonable. But I don't want to live in a cave. I like indoor plumbing (Suelo squats). I like electricity. Still, there's an obvious beauty in the simplicity of subsistence. It's an un-American notion these days. We don't revere our ascetics, and we dismiss the idea that money could be some kind of consensual delusion. For most of us, it's as real as the next house payment. Suelo doesn't take public assistance or use food stamps, but he does survive in part on our reality, the discarded surfeit of the money system that he denounces—a system, as it happens, that recently looked like it was headed for the cliff.

Suelo is 48, and he doesn't exactly have a 401(k). "I'll do what creatures have been doing for millions of years for retirement," he says. "Why is it sad that I die in the canyon and not in the geriatric ward well-insured? I have great faith in the power of natural selection. And one day, I will be selected out." Until then, think of him like the raven, cleaning up the carcasses the rest of us leave behind.

Ten Most Popular Jobs for Economics Majors

The Ten Most Popular Jobs for Economics Majors are:

Popular Jobs for Economics Degree

Methodology Jobs ranked by popularity among graduates. Annual pay for Bachelors graduates without higher degrees from all colleges. See full methodology for more.

The bars measure the median U.S. incomes for these jobs.

Is Marijuana the Answer to California's Budget Woes?

A July 22, 2009 article by Tom McNichol in TIME magazine asks "Is Marijuana the Answer to California's Budget Woes?":

Proponents of marijuana legalization have advanced plenty of arguments in support of their drug of choice — that marijuana is less dangerous than legal substances like cigarettes and alcohol; that pot has legitimate medical uses; that the money spent prosecuting marijuana offenses would be better used on more pressing public concerns.

While 13 states permit the limited sale of marijuana for medical use, and polls show a steady increase in the number of Americans who favor legalization, federal law still bans the cultivation, sale, or possession of marijuana. In fact, the feds still classify marijuana as a Schedule I drug, one that has no "currently accepted medical use" in the United States.

(See a TIME video on Medical Marijiuana Home Delivery)

But supporters of legalization may have been handed their most convincing argument yet: the bummer economy. Advocates argue that if state or local governments could collect a tax on even a fraction of pot sales, it would help rescue cash-strapped communities. Not surprisingly, the idea is getting traction in California, home to both the nation"s largest supply of domestically grown marijuana (worth a estimated $14 billion a year) and to the country"s biggest state budget deficit (more than $26 billion).

On Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California legislative leaders a tentative budget agreement to plug the state's deficit, but it would involve making sweeping cuts in education and health services, as well as taking billions from county governments. Democratic state assemblyman Tom Ammiano has introduced legislation that would let California regulate and tax the sale of marijuana. The state's proposed $50 an ounce pot tax would bring in about $1.3 billion a year in additional revenue. Ammiano's bill was shelved this session but he expects to introduce a revised bill early next year.

(Read "Can Marijuana Help Rescue California's Economy?")

If the state legislature doesn"t act, perhaps California voters will. One group is preparing to place a statewide initiative for the November 2010 ballot that would regulate and tax the sale of marijuana for Californians 21 years of age and older. Tellingly, the group spearheading the measure calls itself TaxCannabis2010.org, stressing the revenue advantages of marijuana legalization. The group hopes to collect the required 650,000 voter signatures by January to place the measure on the November 2010 ballot.

"There"s no doubt that the ground is shifting on marijuana," says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes alternatives to the war on drugs. "The discussion about regulating and taxing marijuana now has an air of legitimacy to it that it didn"t quite have before. And the economy has given the issue a real turbo charge."

(Read "Can Marijuana Help Rescue California's Economy?")

The legalization effort is getting serious consideration from surprising quarters. In May, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger publicly called for a large-scale study to determine whether to legalize and tax marijuana.

"I think it"s time for a debate," the governor said at a news conference. "I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs."

(See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture)

In California, medical marijuana sales are already taxed, and some communities are looking for ways to get a bigger slice of the pot pie. Residents Oakland are currently voting in a mail-in special election that includes a measure which would make the city the first in the country to establish a new tax rate for medical marijuana businesses. If the measure passes, Oakland marijuana dispensaries, which are now charged at the general tax rate of $1.20 per $1,000 in receipts, would see that rate raised to $18 per $1,000.

A Field Poll conducted in California this spring showed 56% of the state"s registered voters in support of legalizing and taxing marijuana as a way of offsetting some of the budget deficit. Several national polls have shown that more than 45% of American adults are open to legalizing pot, about double the support a decade ago.

Even the most ardent marijuana advocates aren"t expecting nationwide legalization anytime soon. Instead, any action is likely to come on the state and local level. For now, all eyes are on cash-strapped California, where high taxes could take on an entirely new meaning.