But the coaching business is booming, with affluent parents being the best customers. If the payoff is really so small, why has the market judged coaching to be so successful?

Most obviously, parents who pay for expensive coaching courses ignore the role of self-selection: the students who seem to profit from a coaching course tend to be those who, if the course had not been available, would have worked hard on their own to prepare for the test.

Then parents confuse the effects of coaching with the effect of the basic preparation that students can do on their own. No student should walk into the SAT cold. It makes sense for students to practice some sample items, easily available from school guidance offices and online, and to review their algebra textbook if it has been a few years since they have taken algebra. But once a few hours have been spent on these routine steps, most of the juice has been squeezed out of preparation for the SAT. Combine self-selection artifacts with the role of basic preparation, and you have the reason that independent studies using control groups show such small average gains from formal coaching.

Source: Abolish the SAT, Charles Murray

Ben Joravsky at the Chicago Reader (a weekly “alternative” newspaper in Chicago) has written an article purporting to show how Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner is trying to cripple the Democratic Party.[1] The gist of Joravsky’s argument is this. Rauner is using his pro-choice policies to gain neutralize opposition from liberals and gain support from those Illinois Republicans who lean pro-choice. At the same time, however, he has done a lot of work to destroy public employee unions in Illinois. Exhibit A for that is his role in initiating the pending US Supreme Court case, Janus v. AFSCME, which could (and probably will) end compulsory fair share dues for public sector employee unions.

In sum, Joravsky is saying Rauner is using abortion to distract people from union policy. here’s the clincher:

As for Rauner’s friends at Planned Parenthood—well, with a drop in membership, unions will be less able to help elect Democrats. So really the assault on unions is an attempt to cripple the Democratic Party. You don’t think the Koch brothers actually give a hoot about workers like Mark Janus, do you?

If Democrats can’t beat Republicans, they can’t enact liberal-minded measures, like—oh, just to pick one—reproductive rights.

Think about this, Planned Parenthood. Your good friend, Bruce, is throwing you under the bus once again. Only this time he’s got a more roundabout way of doing it.

There’s an irony here that Joravsky doesn’t acknowledge. He seems to play right into the notion that unions are adjuncts to the Democratic Party. That notion is grist for the plaintiff in Janus v. AFSCME. Janus, in Joravsky’s own words,

is a state employee who argues that his First Amendment rights are being violated because state law requires him to contribute a “fair share” portion of his paycheck to the union that represents him—in this case, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. In particular, he doesn’t think he should have to donate money to a union with which he disagrees politically.

Supporters of compulsory fair share for public-sector unions often say, quite correctly, that unions are forbidden to use compelled dues for political campaigning and that compelled dues are to be used only for implementing and negotiating union contracts. Opponents of fair share claim that the process of negotiating contracts is inherently political when the employer is the state.

But Joravsky has just reaffirmed another reason to view unions as political. Joravsky bases his argument about Rauner “crippling” the Democrats on premises that lend support for Janus’s views. According to Joravsky, unions prefer and advocate for a political party with which many union members do not affiliate, and they do so in the service to a political position with which many union members might disagree.

[1] Ben Joravsky. “How Bruce Rauner is trying to cripple the Democratic Party.” Chicago Reader. October 17, 2017. <https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/how-bruce-rauner-is-trying-to-cripple-the-democratic-party/Content?oid=32566550>. Accessed October 20, 2017.

Most months, we don’t really run low on our data plan. We’ve had maybe two months or the last twelve where I’ve had to say “We need to cool it” for the final week.

It’s going to take something Herculean this month to avoid going over, because everything converged into a single billing period.

The first thing that happened was a stupid error on my part. I was downloading Wikipedia when I left to drop Lain off at preschool. The result was that on the very first day of the plan, we lost 20% of our usage for the month. Last month – one of the two where we had to cool it – we ended at 9%. So right off the bat, there were going to need to be some adjustments. The second thing is that we had a storm and it took out our Internet, and made it more unreliable than usual. Actually, for about 48 hours it was deader than dead. Then it was extremely unreliable to where I could do emails and Twitter but that was about it. Now, a good portion of our data usage in general is compensating for our unreliable home connection. So when we need to “cool it” we usually just accept the unreliability. But you can’t do that when it’s out entirely, or nearly so. Oh, and Monday was Procrastinators’ Tax Day, and we procrastinated. The Internet should be working again at the end of the week, but then the last one is that I agreed to help Decision Desk HQ with vote totals in a nearby county for the Virginia gubernatorial race. And, of course, I’ll be using my own data. That’s on 11/7, which is the second to last day of the billing period.

All of this is screaming for us to go with an Unlimited Plan, but money is kind of tight right now and we just can’t justify the price hop. We’re on the highest data plan otherwise.

The phone companies are working on the rollout of 5G. I’d rather they work on the bandwidth of existing networks so that using data is less expensive.

Netflix is raising its prices:

Netflix is raising two of its pricing tiers for US subscribers beginning next month, Mashable reports. The standard tier, which allows subscribers to watch on two screens at once, will be bumped up from $9.99 to $10.99 per month. The premium tier, which is available in Ultra HD and allows users to watch on up to four screens, will go up from $11.99 to $13.99. The Basic $7.99 per month plan will remain the same.

“From time to time, Netflix plans and pricing are adjusted as we add more exclusive TV shows and movies, introduce new product features and improve the overall Netflix experience to help members find something great to watch even faster,” a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge.

It’s a little awkward that they’re doing this right as they’ve dropped a couple of popular shows (30 Rock and… something, can’t remember what, but I’ve heard complaints), but they’re often losing (and adding) shows. And they’re slated to lose Disney Stuff soon, so there is probably no best time to pull off this bandaid. Might as well get it over with.

It’s still a pretty good deal, though, all things considered. The standard level price is still cheaper than Hulu, the other main streaming-network-shows service. It’s also cheaper than HBO, the biggest original-programming streaming service rival. (It is more expensive than Showtime-Starz-Cinemax, however.) Netflix right now is straddling the line between being a general content vault (Hulu’s domain) and an original programming service (like HBO) and seems to be in the general process of a transition from the former to the latter once it has ramped up production of enough original content. My advice to people who want to see familiar or better yet nostalgic programming is to go with Hulu, and original programming to go with Netflix. That’s where things are.

But if you’ve Cut the Cord, it’s all pretty much worth it. Even if you’re using a slim cable service, it’s probably something you want to do. You can get Sling/Vue/etc and Netflix and Hulu and other service and still save a whole bunch of money even with this modest price hike.

I’m not sure at what point that ceases to be the case. If they went up another three or four dollars I would probably go from Netflix+Hulu to Netflix or Hulu, doing one six months of the year and the other for the other six months. That’s one of the liabilities with Netflix’s model: You can get it for a few months, get caught up on everything, then cancel. Hulu is in a slightly better spot because it’s more of the go-to if your mind says “Hey, I remember that TV show Silk Stalkings, I should catch an episode!” which is more likely to happen sporadically and makes it nice to have Hulu twelve months of the year. This will become a bigger issue from Netflix if they do become more of an HBO and less of a Hulu.