Skip to Content

Neal Rovick

St Anthony, MN
Commenter for
3 years 1 week

Recent Comments

Posted on 11/02/11 at 11:29 am in response to What GDP doesn't tell us about our well-being

The tie between GDP and the health of the economy is broken as viewed by a typical worker.

First, the performance of many jobs by automated systems has not necessarily reduced the costs of goods and services and their value in the GDP but it has definitely reduced the number of jobs and the pay associated with jobs.

Second, the exclusion of intermediate goods as opposed to finished goods misses the massive decline in the production of intermediate goods in the US. A Toyota or...

Posted on 11/02/11 at 08:48 am in response to Vikings stadium runs into wall with latest Dayton statement, but there appear to be other options

Dennis (#7) sez..

...You can't say you oppose a state-run stadium or casino or horse track but be in favor of golf courses and swimming pools. It's all the same...

Really? When could you, as an individual, book a game at the Vikings stadium or have your kids play all day at the stadium?

Publicly funded, publicly owned, public access, public use.

Publicly funded, privately owned, private access, private use.

See a difference now?

Posted on 10/31/11 at 02:35 pm in response to Kline: Obama student loan program is a 'mistake'

Kline is entirely in the "for profit" education's pocket--his biggest fight has been to prevent dropping colleges' federal eligibility if too many of that colleges' graduates are in default of student loans.

But isn't the high level of default for over-priced or worthless degrees exactly what we need to prevent in order to lower the cost of the federally guaranteed student loan program?

So where is his concern of fiscal responsibility? Perhaps it's only with respect to his...

Posted on 10/29/11 at 09:40 am in response to Tea Party to Bachmann: 'Go away'

For those of you who minimize the Ned Ryun statement, consider this:

Ryun also run an outfit called Generation Joshua. Some of the goals of the organization are to politically activate the home-schooled.

www.generationjoshua.org

Go to that site and there is an endorsement by Bachmann of Ryun's organization in the flash intro on the website (it's one of several flash items-wait for it).

...
Posted on 10/28/11 at 10:01 am in response to Mayo's innovation team thinks big, moves fast to transform medical care

..."We spend more money per capita on health care than any other country on the planet and our outcomes are not nearly as good"...

And the main thrust of his research?

Limit actual physical contact time with patients while increasing reimbursement for that limited contact.

Somehow, that doesn't seem quite on target.

The biggest elephant in the room that isn't mentioned is the amount of money eaten up in the fragmented public/private insurance model of medical...

Posted on 10/27/11 at 08:52 am in response to Bankers look at $100 million in state money and say, 'Eh'

The new metering system already has a big revenue increase in it--the parker has no idea of how much time is remaining at the the spot they pull into. The previous parker most likely had paid for more time than they would use (have you seen how much a ticket costs?), but there is no way for the next parker to tell if there is no time remaining or two hours remaining. So they then fully pay for their expected parking (plus some overage). And so on, all day. At busy parking spots, the...

Posted on 10/26/11 at 12:01 pm in response to Dayton's jobs summit takes a hard, hopeful look at Minnesota's future

...And he praised the state's core strengths: health care and education....

A future based on items that are increasingly unaffordable to individuals and and governments?

How will that work out?

Posted on 10/26/11 at 07:40 am in response to Minnesota-made electronics found in Iran-smuggled IEDs

...corrupt secretaries of state like Mark Ritchie...

Those are libelous words.

Posted on 10/26/11 at 09:45 am in response to What the heck is economics?

My impression of the current state of economics sees it as a field removed from science. Sure there are lots of equations and graphs and lots of scholarly papers based on moving apparent correlation into "laws", but there are fundamental disagreements as to cause and effect, re the current Keynesian debate. How can something so fundamental and critical remain open to wide debate?

However, the biggest flaw that I see with economics as a predictive and steering tool is that it is so...

Posted on 10/26/11 at 01:48 pm in response to What the heck is economics?

Mr Tester brings up some data from Reagan administration and inadvertently steps into the swamp of tricky numbers.

If you go on nominal tax receipts, yup, they increased 72% from '81-'90. Wow, over 7% a year!!

BUT, if you go by inflation adjusted numbers, based on 2005 adjusted numbers, the increase in that period is only 20%. 2% a year, not such a big wow. In fact, pretty anemic.

By the way, what also happened in that time period? The deficit in 1981 was 11.6% of...