Power Pal

It's been a few months since I've posted anything up here (chalk it up to b-school). But I figure I should try to keep in the habit of posting things I come across. With the election only 8 days away, I thought this one was appropriate. I read a post in Mankiw's blog called " My Personal Work Incentives ". He takes a look at each of the candidates tax plans, specifically the high-end of where their tax plans would place people and companies, and then considers where an additional dollar earned today would be 35 years from now. Basically, if he earned an additional dollar today and saved it for 35 years with interest at 10%, what could he expect to hand over to his kids in 35 years (taking into account personal income taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, and estate taxes)? So, it turns out that $1 would yield $28 to his kids without taxes, $4.81 with McCain's tax plan, and $1.85 with Obama's tax plan. I thought this was a funny closing line: The bot...

I've watched the show SuperNanny quite a few times and think it's a great show. I read an article in the latest US News & World Report called Good Parents, Bad Results . The article highlighted eight things that parents do wrong when disciplining their kids (based on findings of researchers from places like the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic). Here's the rundown of the eight and some excerpts: 1. Parents Fail at Setting Limits If parents don't set limits, children will then try to push the limits because they feel unsafe. They are looking for their parents to respond so that they can get an understanding of what's safe and what's not safe. These kids have problems later in life. But, paradoxically, not having limits has been proven to make children more defiant and rebellious, because they feel unsafe and push to see if parents will respond. Research since the 1960s on parenting styles has found that a child whose mom and dad are permiss...