Tuesday's Assorted Links

Teacher diversity, newspapers, tuition cartels, robot tractors, and litter

This is the type of shortage I’m okay with! I almost always turn down bags when I’m shopping if it’s something I can easily carry out of the story. This was taken at my local Barnes & Noble in State College!

Hi, y’all! A big winter storm has come through the Northeast, but that hasn’t stopped me from finding 5 good stories to share with you this week:

1. The Urban Institute has put together a report that looks at the impact of teacher diversity on Hispanic student achievement.

2. After years of declining coverage, more newsrooms are making workplace safety, unionization, and remote work front-page stories.

3. A new lawsuit accuses 16 elite colleges of colluding to fix the price of tuition and overcharged students for decades.

4. John Deere will begin selling autonomous tractors later this year.

5. Rail car thefts are up 160% in Los Angeles and the tracks are littered with leftover boxes & debris.

If you read anything this week that was super interesting, leave a comment using this button right here:

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Did you miss yesterday’s post on low-wage workers being treated like we never called them essential? You can still read it here:

From essential to expendable

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Since 2016 I have challenged myself to read 52 books each year. I didn’t really read much of anything during college unless it was assigned reading. Around 2012 I realized that I needed to start reading more and I started with a simple 12 book challenge. I figured 1 book per month was enough to make me a better person. Fast forward to today and now I read between 80 and 90 books each year, but the goal is always just 52.

Each week, I’ll update you on the progress and share what I’m reading. Feel free to follow me on Goodreads or just keep up with the progress here. I read a wide variety of books, but about half of them will be nonfiction. There won’t be too many economics books during the year, but who knows!

We’ve finished 2 whole weeks so far this year, and I’ve checked in a total of 3 books. The most recent book I finished was Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe. It was a really thought-provoking book and left me with some moments of existential panic about what the future holds. I marked it a 3, but it was really more of a 3.5/5. I have never taken a physics course before and it would have helped if I had some basic knowledge about the subject.

If you’re interested in more in-depth reviews of books and how they relate to economics, consider becoming a paid subscriber. At the end of each month, I’ll select a book and share a more detailed review about how it connects back to some of the material we cover in economics courses. Most of the books will lean more heavily toward economics, but there may be some books by historians, sociologists, or political scientists as well.