Hi y’all! Here are five stories from this week that contained some neat applications of economic principles or are related to teaching:
About 60% of Americans consider themselves “working class,” including some with college degrees and high incomes [Pew Research Center]
Revenue in the private security sector climbed 17% over the past decade to above $50 billion in 2025 [CNBC]
According to the OECD’s education report, students who use AI for schoolwork underperform those who don’t by a significant amount [Yahoo! Finance]
Snoop Dogg is hiring an international ice cream taster who will be paid $10k a month [NBC News]
Satisfaction with K-12 education hits new low [Gallup]
Last year’s US Open set a record at the concession stand, where a $23 cocktail called the Honey Deuce pulled in over $17 million in sales. Once the numbers are crunched for this year, tournament organizers are hoping for another record breaking year. But why has a drink that has barely changed over the past 20 years suddenly become a viral phenomenon the past few years. It turns out that an equally old economic theory explains a lot more than just tennis.
An Overnight Success, 18 Years in the Making
The US Open is officially over, which means my feed will be free of Honey Deuce cups for another year. Elena Rybakina and Alexander Zverev will go down as this year’s champions, but they weren’t the only big winners. The tournament’s famous…
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Re: Class Idenfitication, Kathryn Ann Edwards wrote a post about this last week that goes into the data: thhttps://www.kedits.com/p/who-is-americas-working-class
As the parent of a third-grader, I am "entitled" (ambiguity intentional) to comment on the K-12 satisfaction article. Personal disclaimer: my daughter is at a Literature Magnet school which is also an IB (International Baccalaureate) Dual Language (Spanish-English) school in a poor Hispanic area (92%) of Houston ISD -- that is VERY specific. I'm unhappy about the effects of the Texas state takeover of the entire Houston ISD on my daughter's school -- it mandates massive administrative watching of teachers teaching and massive forcing of teachers to teach quickly, along with constant testing and evaluation and "teaching to the test", along with increasing state interference in the curriculum by forcing historical propaganda and Christianity. That said, I very much like the administrators of the school, who are stable, mutually helpful and responsive. The teaching level is what I would call "pretty good for Texas", which does not have high standards (I moved here 25 years ago after living in New Hampshire, where standards are higher, interference is less and teachers generally better -- and yes, I had children in those schools too).
There is a political emphasis in the article which I consider to be a signal of the problem with American K-12 education -- it is much too politicized (for which read that propaganda triumphs over objective analysis). No surprise that critical thinking is bottom of the barrel, given that political orientation is dominant in every conversation around education instead of "What does evidence of outcomes say is the appropriate teaching method?" and "What is the objective historical record for our government?" and "What are evidence-supported views of scientific subjects?"
FYI: The latest PISA scores on reading, math and science for 15-year-olds came out last week, and the US is doing OK on average, but has by far the highest gap between highest and lowest learning: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/3-takeaways-from-the-latest-pisa-test-of-reading-math-and-science/2026/09