Tuesday's assorted links

USPS, college schedules, used cars, gig workers, and salary transparency

Hi y’all! Here are 5 stories that I learned about in the past week that I thought you would also enjoy:

1. The Postal Service will invest in new gas-powered mail trucks, not electric ones.

2. What’s better for college students: semesters or quarters?

3. Used car prices keep getting more expensive.

4. Gig workers in Seattle are asking the city council to include them in minimum wage legislation.

5. The importance of salary transparency laws for women, young workers, and the companies themselves.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the links you clicked on. Just click this little button to share your thoughts:

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Yesterday I summarized a presentation I made at the Robert Morris Teaching Economics Conference on using Disney examples to teach different concepts.

The most magical way to learn economics

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We’ve completed 8 weeks so far and I can finally announce that I’ve updated my book total to 7 books for the year. I’m still a little behind schedule for 52 books, but that’s pretty normal at the start of the year. As I start to wind down, I’ll be able to finish more books. I’ve done a better job at not starting books, but now I need to actually finish the ones I have started.

Last week I wrapped up two longer books that I was in the middle of reading. One was The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. It had a fairly captivating story throughout, but I’m not a huge fan of people sort of wandering through life. I rated it a 4/5 on Goodreads, but I’d probably put it at 3.5/5 on a personal scale.

The other book I finished was Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. It looks at all of the historical inaccuracies or omissions that are covered in high school history textbooks. I wasn’t surprised by some of them, but others definitely had me looking up more information. The entire time I couldn’t help but wonder what a project like this would look like for economics textbooks.