Posts 31–35 of 55

Unfit for Work

Joffe-Walt spent 6 months exploring the disability program. As she reports, the story of the U.S. economy we normally hear is not the full picture, not by a long shot. Our federal disability program is only slightly caused by an aging workforce; it is primarily an increasingly expensive, relatively hidden safety net.

The federal disability program, along with the associated health care benefits, costs about $260 billion a year. That’s not only eight times more than we spend on welfare, it’s more than we spend on welfare, food stamps, the school lunch program, and subsidized housing combined! And the worst part is that the disability program incentivizes people to stay on the program forever and never get off of it. You know, the opposite of what a welfare program should do.

The Reality of Wealth Distribution in America is Not What You Think

Watch this video and decide for yourself if the current reality of wealth (not income) distribution in the U.S. is healthy and/or fair.

This is why people love Amazon

Amazon really knows how to treat its customers right. In addition to the low prices, they make returns so easy. In fact, sometimes you don’t even have to return something that doesn’t work out for you.

I needed to return an $8 curtain rod holder. To my surprise, when I went to generate the RMA on Amazon, I got the image above.

Delete anyone's eBay listing

I was just the victim of an eBay fraud attack which resulted not only in my eBay listing being canceled but also of the entire listing being deleted with no way for eBay to recover it.

I had listed my old iPhone and was happy to see people bid over $200 for it. The listing was eventually won by a certain shahid.quraishi. However, within 45 minutes of the auction ending, I received an email from eBay saying,

Unfortunately, we had to cancel bids and purchases for the following buyer because they're no longer registered on eBay: shahid.quraishi

What eBay didn’t mention is that they completely deleted my listing. It no longer shows up in the Selling section of My eBay and when I called eBay Support they said it was completely removed from the system with no way to get it back.

Let's Teach Kids to Code

When kids first enter primary school, they spend their time doing creative things like drawing, painting, building, and experimenting. But after those first years, the creativity stops. Dr. Resnick is working to change that. He and his team have developed new ways to help older students engage with technology in order to encourage them to create and experiment the way they did in kindergarten.