Econ Courses Make Students Less Generous

On December 2 of 2011, Harvard Business Review “Daily Stat” published the following:

Econ Courses Make Students Less Generous

College economics courses have the effect of making non-econ majors less generous, at least toward nonprofits. Taking introductory microeconomics reduces a nonmajor’s likelihood of donating to specific nonprofits by 2 percentage points, and an intermediate course reduces the likelihood by 3.7 to 7.9 percentage points, according to Yoram Bauman and Elaina Rose of the University of Washington. It’s unclear whether this is the result of exposure to economics concepts, exposure to econ faculty and students, or some other cause, the researchers say.

So why, pray tell, are a bunch of economists running our country, in an age where we need generosity more than ever?

Big Spending on War Has Little Effect on GDP

According to Military Spending and Economic Growth in South Asia: A Panel Data Analysis as reported by Harvard Business Review on November 30th, 2011:

A 1% increase in military spending increases real GDP by only 0.04%, according to a study of five South Asian countries by Albert Wijeweera and Matthew J. Webb of the Petroleum Institute in the United Arab Emirates. Their findings suggest that the substantial amount of public money currently directed toward military purposes in these countries has just a negligible impact on economic growth.

Well, duh.

That’s a reason why the United States should probably stop spending $660+ billion dollars on our military.

And that, by the way, is NOT counting the over $56 billion in the so-called “black budget”, which receives no Congressional oversight whatsoever.

War, what is it good for?