The chart below, adopted by Catherine Rampell from a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, illustrates the difference in weekly pay between people with different education levels today and a generation ago.

Rampell explains:

As you can see, most men today earn less than equally educated men in 1979, with the exception of the most highly educated.  The opposite is true for women: Most women today earn more than their equally educated counterparts from 1979, with the exception of the least educated.

CNNMoney reports on the abandonment of the U.S. Dollar by foreign central banks:

A new report from Morgan Stanley analyst Emma Lawson confirms what many had suspected: the dollar is firmly on its way to losing its status as the reserve currency of the world. We already knew that central banks have preferred gold to dollars, and that they’re even selling their gold for cash; now, according to Lawson’s data, it seems that those central banks prefer almost anything to dollars.

Lawson found that central banks have dropped their allocation to U.S. dollars by nearly a full percentage point to 57.3% from 58.1%, and calls this “unexpected given the global environment.” She adds, “over time we anticipate that reserve managers may reduce their holdings further.”

What is surprising is that the managers of those central banks aren’t buying traditional fall-backs like the euro, the British pound or the Japanese yen. Instead, she suggests they’re putting their faith in other dollars – the kind that come from Australia and Canada. The allocation to those currencies, which fall under “other” in the data, rose by a full percentage point to 8.5%, accounting almost exactly for the drop in the U.S. dollar allocation.

There is certainly an element of economic competitiveness in those statements from foreign bodies and governments, but at the same time, Americans shouldn’t be surprised that, in these touchy times, central banks want more of a measure of security than the dollar can afford right now – particularly when we’re running up an enormous deficit through the costs of stimulus programs and two simultaneous wars.

Just last week, America’s debt lept $166 billion in a single day. That one-day run-up is greater than the entire U.S. annual deficit in 2007. And Americans, the world’s consumers, continue much of the behavior that helped the U.S savings rate drop so low.

You can’t spell “faith” without “fiat” – and the former is exactly what the latter type of currency consists of.

The U.S. Dollar will only remain strong so long as investors possess confidence in the financial soundness of the U.S. government and the ability of its leaders to properly manage its currency. Though President Obama and his administration are certainly the worst offenders, past Presidents and their administration certainly share the blame.

The core of the problem is the fact that we have a centrally-managed currency. As with any rivalrous and excludable good, money is best left in the invisible hands of market forces, rather than the historically incompetent hands of central planners. The power hungry have no reason to stabilize the currency, they will be long dead by the time the full consequences are apparent – and, as Keynes taught his followers in the Obama administration “In the long run we are all dead.”

Left in the hands of the free market, currency would be stabilized to a ruthless degree – all for the sake of profit. Abandonment of the dollar by foreign central banks would be disastrous for our already fragile economy. But perhaps the silver lining is that this type of upheaval will wake Americans up to the danger of central planning – particularly in the realm of monetary policy.

America’s new health care laws include a 10% tax on tanning bed use. The “tan tax” is a consumption tax, meaning it applies to the consumption (sale) of a good or service – in this case, tanning salons. The tax, quite obviously, is discriminatory – as are many consumption taxes. The tan tax discriminates against whites, as they use tanning beds overwhelmingly more than any other racial group. Though I have no data on-hand to provide support, I would venture to guess that the tan tax also discriminates on the basis of gender, as I would imagine women spend more money on tanning than men. Another glaring example of discriminatory consumption taxes are cigarette taxes. People with lower incomes are much more likely to smoke cigarettes than people with higher incomes. In fact, any consumption tax is, most likely, discriminatory in one way or another – as different groups will use different products to varying extents.

This inherently discriminatory nature of consumption taxes is one of the reasons they are bad policy. It would be a extremely difficult to construct a consumption tax that did not, in some way, punish a specific group of people for their life choices. And this is really the core problem, consumption taxes distort markets by influencing the decisions of economic actors. Citizens of a free nation should not be punished for how they choose to spend their money. Furthermore, they discourage spending on goods and services, a terrible idea in a recession.

Six Algerian detainees have said they prefer to remain in Guantanamo Bay to Algeria, the Washington Post reports.

The detainee had asserted that if he is returned, the Algerian government will torture him or he will be targeted by terrorist groups who will kill him if he refuses to join.

“These men would rather stay in Guantanamo for the rest of their lives than go to Algeria. That speaks volumes,” an attorney for one of the detainees said. “They are terrified to go, but this administration is willing to march them off a cliff.”

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

$450,000

That’s how much pharmaceutical counterfeiters can make from $1,000 in seed money, according to Aline Plancon, an Interpol officer who investigates the fake-prescription-drug trade. Compare that with heroin, where $1,000 will only earn a return of $20,000, she estimates. One seller of fake Viagra – among the most frequently copied medicines – allegedly made enough to buy a beachside villa in Spain, a diamond-studded Rolex and a flat in London.

Oftentimes, when a given product is prohibited or overly-regulated, we see criminals step in to fulfill the demands of consumers. My first instinct is to blame overly-stringent regulators, such as the FDA – which make drugs more expensive. But it seems unlikely that simple over-regulation would allow for such a lucrative black-market business as this, particularly when legitimate prescription medications are not that difficult to obtain. I’d be very interested in hearing possible explanations for the allegedly soaring profits of pharmaceutical counterfeiters.