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Japan 2026: Day 3 – Meiji Jingo Shrine, Cat Street, and Shibuya Sky

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(This is a write up of our trip to Japan this summer).

Day 3 (5/27): Meiji Jingo Shrine, Cat Street, and Shibuya Sky.

We all woke up about 6 a.m. and chilled for a bit with our coffee and onigiri. When we were ready for the day, we took a train to the Meiji Jingu – a shrine dedicated to Emperor Meiji and his wife. It was nice to see so much green space in the big city. Wikipedia tells me it covers 170 acres and the shrine was rebuilt in 1958 after the original was destroyed in the air raids. We briefly chatted with a mother and son, the former from Texas and the latter from Los Angeles. We kept crossing paths throughout the day.

Walking on the grounds surrounding the shrine.

 

Shrine!

 

From there we went to Takeshita Street, known for being colorful and kawaii. It was a madhouse.

Takeshita Street

 

The crowds were challenging.

After fighting crowds for awhile, we were ready for lunch. We found a cash only ramen place, Oreryu Shio Ramen. While we were pondering our options, a Russian couple came by and said it was the best – they’d been there five times. You ordered via a machine outside, into which you put your cash before making your selections. Doing the math, we didn’t have enough cash on hand. So, we went to the Family Mart down the street and hit up an ATM. It’s really kind of amazing how easy it is to get cash these days. Just pop in your bank card and make a withdrawal. There’s a foreign transaction fee, but nothing so expensive as trying to deal with a currency exchange.

It was a small place with four or five tables and counter seating, with two guys working. The Russians were right, it was really good and hit the spot. The kids and I had pork ramen. I can’t remember what Amy had.

Do not doubt the Russians when it comes to ramen.

After eating, we walked to Cat Street which had a number of cool little shops. One of them was Café Reissue where they make 3D recreations of the photos you give them. Amy had a picture of Milo, our schnoodle. Originally, that was cool. But it got a little sad as she drank the coffee and he began to sink into the cup. Sadder still when she had to eat his face. Next to us was a family with a lot of kids who were, it must be said, a little screechy.

Now with 20% more schnoodle!

Another place we went was a vintage shop which had this over the top jacket – kind of in the style of a letterman’s jacket – emblazoned with “The Riddler” and related images. That level of commitment to the Riddler would be notable.

I kind of wish I was this into the Riddler.

The next stop of note was Tower Records where we spent a lot more time than I would have anticipated. It was a huge facility with several floors. The kids being as musical as they are, I guess it’s no surprise. Cole got a CD with “Brasilian Skies,” a jazz fusion album by Masayoshi Takanaka. Harper got a cassette for which I did note the title.

Looking for some tunes at the Tower.

Eventually it was time to move on because we had reservations at Shibuya Sky – an observation deck at the top of the Shibuya Scramble tower. The observation deck itself has a kind of astroturf covered helicopter pad where a lot of people can hang out and enjoy the views. Our reservation was for some couches that you can rent and sit at for an hour or so. The reservation came with drinks and a snack. We had champagne and some crunchy snacks. Notable in the distance were Tokyo Tower (constructed 1958) and Tokyo Sky Tree (constructed 2012), the latter of which is apparently the world’s highest structure.

It was windy!

 

 

 

 

After our time was over, we headed down to Shibuya Crossing. Now the crowds got serious. We made an obligatory stop at the Hachiko Statue, a statue commemorating an Akita dog with unwavering loyalty to his owner. The dog would apparently wait at the station every day for the owner to return home from work. When the owner died, the dog continued to wait there most days for the next 10 years.

Good boy.

We, of course, navigated the Shibuya Crossing itself and ended up a two nearby malls with a Sanrio Store and a Nintendo Store. I was quite possibly the oldest person at either of these places. The demographic skewed very young.

Waiting to cross.

We looked for dinner in that area, but it was mobbed. We were unlikely to locate good options without serious wait times. So, we took the train back to Shinjuku and walked down the street to a Korean grill. We were starving, energy levels crashing, and not looking to navigate unfamiliar foods. The most recognizable dish for us was bibimbap, so we ordered two of those and called it good. Harper ordered a drink called soju which wasn’t my taste. (The waiter was pretty surprised at her order!) Ended the day with 25,000 steps and crashed hard. We, frankly, probably overdid it on this day.

Japan 2026: Day 2 – Akihabara and Food Tour

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(This is a write up of our trip to Japan this summer).

Day 2 (5/26): Akihabara Electric Town and Food Tour

We were up pretty early in the morning. Amy brought a special, single serving coffee maker because there isn’t much of a coffee culture in Japan. We got by in Tokyo with that gadget and some Starbucks instant coffee. Breakfast was onigri and the corn porridge snack. We also had the egg sandwiches that are kind of famous. They really weren’t bad.

I had to use Google Translate to figure out the toilet operations. Because of the use of bidets, the toilets and toilet paper aren’t as robust as what you find in the U.S. One of the kids, apparently not yet savvy to that fact, seems to have clogged the toilet. Fortunately, it was minor with just paper and not product residue. There was no plunger, but fortunately whatever the problem was had resolved on its own when we came back after leaving for the day.

Unfamiliar with bidets and functionally illiterate is no way to go through life, son.

We took a train to Akihabara Electric Town. The trains in Tokyo seem to work great: on time, interconnected, and frequent. Google Maps makes things really easy for the foreign traveler. Which is good because I often wasn’t able to make heads or tails out of the signage. The Suica Card is really slick – particularly if you have an iPhone. The Wallet app has the Suica card built in, allowing you to add funds via Apple Pay. That, in turn, allows you to pay your train fare with your phone – activated simply by sliding your phone above the electronic fare scanner at the entrances and exits. The trains were generally pretty affordable. From Shinjuku to Akihabara was 209 yen each way which, with a yen being .006 dollars, worked out to about $1.30. (I became pretty good at doing the mental math for currency conversion.)

Shrine!

Akihabara’s “Electric Town” is an area famous for manga, anime, electronics shops, and arcades. We looked around but ultimately did not end up buying much. Lunch was at at Hinoya Curry. Like most of the places, it was fairly small with a couple of tables and bar seating. Unsurprisingly, we had the curry!

We had some fun at the “HEY” arcade where I got the high score on Star Fox and Cole got the high score on Galaga. This isn’t too impressive, since I’m not sure how many other people had even played those machines. As we browsed the stores, we noticed that the legit manga sections of the store had a way of abruptly giving way to the porn sections.

 

Hi Score! (I’m pretty sure all of those other players are computer generated.)

 

 

Harper is going old school, as is her wont.

We went back to the house for some horizontal time before the evening’s activity which was a food tour. It was back close to where we’d had dinner the night before, and we were able to walk to the meet up spot. Our guide was Yoshi. He seems to have had a lot of different jobs – some of which had him traveling to the U.S. a fair amount. He’d even spent a little time in West Lafayette, working for a supplier to Subaru. Our co-tourists were a trio from Manchester, a guy from Atlanta, and a couple from Canada. The Manchester couple apparently had side-gigs as concert photographers for rock concerts.

Our Manchester friends.

I was fairly hopeless at picking up Japanese words. But, for some reason, I immediately became familiar with the word “izakaya” – usually a small little bar serving food. Our first stop on the tour was an izakaya with a very narrow corridor on the first floor, leading to even narrower stairs to a small room upstairs which is where we congregated. Here we had beer, several kinds of sushimi, meat skewers, a chicken meatball, and stingray fin. The stingray fin was particularly good – a hint of sweetness and an odd texture that was strangely satisfying. The second stop was a standing bar with fried meat skewers (one of which was Wagyu). There was also edamame, potato salad, and more beer.

Standing bar with Yoshi.

The third and final stop was the best. It was at a bar in the Golden Gai. This is an area with six narrow streets connected by even smaller alleys and something like 200 tiny bars. Yoshi took us into one, up some stairs, and into a bar room with a semi-circular bar and stools around it. It was just us and the bartender here. I had a shot of habushu – a liquor that tastes a little like Jägermeister and is made with some kind of process involving a pit viper (habu). Then there was karaoke. Not at all my kind of thing, typically. But Yoshi got us started, the bartender participated, and then we were all singing together. Country Roads is a fan favorite – everyone knows it, and the range is not challenging.

Golden Gai

 

Pit Viper Alcohol? Sounds like a plan!

 

Country Roads is a fan favorite.

We then headed home, stopped by a 7-11 for some sugar to use for our coffee, and everyone was asleep by 10.

Japan 2026: Day 1 – Travel & Tokyo

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(This is a write up of our trip to Japan this summer).

Day 1 (5/24 – 5/25): Travel and Tokyo

Harper’s interest in Japan was maybe the deciding factor in getting us over the hump, making the decision to go on the trip. She has long loved anime, Japanese food, and generally seemed to list it first in terms of places she’d like to visit.

It was on all of our lists of places that seemed interesting to visit, but I was vaguely intimidated by the prospect. It’s awfully far away, and the language and culture is more remote to us than what you might find in Europe. For example, they don’t use the Latin alphabet. My interest in the place goes back to being a child in the 70s. The coolest toys and cartoons came from Japan. My father and stepmother had a Japanese exchange student (Chizuru) in Colorado when I was visiting. (Random memory: I was probably 8 years old and my stepbrother, Michael, would have been 9. I think we were going to the airport to get her when Michael says to me, “don’t mention Iwo Jima!”)

Chicago traffic makes everyone happy!

This year, everything lined up for a trip to Japan. Our several trips to Europe gave us a decent background in international travel. The kids both had time off in late May and early June – times when Amy and I could also take off work. (And, who knows if we get many or any more opportunities like that.)

Travel was relatively smooth. Chicago is a little easier to handle on a Sunday morning. We departed O’Hare around 12:25 p.m. on May 24 (CDT). There was something like an hour delay on the tarmac. The announcement was hard to hear, but referenced something about “customer service” and the proper count. So, it may be we had more people on board than they thought or fewer. Fortunately we didn’t have to return to the terminal. We landed in Japan at Haneda airport at 3:15 p.m. on May 25 (JST). If my math’s right, that was 12.5 hours including the delay. Total travel time, door-to-door was 19 hours.

Big old jet airliner

Our Airbnb was on a narrow street just south of Haneda University. It was a three floor apartment with a bedroom and full bathroom on the first floor, the kitchen and living area on the second floor, and two bedrooms and a half-bath on the third floor. The bathroom was different for us  – it had a full wet room instead of just a shower. The heated toilet seat with bidet was also different. The decorations were primarily Disney themed with a Christmas tree in the living area.

 

 

I was not kidding about the Christmas tree.

After a bit of rest time, we ventured out for supplies – there are 7-11s everywhere. The closest one was, at most, a five minute walk. We got a 6 pack of Kirin, snacks, sandwiches, and some onigiri. One of the snacks that I picked randomly because of the corn on the packaging tasted like corn chowder. The onigiri (rice balls with fish) are a local snack that became our breakfast staple. At one point, during that first trip, Cole and I had lost track of Amy and started venturing up to the second floor. It was not a two-story store! Before we left, someone had put some signs together to block the stairs. Back home, after a beer, it was time for dinner.

The area in Shinjuku where we walked was really vibrant. Lots of young people walking the streets. It was a broad mix of Asian and white people, very much an international crowd. We ate at a place called Yoimodo. They served up some meat skewers, of which the pork belly was my favorite. (Yakitori is apparently the term for grilled, skewered chicken – yakiton is pork.) They had Asahi which ended up being my favorite of the major Japanese beers. Ordering was done via QR code and payment at the register. That kind of QR code set up ended up being very common at the places we went. It helps overcome the language barrier.

Yoimodo

After dinner, we just strolled a bit. Saw the Godzilla Head – which really made me happy. Again, I was a 70s kid. Godzilla really speaks to my inner child. (Fun fact – the sound of his iconic roar comes from a cello recording played backward.) Apparently their Don Quixote stores (“Donkis”) are a bit of an institution. The one we went to was packed, and the crowds quickly became an issue for us. Jet lag was kicking in, and we were tired. We got home and crashed at about 9 p.m. I managed to sleep until 6 a.m., but there was a period around 1:30 a.m. when I woke up and felt like it was time to get up.

Go go Godzilla!

West Lafayette 2026 Referendum Successful

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Just a little post script on my post from August about the West Lafayette referendum. I’m happy to report that it was successful. This time it passed with just shy of 70% of the vote. That’s down from the margins in 2017 and 2023, but it was the highest pass-rate in the state. Part of the reason for the decline is that the State keeps trying to put its thumb on the scale to discourage these referendums. Communities are now limited on when they can hold the referendums – general election years, rather than during primaries or municipal elections or special elections. The mandated language on the ballot is also misleading, designed to make the proposed tax rates as scary as possible.

West Lafayette is fortunate. Its citizens are more likely than average to value education. We’ve also been through this referendum process several times now – 2010, 2017, 2023, and now 2026. That the State forces us to waste time, money, and effort, to maintain funding that our local citizens have said repeatedly and emphatically that they want is wasteful.

Still, the process is a community building exercise. I have made some new friendships and strengthened others through the process of knocking on doors, organizing, and advocating for a cause. (Many of us were also united in our effort to elect a couple of great candidates to our local school board.) Our educational outreach hasn’t maybe gone far enough. Just yesterday, I heard a school board member talk about the need to be accountable with this “new” funding. I have no arguments with the accountability part of the statement. Spend the money productively and responsibly! But it’s not new money. We had to jump through all these hoops to maintain the status quo on school funding. West Side wasn’t looking to get rich off of this deal. The State reorganized the budget in a way that was detrimental to public education, and our community had to organize and vote to undo the damage the General Assembly was trying to cause.

On that note, a lot of the people in Indianapolis responsible for much of the bad education policy over the past decade or two got voted out on Tuesday. In terms of public education in Indiana, Bob Behning, long time chair of the House Education Committee was the most notable victim of the 2026 blue wave. A lot of the other Republican members of the education committee were ousted as well. The GOP still holds a majority in the General Assembly, and Mike Braun still appoints most of the state board of education. So, the privatization-minded approach to education will probably continue. But, with a stronger Democratic caucus in Indianapolis, hopefully the worst impulses can at least be mitigated.

West Lafayette Schools: 2026 Referendum

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This fall, the West Lafayette Community School Corporation has put a school funding referendum question on the ballot. If you live in the district, you should vote “yes.”

The school received approval from the voters for such a referendum tax rate as recently as 2023. But, the General Assembly has shifted the state’s tax system enough that, in order to maintain the status quo, the school has to get a new rate approved.

The short version is that the state has changed the way a property owner’s net assessed value is calculated which means that the referendum tax rate no longer generates the same revenue. Because of the changes, despite having the same real estate and the same approved tax rate, the landowner would be paying less tax to support the schools.

Here is the longer version:

History

Back in 2008, the General Assembly completely revamped how schools were funded. Mostly the state took over school funding. A number of state decisions led to West Lafayette, in particular, getting the short end of the funding stick.

We were landlocked and couldn’t grow – resulting in less money from a formula that valued growth. We were a small district – resulting in less money from a system that subsidized geographic size with greater busing needs. We were a district with fewer socioeconomic challenges – resulting in less money from the State’s “complexity index.”

None of these were necessarily unreasonable choices by the State. But the result was that West Lafayette received somewhere like the third lowest amount of per student funding of any school system in the state. Fortunately, the State gave districts the referendum tool – we could vote for higher taxes to support education in our communities.

West Lafayette is a relatively wealthier area that *strongly* values education. So, in 2010, the voters authorized a tax rate of up to $0.43 per $100 of assessed value.

Now, as it turned out, that rate was more than the school ended up needing. The budgets approved by the West Lafayette school board never exceeded $0.37 per $100 of assessed value. So, when it came time to re-authorize the referendum rate in 2017, the ballot question was limited to a rate of up to $0.37 per $100 of assessed value.

And, again in 2023, that was the rate that was re-authorized for taxes beginning in 2024. Up until now, it was sufficient for the school’s needs. And that rate would have been good through the year 2031.

SEA 1

But, in 2025, the General Assembly adopted SEA 1 which significantly changed the landscape. That referendum rate approved by the voters is multiplied by the “net assessed valuation” of a piece of property. Which is to say the assessed valuation after applying deductions.

There are three main areas where the General Assembly reduced the net assessed valuation in ways that reduce the funding for schools: 1) changes to the residential property deductions; 2) creation of a new deduction for rental properties; and 3) increased exemptions for business personal property.

The upshot is that if a person was paying $600 to fund the school under the old $0.37 rate, under the new assessment rules, an increased rate will be necessary to generate that same $600 tax payment for the school.

The school district has analyzed the impact of net assessed value once SEA-1 is phased in and has determined that a rate of up to $0.57 is necessary to generate the same revenue as the $0.37 rate under the old assessment rules.

Residential Property Deductions

Under current rules, a residential property owner gets two deductions: the “standard” deduction of $48,000 and a “supplemental” deduction of 37.5% of the assessed valuation. SEA 1 is phasing out the “standard” deduction and increasing the “supplemental” deduction from 37.5% to 66.7%. (The “supplemental” deduction will need a new name once the “standard” deduction is phased out and stands alone.) West Lafayette tends to have higher value homes, so the deduction from this extra percentage will tend to exceed the $48,000 “standard” that it will be replacing.

The break even point appears to be a home worth $102,740. Below that valuation, homeowners would get more value from the “standard” deduction. Above that valuation, the “supplemental” deduction based on a percentage gives a bigger break. And, because this is a percentage, the higher the valuation – the bigger the tax break.

So, where the $0.37 rate might result in a tax bill on a $300,000 home of about $600, now – because net assessed value is being calculated based on about 33.3% of the home’s actual value – that rate has to be higher (closer to that $0.57 rate) to generate the same $600 on the same property.

This is why the schools need to go through the referendum process to replace the existing $0.37 rate with a new rate of up to $0.57.

Rental Property Deductions

Indiana divides real property into “1%, 2%, and 3%” categories. This comes from categories added to the state constitution back in 2010 which limits the permissible tax bill to 1%, 2%, or 3% of a property’s net assessed value (unless an additional tax is authorized by referendum.) 1% is for homestead property, which is to say owner-occupied real estate. 2% is for agricultural land and non-owner occupied residential property (i.e. rental properties). And 3% is for everything else – which is to say (non-ag/non-rental) commercial, industrial, and business personal property.

Under current rules, the 2% properties don’t get much in the way of deductions. They have to pull full freight on their taxes. Under SEA 1, they’re given a 33.4% deduction which phases in through 2031. Given that West Lafayette is a university town, this deduction hits us particularly hard. Once again, the higher rate is necessary to keep the tax bill for landlords the same.

Business Personal Property

There is currently a business personal property exemption for property of up to $80,000. That exemption is being raised to $2 million. Meanwhile there is currently a depreciation floor of 30% – meaning that business personal property being used by a business has to be valued at 30% of its original value regardless of how old it gets. Under the new law, that floor drops to zero.

So a business might be using business personal property in its operations, but – for tax purposes – that property might now be regarded as not having any value. While West Lafayette does not have the same amount of business personal property as more industrial areas, these changes will not be helpful.

Ballot Language

The ballot language mandated by the General Assembly for these school operating fund referendums is, in my opinion, intentionally misleading. The folks in Indianapolis are reflexively hostile to local taxes and want the language to sound as intimidating as possible. In particular, it suggests an increased tax bill but does not make clear that the increase is as compared to no referendum rate at all rather than as compared to a taxpayer’s current bill. As our superintendent put it in a recent Op-Ed:

The legally required ballot language is misleading because it presents a calculation based on assumptions that do not necessarily reflect what an individual homeowner will actually pay. Actual property-tax impacts vary depending on assessed value, exemptions, deductions, circuit-breaker protections and other circumstances.

However, property-tax reform and individual tax-relief eligibility mean that a particular homeowner’s school property taxes could decrease, remain about the same or increase by a few dollars annually.

Consequences of Non-Passage

The referendum funding was put in place by our voters for a reason. The funding rate wasn’t adopted just for the hell of it – our community gets a return on its investment. It prevents class sizes from becoming unmanageable. It pays for teachers the school needs. And, it enables programming that provides our kids with a well-rounded education. If you cut the funding, teachers get cut. Class sizes get bigger. Programs not required by state law – think music and art – go away.

Referendum funds constitute nearly 25% of the West Lafayette school budget. These funds provide salary and benefits for more than 50 teachers in addition to paying for custodial and maintenance operations, including wages, benefits and equipment.

Conclusion

The goal of the West Lafayette school referendum question in 2026 is to keep school funding steady. The school is not trying to increase the amount it receives from this tax rate. Because of the variability in tax situations, some landowners would still experience a decreased tax bills while, for others, it might stay the same or increase somewhat. The tax impact is not expected to be significant for any homeowners as compared to the current tax structure.  Meanwhile, the impact on the school for voting “no” will degrade the quality of education in our community. A “yes” vote this fall is necessary to prevent this and preserve our schools in West Lafayette.

Hicks: Quality of Life Investments Spur Economic Growth

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Ball State Economist, Michael Hicks, has a column explaining that, while there is strong evidence that a community’s quality of life investments spur economic growth in that area; Indiana’s policymakers have mostly chosen to pursue the less reliable “agglomeration” model for economic growth.

Quality of life investments are amenities like outdoor recreation, cultural attractions, dining & entertainment, etc. Quality of life can also refer to things like education, public safety, access to quality housing options, and a clean and healthy environment. Meanwhile:

Agglomerations is the technical term for the magic that happens when businesses cluster in a certain area. … The idea is simple. Businesses that locate close to one another inadvertently share innovation and skills. They may do so through formal cooperation, by hiring one another’s staff or just by having people from the same trade hang out at a bar or go to church together.

One way or the other, the trick to economic growth basically involves getting educated people with their attendant abilities and skills to live in your area. Hicks tells us that the former is much more reliable than the latter. In spite of this, Indiana’s policymakers have spent far more resources on agglomeration than quality of life – spending gobs of money trying to attract employers to various places.

Part of this – maybe a large part –  might simply be a matter of imbalanced lobbying power. Companies who want government money have a pretty compelling incentive to hire people who can advocate for policies that direct public money to their private interests. The general public has a much more diffuse interest in the benefits that come from quality of life investments – particularly before they are actually built.

But I also have a sense that there is a strain in Hoosier thought that regards spending money on quality of life as frivolous. Maybe this goes back to our Calvinist/Puritan roots. Spending money on business and work is serious and productive. Spending money on a more enjoyable life is wasteful, possibly sinful. This world is a testing ground for the faithful, not a place for joy! (To be clear, this is me speculating; not something Prof. Hicks has ventured.)

 

Teachers are the Tip of the Spear

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Casey Smith, writing for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, has an excellent account of a recent meeting of the General Assembly’s interim study committee on fiscal policy. The top line information is that Indiana’s teachers make less than surrounding states and that’s going to cause us problems. (Ball State economist Michael Hicks has done a good job explaining how  Indiana’s fiscal and policy choices over education have hurt us and will continue to hurt us.) The information received by the study committee indicated that median wages for teachers, when adjusted for inflation, have declined since 2020 and lag behind neighboring states.

Some of the responses, hoping to dodge state responsibility for fixing the issue, are a riff on the classic “waste, fraud, abuse” theme which is an old chestnut when it comes to any government spending. In this case, some of the lawmakers are certain that the state money is simply not getting to teachers.

“It’s frustrating up here … that we want to take care of teachers as best we can, because we think that helps us educate kids better,” said Sen. Scott Baldwin, R-Noblesville. “But dollars going into the school system from this body don’t seem to always make it into the classroom or teachers’ pockets.”

…

Baldwin continued to push for greater transparency in local spending to ensure that “dollars reach classrooms and teachers,” rather than being absorbed by administrative growth.

…

Other ideas discussed included …  giving districts more flexibility to redirect certain capital project funds — like those used for athletic facilities — toward salaries.

“We just need to somehow loosen up that money for teachers over another astro-turf football field,” said Sen. Travis Holdman, R-Markle.

I challenge the idea that we are spending inordinately on facilities or administrators. But, even without getting into the weeds on that question, I think it’s absolutely worth mentioning – and loudly – that you need more than teachers to educate a kid. It’s like the recent trend on the right these days of trying to focus on “war fighters” in the military and ignoring the importance of logistics. One of my favorite quotes from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (set in World War II):

The United States military … is first and foremost and unfathomable network of typist and file clerks, secondarily a stupendous mechanism for moving stuff from one part of the world to another, and last and least a fighting organization.

Similarly, Ulysses S. Grant has been criticized (perhaps unfairly) as being less of a soldier than General Lee. But Grant was a good quartermaster with a superior grasp of logistics which is part of why his efforts succeeded and Lee failed.

In a similar way, teachers are part of an educational system – an important part, but hardly the only part. We should make sure teachers are properly paid but it would be foolish to do so by starving the system of its facilities and logistical capabilities. (A failure to recognize that education requires a systematic approach is also a deficiency in Rep. Thompson’s recommendation for “market-based” incentive pay for STEM teachers or other areas where there are shortages. STEM teachers rely on, for example, the elementary teachers who have taught the kids to read and the fundamentals of math.)

Once again, as Caleb Mills – the father of Indiana’s educational system – said, “there is but one way to secure good schools, and that is to pay for them.”

Finding Equilibrium on the “Dear Harvard” letter and why it matters to all universities

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Good post by Purdue economics professors, Jay Akridge and David Hummels, (not exactly lefty firebrands) on the administration’s “Dear Harvard” letter and the threat it poses not just to Harvard, but to universities generally. Akridge and Hummels write a blog called “Finding Equilibrium” focused on the future of higher education.
Under the veneer of civil rights concerns, the executive branch is demanding changes to Harvard’s governance, departmental structure, faculty hiring, student admissions, and student conduct policies. In addition, the demands require extensive and intrusive new reporting and audit requirements on all the above, along with punitive actions taken against particular departments based on the content of their scholarship. It wants to impose quotas in faculty hiring and student admissions based on a federally mandated conception of “viewpoint diversity.”
When Harvard declined the executive branch’s demands, Trump indicated his intent to retaliate by using the IRS as leverage.
Say the economics professors:
“It’s old, rich, elite Harvard. The vast majority of higher education institutions look nothing like Harvard with respect to financial resources, selectivity, student profile, research reputation, alumni achievements,…so?
Let’s be clear. This represents perhaps the most dangerous moment in the history of the modern university. The Trump administration is threatening nothing less than the financial destruction of the world’s leading university. That is, unless Harvard complies with what they (Harvard) regard as a series of clearly illegal and unconstitutional demands, and put every aspect of their operation under the systematic control of the federal government.
Again, you might think this is an Ivy League problem and not relevant to the rest of higher education, but that would be wrong. It is no accident that first Columbia and now Harvard have been targeted, with Penn, Princeton, Cornell, Northwestern, and Brown next in line, and the list of “concerning” universities growing by the day. If the strongest and best-resourced universities are brought to heel, the rest will follow. And as should be clear from Columbia’s capitulation, agreeing to the administration’s initial demands does not resolve matters. It invites additional penalties and more aggressive intervention.”
The entire thing is worth a read.

Federal Economic Chaos Hurting Indiana

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Tariffs and the recent economic chaos is resulting in a projected $2 billion less in revenue for the State of Indiana than previously projected. That’s going to leave a mark.
“What happened?
The December forecast data included roughly $800 million in new revenue for the state over the next two years, though nearly all of that came in the first year. Now even that marginal growth is gone. Much of the loss can be attributed to economic uncertainty, including worries about the impact of tariffs in the country’s most manufacturing-intensive state.
…
According to an analysis from Axios Indianapolis, Indiana is the third-most reliant state when it comes to China, which imported $6.1 billion in Hoosier goods in 2023. More than half of that was in pharmaceuticals and medicines followed by oilseeds and grains.”
This is a far cry from America’s economic prospects six months ago.
Two front pages of the Economist side by side. The first from October 2024 has a roll of dollar bills rocketing to the sky with the headline “The Envy of the World”.The second is this week’s front page which is a version of Munch’s Scream painting but the face is instead an upside down sack of dollar bills. The headline says “How a dollar crisis would unfold.”

What a difference six months makes.

Turning Pain into a Virtue and Spreading It

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Posted this in a Facebook thread and it’s a theme I mention from time to time, but for posterity:

The context was a debate in the Indiana Senate about whether teachers learning about and using techniques having to do with emotional intelligence is valuable for instruction. The General Assembly is removing “social emotional learning” provisions from the Indiana Code. Near as I can tell “SEL” is one of those pieces of jargon that, regardless of its true or original meaning, has turned into a shibboleth. One of the things being projected onto it from the right is the idea that it means coddling the kids, making them weak, emasculating the boys, and so forth.
This leads me to one of my periodic observations where I feel like a fair amount of the bad in the world we see is adults trying to rationalize their childhood trauma. Their parents beat them, neglected them, or otherwise treated them poorly in ways that may have, in retrospect, been unnecessary. But it can be unbearable to think that the pain and hurt inflicted by one’s parents may have been needless. So, they project virtue onto some of this stuff to give the pain value. Once pain becomes valuable, it becomes not just permissible but virtuous to spread it.