Thursday, February 20, 2014

The Mack Brown retirement domino

I'm a pretty rabid fan of Texas Longhorn football and so the Mack Brown "retirement" was a tough one to take. But I realized that for several people in the coaching world, this would be an opportunity to move up. One of the top college football coaching jobs would open up and that would create a void that would trickle down to the bottom of the pile. So how did that work out? Here's the chain reaction that the Brown retirement created. It involves 6 coaches at 4 schools.

Head Coach Mack Brown retired from Texas
Head Coach Charlie Strong left Louisville to replace Brown
Head Coach Bobby Petrino left Western Kentucky to replace Strong
Offensive Coordinator Jeff Brohm was promoted at Western Kentucky to replace Petrino
Special Teams Coordinator Tyson Helton left Cincinnati to replace Brohm
Graduate Assistant Marc Nudelberg was promoted at Cincinnati to replace Helton

Ostensibly, some kid will get a job as a graduate assistant at Cincinnati to replace Nudleberg, but I don't know who that is. That is unlikely to be announced and they aren't usually listed along with the coaching staff.

So Marc Nudelberg, you should send Mack Brown a thank you note for your promotion.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Minimum wage job loss and teens

One thing I don't see anyone talking about in the wake of CBO report on job losses and wage gains resulting from a minimum wage increase is who will lose those jobs. I think most people would agree that it's better if middle-class teens working part time lose their jobs than for single moms working full time do. And it turns out that is just the case.

Teenagers would be disproportionately hit. The CBO estimates that the elasticity for directly affected adults is about 1/3 of that for teens. See page 25 & 26 of the report.

And from page 30
The reductions in employment would be concentrated more among teenage workers than among older workers
That doesn't mean that it is a good or bad trade-off (higher wages for some and job losses for others) but it does tilt the scales a little.

Update: Here's why this is relevant, The Heritage Foundation has objected to raising the minimum wage because "most minimum-wage earners are young, part-time workers and that relatively few of them live below the poverty line." Dubious claim, but the underlying idea is that we should not try to help suburban teenagers, but rather the working poor. OK, well, the CBO report says that teenagers will bear the brunt of the job losses. So, it seems that raising the minimum wage will help the working poor at the expense of suburban teenagers. Isn't that what conservatives want?