DOES KINESIOLOGY TAPE REALLY WORK?

It’s certainly colorful.

ARE TEENAGERS HAPPIER THAN THEY WERE TEN YEARS AGO? If so, maybe it’s because they’re spending less time around other teenagers.

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JOHN FUND: How Lee Kuan Yew Created A Viable Welfare State:

Lee Kuan Yew, a member of Britain’s left-wing Labour party while a student at Cambridge, managed to create a workable welfare state, one that provides for people without creating Social Security–like Ponzi schemes or unsustainable entitlements. Both liberals and conservatives have much to learn from what he built, the details of which are missing in most of the tributes to him. Lee’s first priority when he became prime minister in 1959 was to reimagine Singapore’s economy. “Back then, this place was a swamp, with no natural resources, and it even had to import its drinking water from Malaysia,” Jim Rogers, a noted American investor who has lived in Singapore for nearly a decade, told me during my visit there. By embracing free trade, capital formation, vigorous meritocratic education, low taxes, and a reliable judicial system, Lee raised the per capita income of his country from $500 a year to some $52,000 a year today. That’s 50 percent higher than that of Britain, the colonial power that ruled Singapore for 150 years. Its average annual growth rate has averaged 7 percent since the 1970s. “A 2010 study showed more patents and patent applications from the small city-state of Singapore (population 5.6 million) than from Russia (population 140 million),” noted economist Thomas Sowell observes. But that wealth wasn’t used to create a traditional welfare state. Economist Mark Skousen notes that Singapore is rated along with Hong Kong as one of the two most free economies in the world. Any expansion of government is gradual and grudging. In 2013, when Singapore broadened its medical-benefits program, the local Straits Times newspaper made clear the government’s philosophy: “The first [priority] is to keep government subsidies targeted at those who most need them, rather than commit to benefits for all. Universal benefits are ‘wasteful and inequitable,’ and hard to take away once given, [finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam] said.” . . .

Singapore’s approach to the provision of health care, retirement income, and housing is in sharp distinction to that of other countries. People are required to make relatively high payments into savings plans from which they can later buy a home, pay tuition, and purchase a variety of insurance policies. For those under age 50, the employee contributes 20 percent of his income, and the employer 16 percent. A third of the employee’s share is put into a private Medisave account. When the balance reaches 34,100 U.S. dollars, any excess funds can be used for non-health-care purposes. All are enrolled in a catastrophic-health-care plan, although they can opt out.

Read the whole thing.

CONNECTICUT LAW TRIBUNE: Reining In Rogue Prosecutors Should Not Be Taboo Topic.

A SECRET OF GETTING AHEAD: The Power of Being Able to Do a Good Job at Tedious, Detail-Oriented Work.

COMPARING HER TO NIXON IS PROBABLY UNFAIR. TO NIXON. Leaked Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network. On the other hand, they make her lapses as Secretary of State even less forgivable, since she obviously knew what was going on. “Blumenthal’s emails to Clinton, which were directed to her private email account, include at least a dozen detailed reports on events on the deteriorating political and security climate in Libya as well as events in other nations.”

FLIRTING ADVICE from a Tinder robot.

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ISN’T THE VERY TERM “TESTOSTERONE-ADDLED BRUTES” AWFULLY SEXIST? Plus: “If the brutishness of brutish men has a physical cause — testosterone — shouldn’t we be more empathetic the way we are toward other medical conditions that impair the mind? Isn’t it ableist of us to direct hostility toward ‘testosterone-addled brutes’?”

SO WHERE IS EVERYBODY? Extrasolar Planets Are, Almost, Everywhere.

PREPPING FOR A MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE: Amazon Robot Contest May Accelerate Warehouse Automation. “Amazon has already automated some of the work done in its vast fulfillment centers. Robots in a few locations send shelves laden with products over to human workers who then grab and package them. These mobile robots, made by Kiva Systems, a company that Amazon bought in 2012 for $678 million, reduce the distance human workers have to walk in order to find products. However, no robot can yet pick and pack products with the speed and reliability of a human. Industrial robots that are already widespread in several industries are limited to extremely precise, repetitive work in highly controlled environments.”

But the robots get better every year, while the workers stay the same. Or, perhaps, get worse.

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Paul Duffau: Surviving the Home Inspection: The Essential Seller’s Guide.

LESS THAN PERFECTLY: How Airlines Screen Their Pilots, and Watch Out for Warning Signs. Plus: “American regulations require that a flight attendant go in the cockpit whenever one pilot leaves. That is as a security measure, in case the remaining pilot has a medical issue and can’t open the security door. With an attendant in place, unlike in the Germanwings scenario, the co-pilot isn’t left alone. As CEO Carsten Spohr of Lufthansa (Germanwings’ parent airline) said in a press conference today, Europe doesn’t have such a rule.”

“GOVERNMENT” IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Like stage gladiatorial pit-fights with inmates for our amusement.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): “According to an arrest affidavit, Granado admitted to police during an interview that she had been involved with a male student, who was 15 at the time, in April 2014.”

RUSSELL BERMAN: The Western Rift Over Iran. “Suddenly it is the US that is from Venus and the Europeans are from Mars, to use the imagery of earlier debates. . . . American policy has largely involved withdrawals—from the Middle East—and relinquishing of leadership elsewhere.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 687.

IS IGNORANCE OF THE LAW AN EXCUSE? No, but Michael Cottone argues that maybe it should be, in his Rethinking Presumed Knowledge of the Law in the Regulatory Age. I think this is a very important topic and an important piece. As he notes, it expands (significantly!) on some of the ideas touched on in my Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece. (Bumped).

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Egypt-Saudi Invasion of Yemen Imminent.

The Egyptians’ decision to return to Yemen, which is essentially their Vietnam, is extremely significant. It reflects both enormous fear on the part of the Sunni powers and the strength of the Saudi-led alliance.

Events in Yemen continue to accelerate much faster than many experts predicted, and the potential for widespread sectarian war between Sunni and Shi’a grows more acute by the day. In some ways this portends even more trouble than ISIS’s fight against Iran’s proxies in Syria and Iraq: that fight is both bloody and strategically important, but ISIS is also an enemy of the Sunni powers (whose rule it wants to overthrow). Now, the Saudis and their allies are clearly prepared to confront Iran’s allies head-on.

The price of the Obama Administration’s comprehensive failure of strategy in the Middle East may be very high.

Before you can dub it a failure, you have to know what Obama is trying to accomplish.

ILYA SOMIN: Why mandatory jury service is a poor justification for mandatory voting.

JOSH KRAUSHAAR: Democrats’ Identity Crisis Is Spilling Into Their Senate Races: Democrats have been remarkably successful at avoiding contentious primaries, but the ones taking place in 2016 will be consequential.

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LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: FBI disrupts plot to kill scores at military base on behalf of Islamic State. “Authorities arrested an Illinois Army National Guardsman after he attempted to travel to Libya and fight with the Islamic State as well as the soldier’s cousin who was plotting to attack a U.S. military installation and kill scores, federal prosecutors announced Thursday. Hasan Rasheed Edmonds, 22, and his cousin Jonas Marcel ­Edmonds, 29, both of Aurora, Ill., were charged with conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization.”