Course timing and readings
WEEKLY REMINDERS/ANNOUNCEMENTS – EWOT, Week 1
Read the Syllabus
The syllabus and all class materials are on the Blackboard website. Please read the syllabus and related course descriptions carefully. All policies related to grades, assignments, etc. are on the syllabus. Please think twice and three-times before sending admin-related emails that are covered by the syllabus. For example, “What date and time is our first midterm?” Ask a classmate first. Ask a TA second. Ask the Head TA third.
Or DON’T Read the Syllabus: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6a763182a9d08191b73bba0904ed9144-econ-108-syllabus-what-do-you-need-to-know
Explore Blackboard
The entire site is clunky, but it is the official communication source, and all class materials we wish to share will be in repository there. If you hear something about the course from someone, and you cannot find it on our ChatBot or Blackboard, assume it is not the case.
Topics This Week
We jump right into class materials on Day One. We will not spend class time going over the syllabus or doing introductions or anything of that sort. Our first few weeks will be spent trying to fan away the miasma of economics apprehension, and to help you understand our goals for the course. We are not here to go through a textbook and just check the boxes, we aim to give you a full-blooded introduction to the EWOT.
Readings This Week
Begin working your way through the readings in Section One. There is no particular order to them, and as you will see that none of these is “required” in the traditional sense of the term. If you wish to only read a little bit, please focus on i, Pencil. The Engerman paper is a nice historical examination of what you are about to get yourselves into and the short Otteson Chapter is a very good attempt to define some terms that are ill-tossed around. Of course, there is never a wrong time to go through the materials in the Ur-Readings section.
Or Don’t Read Anything At All - the UNReading List: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6a6b783f83a881919379581ca86905d8-the-ewot-unreading-list
Assignments and due dates
And the treat you’ve all been waiting for … Week One Assignments
Your very first course assignments are posted on Blackboard under “Weekly Updates and Assignments 2026.” Before you do that, we have added two things for you to read carefully. First read our opening cogitations about your coming intellectual life and futures – the Week Zero Reflection. Second, we have put together a document that describes clearly how we will be grading each of the Research and Rumination assignments throughout the term.
Both your research and rumination assignments are due the first Sunday night of the semester, September 6th before 6:59pm. Submit your assignments on Blackboard under “Weekly Updates and Assignments 2026” then to “Week One Class Update and Assignment” and then you click each particular assignment to access the submission box.
Exam information
Please make note of the Exam dates and times. The exams are held outside of class-time. Your first exam is on Friday, October 2nd at 2pm.
Recitation information
THERE IS recitation this week. Our first recitation sections will begin on Wednesday, September 2nd. Please be on the lookout for a welcome e-mail and additional information from your recitation TA.
What do I bring to recitation? Sticks, eyes, feet and brains.
Other class admin, TA hours
Look for an announcement from our Head TA Katherine Watai. Alexa Pishtey is our assistant instructor for the course. I make myself very available by phone, text or email during the week. I am moving to not being on or near electronics over the weekend.
To access our updated office hours schedule, visit tiny.cc/RizzoHours.
Upcoming Special Events
Department of Economics Engerman Lecture
“After Shocks: Adaptation and Growth through Volatile Times”
Who: Rick Hornbeck of the University of Chicago
Day: Wednesday, September 16th
Time: 5:00pm
Where: Morey 321
The Politics and Markets Project, hosted by Professor David Primo. Title TBD. Wednesday, November 4th, 7:30pm to 8:30pm, Wegmans Hall 1400. Follow on Instagram.
Department of Economics Special Guest Lecture: Human Capital for Humans, with Pablo Pena of the University of Chicago. Date: Thursday, October 8th. Time and location TBD.
Some Items That Caught Our Attention
Wanna Get An A? Try this.
Wanna Get An A? Try this too,
Minimum Wages are Not Magic Wands, Episode 38775782: “We find adverse – rather than beneficial – effects of minimum wages on the employment, hours, and earnings of initially-employed low-wage workers in poor and low-income families. … the adverse effects for poor and low-income low-wage workers help explain why minimum wages do not reduce poverty.”
Ban Data Centers … and blow up the economy: “The big danger is that data center bans will choke off the main engine of U.S. growth, throwing a lot of Americans out of their jobs and putting a hole in Americans’ retirement savings. But before I talk about that, I should talk about why I think limitations on data centers aren’t actually a crazy idea. …”
Do You Need to Be a Billionaire to Live Your Dreams? “I am reminded of a scene in the movie Wall Street where Bud, the protagonist, is working in a high-paying finance job he hates so that he can make a million dollars, retire and ride a motorcycle across China. The inside joke is that you don’t need to work on Wall Street, or to make a million dollars, to buy a motorcycle to cross China. You could easily do that whole trip for $2,000 dollars, saved from a short summer stint working at Costco … The bottleneck for most dreams is not financial. It’s a lack of confidence, willingness to take a risk, and face failure, or a lack of imagination of what is possible with current resources. If you want to write a novel you don’t need capital — you need discipline and 1,000 words a day. If you want to start a consultancy you need expertise and a first client, not a war chest. A lack of money is a convenient thing to blame because it feels concrete, but it’s rarely the actual blocker for achievements.”
“Bloomberg reports over a quarter of Gen-Z investors consider sports betting part of their long-term financial strategy, with 52% apparently moving their investment funds into sports bets. Ah yes, the new investment strat known as “DraftKings.” Now, you might not be shocked to find out that placing 6-leg parlays isn’t a sound substitute for investing in blue-chip stocks.”
Building at 26
Legal Plunder, Gavin Newsome and Poop Diapers: Any sufficiently evolved regulatory regime will devolve into a system of legal plunder backed by a system of faux morality used to disguise it as safety and justice. Who could be against having newborns get diapers, do you hate babies? I must, because this is not access, this is theft. baby2baby, the nonprofit set to guzzle this largesse on a no bid/no shop contract is run by norah wienstein who sits on the board of california partners project with, wait for it, jennifer siebel newsom. and the costs are multiples of what you’d pay on amazon or costco. it’s legal plunder to favor a crony. California is about to spend $20 million of taxpayer money to give 100,000 newborns 400 diapers each through Baby2Baby.
Do the math with me:
100,000 babies × 400 diapers = 40 million diapers
$20,000,000 ÷ 40,000,000 = $0.50 per diaper!!!!!
Now walk into any Costco in California and you can buy the same quality diapers for .12 to .15 cents each! That’s $48 to $60 for 400 diapers. So the state is paying 8–10x more per diaper than a regular family buying in bulk. They could’ve just handed every low-income new mom $100 cash and told her to go to Costco. She’d get more diapers, better ones if she wanted, and still have money left for formula, wipes, or whatever the hell she actually needs. But nah… that wouldn’t let Gavin and his connected “nonprofit” girls running the show there cut ribbons, take photos, do galas and be friends with celebrities and brag about the “first-in-the-nation” program while skimming their cut for “administration” and “partnerships.”
Not on Your Bingo Card? “Our results show that within a socioeconomically vulnerable population, Black adults outlive Whites.”
Someone Else Should Pay I Guess: “When asked if they would support just a $1 monthly fee on their electricity bill to fight climate change, only 47 percent say they would while almost as many (43 percent) are opposed. Even at this level, opposition is greater than support among working-class voters. When the proposed fee is increased to $20, overall voter support plummets to 26 percent with 60 percent opposed. At $40, it is 19 percent support to 69 percent opposition; at $75 it is 15 percent vs. 72 percent; and at $100 it is 7:1 against (77 percent to 11 percent) paying such a fee to combat climate change.”
The Gals are Superior, Jigsaw Puzzle Edition: “recently learned about the world jigsaw puzzle championship, which is the first sport i've found where mixed genders compete and men do okay but women usually win.“
In China, the smarter you are, the LESS entrepreneurial you are
Are Robots and Asteroid Mining Overrated?
Against Brokenist Economics: “Roughly speaking, we have three major political movements — the MAGA right, the socialist left, and the “woke” left. But none of these seems especially interested in the kind of smart, reasonable policies that would significantly improve the material well-being of regular Americans. Their economic programs are all pretty bad.”
JEP Symposium on Tariff Economics
So, Are We Leaving the Labor Force or Not? A revisionist take on whether the labor force participation rate is really falling, or whether it is a relic of statistical and tax policy (not unlike the Tax Act of 1986).
The Free-Market Success of … “The Japanese rail model seems to work so well because (1) most of the network is private, (2) liberal land-use policies have allowed Japan's urban centres to develop enough density to properly support the use of rail, and (3) the rail operators make money in a bunch of other ways beyond rail. They're typically also in the business of real estate.”
The End of Universities: “The problems cited in the report will be familiar to readers of The Free Press, as they include nontransparent admissions standards, grade inflation, a culture that forces self-censorship, and outrageous tuition pricing. This year, George Washington University—hardly in the top tier of selective schools—started charging a sticker price approaching $100,000 a year for the privilege of studying there.” "I’d like to make some predictions about how higher education in America is going to muddle through. The bottom line is that it will not be pretty, or for that matter efficient, but 20 years from now, the basic product will still be recognizable. You will not be happy with it, and it will not be happy with you. We will all still be talking about it, because it will remain a major mechanism for doling out good jobs, mating opportunities, and social status. …Since our institutions of higher education are so imperfect to begin with, that gives them a kind of robustness. They can get a bit worse without it ending the world or ruining the next generation. Society will advance in other ways." Have a nice day.
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Chart of the Week
“As we can see in the figure below, American kids are not allowed to go very many places without being accompanied by an adult. By at age 14, a majority of American kids are not allowed to travel beyond their own street. Even at age 17, more than 60% cannot go beyond their own neighborhoods.”
The success of the “don’t go to college” fellowships at identifying top talent and promoting cultural change, it is more successful than the most famous incubator.
Photo of the Week
“Switzerland’s official topographic maps have been hiding secret drawings for decades: a duck, a fish, a hiker, even a marmot…”
Video/Documentary/Book/Cartoon of the Week
What has happened to the freedom our kids used to enjoy? And what does that mean for what happens here at college and beyond?
Quote of the Week
You cannot get educated by this self-propagating system in which people study to pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything. You learn something by doing it yourself, by asking questions, by thinking, and by experimenting.
– Richard Feynman