LET’S CHARGE PEOPLE MORE TO COME TO AMERICA

Upping the visa application fee (from $100 to $131) should encourage them to come.  Especially when they know the hike is to help cover the cost of fingerprinting them.  I think Macy*s should take a page from this playbook and charge people $5 to enter the store, to help defray the cost of shoplifter surveillance.

KRISTOL

The New York Times has added William Kristol to its op-ed page, presumably on the theory it’s good to have someone who’s been pretty consistently wrong to balance those, like Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, who have been pretty consistently right.  My pal Charles Kaiser goes into more detail in his weekly column here.

SEX, ETC.

Feel awkward having “the talk” with your kids?  Just have them click here.  (But check it out yourself first, perhaps by watching  this clip.  Prepare to be horrified but what the teens say is today’s norm.)

WHO INSURES THE TERM LIFE INSURERS?

Mark Lucia:  “As a new dad evaluating term life insurance, should I be concerned about finding an insurance company that is somehow less likely to be sideswiped by a potentially huge natural disaster?  I have this fear that even an A+ rated insurer could go under if (when?) we have a series of Katrina-level disasters.  Are there ways to evaluate how much exposure a life insurer has to specific kinds of risk?  In other words, maybe it’s more prudent to find a lower-rated mutual company focused on life and auto policies than a top-rated behemoth with lots of hurricane/flood/earthquake-type policies.  Just curious if you have given this any thought.”

F Congratulations on becoming a dad.  The life insurance arm of any insurer is likely to be separately incorporated, and covered by separate state-insurance guarantee funds.  The chances that you will die before your child is grown are slim.  The chances that a highly-rated life insurer will collapse are slim.  The chances of both happening at the same time – and with insufficient guarantee-fund backup or government intervention – are real, I suppose, but infinitesimal.