economics

Poverty Makes You Stupid

Whether you're short money or time, the lack impairs your ability to think clearly and find abundance. A new way of looking at scarcity may offer a way out.

Can a Little Inflation Be Good?

Let me jump to the end and say right at the start that I don't think so. However, there's a serious argument being made right now among economists and economic policy makers that h

Recession Journal V: Mind, The GAP

Some well known mainstays of Corporate America have decided not to wait for an official recovery but to sell the idea of it to you. Can we collectively as corporate citizens and co

Understand Capital Costs

Especially for things people often buy on credit, like a car or a house, there's a tendency to divide the ownership into two periods--while the loan is being paid off, where the it

Book review: Life Inc.

Corporations were invented a few hundred years ago--created to increase the wealth and power of favored businessmen (and the governments that favored them). They have become such

The new normal economy

The economy is way short of full employment, so naturally, consumer spending is down. Sooner or later employment, I think, will return to normal levels. Consumer spending will re

Another path to recovery: higher incomes

Preventing a collapse of the financial system is part of preventing a depression. However, the shorthand term for this--getting the banks able and willing to lend--is misleading.

Peak Debt

Is there a limit to how much Americans can spend? Clearly there is: All they earn, minus savings and service on their existing debt, plus new borrowing. Since the Bureau of Econ

What I've been trying to say

You can choose how you want to live. If you choose to live simply, you gain a certain kind of freedom. In particular, you're free to choose to do the work that's the most satisfy

The weird logic of economic growth

Ever notice that we have names for a period when the economy isn't growing (recession or depression), but there's no name for when it is growing?  If they call it anything,

Common Currency: A Primer

These postings will pertain to the economy of life, which is all about personal alternatives that shape our financial world.

Trade versus localization

Localization--eating locally grown foods and buying locally produced goods--has become trendy just lately. For the past twenty years, though, globalization has been the dominate f

Should George W. Bush write for Wisebread?

I'm not sure how many of you watch the news or read the news blogs on a daily basis. I know I can't, it's way too depressing to do every day. But when I saw that George W. Bush, ou