Trump’s Great Leap Backward

Trump’s Great Leap Backward

 There is a strange similarity of thinking between Trump’s tariff-driven bid to “restore” U.S. manufacturing and Mao Zedong’s ill-fated Great Leap Forward (1958-62). They do not share an ideology but a method: both are top-down attempts to force economic reality to...
Please Please Please Give Me Money

Please Please Please Give Me Money

  For only 16 cents a day, less than the cost of one cup of coffee per month, yada, yada, yada … you can support ? They’re out there, the Christmas hucksters, appealing to your guilty heart, yes guilty, you know you’ve sinned and you want to atone painlessly so you...
Billionaire

Billionaire

“Love you all, but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me. If you are a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?” Billie Eilish, after receiving the Music Innovator Award. At the ceremony, Stephen Colbert announced that Eilish donated...
In Praise Of Idleness

In Praise Of Idleness

  Bertrand Russell wrote his essay on the benefits of doing nothing in 1932 during the Great Depression which destroyed the jobs and lives of millions. You can read the essay at this LINK or scroll down to the bottom of this post and listen to it.Russell argues that...
Politics and Markets 3

Politics and Markets 3

 If capitalism undermines democracy (Lindblom, see Politics and Markets 1) and democracy undermines capitalism (Schumpeter, see Politics and Markets 2) then how can we make them compatible?That is the question we face today: authoritarian capitalism, democratic...
Politics and Markets 2

Politics and Markets 2

 In Politics and Markets 1, using Charles Lindblom’s model, I discussed how capitalism can undermine democracy. Let’s turn this around and look at how democracy can undermine capitalism.The influential economist Joseph Schumpeter finished his career at Harvard...