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Inconspicuous Consumption in the Age of Affluence
In an earlier post, Them That Has, Gets: The Rich Get a Lot Richer, I mentioned that the 5% of the households with the highest income accounted for about 35% of total consumption in the United States. This percent will probably rise in the future if the long-term trend towards more income inequality continues to…
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Putting a Price on Professors
Over this weekend (October 23-24), The Wall Street Journal had an article entitled “Putting a Price on Professors,” which you can read at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703735804575536322093520994.html As a reader of murder mysteries and a fan of the Sopranos, the title scared the hell out of me. After I calmed down, I realize they were talking about something…
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Managing Yourself
I generally think management books are a waste of time. But occasionally I come across some advice I think is worthwhile. Such as this: Conscious organization is the great spiritual task of man. We speak of the “composition” of a picture; it is the way the artist has organized his material. The harmony of a…
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Superpower: The United States and Terrorism
When al Qaeda struck the World Trade towers and the Pentagon in 2001, the United States had been the world’s only superpower for ten years. But what does it mean to be a superpower in the modern world? A world of over 200 countries, multinational corporations, global financial markets, global mobility of people and information,…
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The Oil Curse
I asked the following question on one of my economics exams: You are the leader of a country that is trying to economically develop. Your head geologist bursts into your office with the news that he has just found a huge pool of oil. He hasn’t told anyone. What do you do? The answer: Shoot…
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Why Study History? Lessons for Americans
Thucydides A friend of mine recently said that the most “useless” course he took in college was history. Let’s start with Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War. This was a war that took place over 2,400 years ago. What possible relevance could it have to Americans? In this war, Athens and Sparta, the two…