Category: Economics

Protected: A Moral Dilemma

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Wealth Inequality: Causes and Cures

… only a carefully designed mechanism for redistribution can compensate for the natural tendency of wealth to flow from the poor to the rich in a market economy. Is Inequality Inevitable? The “natural tendency” mentioned here ^ is the hypothetical outcome of a random process. It is remarkable that, in a market economy, although there …

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The Only Thing Difficult to Predict

Jill Lapore does a brilliant take-down of a flurry of recent literature themed “The Robots are Coming!” in her recent (March 4, 2019) New Yorker piece The Robot Caravan. Lapore’s acerbic and erudite wit skewers the doomsayers and technophobes who see the apocalypse coming. Her argument could be summed up in one paragraph from the …

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Does Our National Accounting System Reflect Our Values?

A rhetorical question, I’m afraid. We (I’m wearing my Economist’s Hat here) have long been aware of the hidden cost of externalities, those insidious, unmeasured penalties incurred by society in a profit-driven economy. In our national accounts, for example, we measure the dollar value of energy produced (such as electricity or gasoline), but we do …

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