Economics Behaving Badly
George Loewenstein and I have an Op-Ed in the New York Times today. Check it out, and feel free to add your comments.
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Tax Me Baby: The True Cost of Coke
Taxes are inevitable, or so they say. How much we should tax our citizenry, however, is debatable. Tea party members think we tax too much, and many liberals think we don’t tax quite enough. I’m not going to take a position on the overall tax burden right now. Instead, I’ll point out two things I…
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Gossip and The New York Times
It was a confession, one that was perhaps more revealing than the confessor realized. Mark Leibovich, writing about Politico in The New York Times Magazine in April, felt the need to disclose that he had known Mike Allen, the subject of his essay, for a dozen or so years, and that he was a fan…
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The Audacity of Nope
“No” isn’t an ideology. “Nada” is no way to govern a country. “Nope” won’t turn around the economy, and political rope-a-doping won’t balance the federal budget. Yet if you had to summarize the three top “accomplishments” of the Republican party since Obama took office, they would be no, nada, and nope. Because it is out…
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Abortion, Health Care and the Psychology of Compromise
It is a dangerous time to compromise in the U. S. government. A Republican working with Obama is dead meat in the next primary. A Democrat who works with Republicans? Well, you saw what happened to Joe Lieberman the last time he ran as a Democrat. Politicians are understandably worried that if they collaborate across…
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On the Art of Choosing What to Read: Essay Inspired by Iyengar's New Book
So many books, so little time. I am 47 years old. Assuming, in a near best case scenario, that I live 40 more years, and that I read around one book per week the rest of my life, I will finish 2,000 more books before I die. That’s a lot of verbiage. But think about…
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It's Healthcare Reform, Stupid!
Common wisdom ain’t always that wise. The pundits have concluded that Obama made a big mistake by focusing on health care reform this past year, when he should have focused on the economy. Politically speaking, the pundits are correct. Obama has appeared to be ignoring the economy at the expense of health care reform, and…
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Rational Rationing in Western Michigan
See a nice TV news segment from Grand Rapids Michigan last night (March 8th), that followed up on a symposium on health care rationing, where Norm Daniels (one of my heros–a philosopher from Harvard) and I address the need to discuss how to set appropriate limits to contain health care costs. Click on my picture to link to the colloquy coverage.
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What are health insurance companies good for?
They take our money, and hand it over to hospitals and doctors, while keeping a good portion for themselves. What a waste, huh? Well, yes and no. To see a really illuminating discussion of health insurance companies, and what they really do, see this blog http://michaelbrownmd.blogspot.com/2010/02/health-insurance-does-not-earn-its.html by Michael Brown– the Chief Information Officer at Harvard…
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Another Middle Age Facebook User
My kids are interested in learning how to use Facebook. So I figured it was time for me to learn something about this tool, meaning that at the ripe young age of 47, I’ve joined the ranks of the Facebook users. Now I need help from all of you to teach me how to learn…