Upcoming web video chat thingamabob
Here are some details on a live web chat I’m having on Friday. Feel free to send in some fun questions.
Here are some details on a live web chat I’m having on Friday. Feel free to send in some fun questions.
The key to good policymaking is to understand human nature. Want to increase how much money people save? You better know what they will do if you change the tax code. Want to reduce the threat of terrorism? All the security in the world won’t suffice if you don’t, at the same time, find ways…
Early in his book The Power Makers, Maury Klein does a fantastic job of explaining the importance that modern energy systems, like steam and electricity, played in human history: All the achievements of humanity down to about the eighteenth century were constrained by the inability to find more efficient ways to do things beyond the…
According to traditional economic theory, when people perform jobs for pay, they decide whether the pay they receive is large enough to justify the effort they put into the task at hand. But what if someone else is doing the same work for more pay? They probably won’t feel so great about their jobs anymore,…
“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…
I have long been a fan of single sentence paragraphs. I really have. When used properly, an occasional one-off sentence can really stand out, amidst the tumble of longer paragraphs made up of complicated sentences. Here’s a good example from The Power Broker. In this part of the book, Robert Moses has spent an intense…
Interesting take on the Bay of Pigs thinking in the Kennedy administration, as summarized in Jim Newton’s book on the Eisenhower Presidency: “The entire enterprise depended on an intelligence assumption that proved false, namely, that the Cuban people would greet the invasion force as liberators and turn against Castro.” Sounds eerily familiar to the Bush…