Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Story Construction Tells About America’s Economy Is Disturbing

From the New York Times, Ezra Klein’s opinion piece, The Story Construction Tells About America’s Economy Is Disturbing Here’s something odd: We’re getting worse at construction. Think of the technology we have today that we didn’t in the 1970s. The new generations of power tools and computer modeling and teleconferencing and advanced machinery and prefab materials […]

The iceberg of identity

by David Zetland (originally published at The one handed economist) The iceberg of identity How do you describe yourself to others? Me? I am a white American 53-year old male, of average height and weight, mostly white hair (a touch of pepper), green-blue eyes, and a decent tan. That description is perhaps 90 percent of […]

Two basic problems of a declining population in a Country

From the NYT opinion pages comes Paul Krugman’s description of the two basic problems of a declining population in a country, Dr. Krugman ues China as an example. China’s population declined last year, for the first time since the mass deaths associated with Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward in the 1960s. Or maybe it […]

Fredrick Douglass (1867) on race and integration in the US

by David Zetland (originally published at The one handed economist) I had heard of Douglass, but man oh man, I had no idea of his brilliance. His “Composite Nation” speech is full of wisdom and hope, offering a path to that “shining city on a hill” that Americans have had such a hard time reaching — mostly […]

Growth, GDP, and Faith

“This Pioneering Economist Says Our Obsession With Growth Must End,” NYT. Portions are (or much) taken from David Marchese’s interview with Herman Daly in 2022. Economist Herman Daly passed on, October 28 in Richmond, Virginia. at the age of 84. What made Herman Daly unique was his embracing of “the counterintuitive possibility our current pursuit […]