How Big Business Is Winning

As government regulations are crafted to favor larger enterprises and labor unions decline in their ability to fight for better wages and working conditions, the lack of any countervailing power means that profits will rise and wages will fall and the economic situation of a large portion of the population will worsen.

Big Business

Paul Krugman--Thinking About a Trade War

The effects may not be overwhelmingly large, but big enough to notice and probably concentrated in specific sectors of the economy.

The Effects of a Trade War

Paul Krugman--The Effects of the Tax Cuts on Business Investment

There has been almost no economics underlying Trump's policies. His advisors are hacks and the best of them--Gary Cohn--resigned when Trump wouldn't listen to reason over tariffs. Navarro, Kudlow and the rest mark the march to Fox News talking heads as political and economic advisors. If Sarah Sanders does leave will Hannity be the new press secretary?

Tax Cuts and Leprechauns

A Truck Full of Money

Just finished reading “A Truck Full of Money” by Tracy Kidder. Great book. Kidder is an excellent writer about tech. One of my all time favorites is “Soul of a New Machine “ written in 1981. It was his first book and won numerous awards. I highly recommend both books.

Flogging Molly

The Best of Flogging Molly

A Better Electoral System

Ranked Choice Voting

Grownups Try in Vain to Reason with Petulant Trump

The Quest to Grow the First Great American Wine Grape

Growing the "Super Grape"

Krugman: Coal, Cash and Bad Faith

Ten years ago the big debate was whether we should adopt a comprehensive strategy to limit greenhouse gas emissions... [H]owever, technology has been coming to our rescue. The single biggest source of greenhouse emissions, the thing we really need to stop, is coal-fired electricity generation (which has lots of other public health costs too.) And a funny thing happened: coal-fired power became uneconomical. Instead of building new plants, we’re retiring old ones. Partly this was the result of cheap natural gas thanks to fracking. Increasingly, however, we’re looking at the effects of the technological revolution in renewables, which has produced spectacular declines in the cost of wind and solar power. Even if you believe in the sanctity of free markets — which you shouldn’t — you should recognize that markets are now driving a great transition to clean energy.

Coal, Cash and Bad Faith

Jerkish

Philip Roth:

"I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”