Rethinking the Economy

Some thoughts on my latest stab at a framework — “the economy is like a game where players set some of the rules.”
What works: it pulls together several points that I really like, although they still feel like they’re duct taped together.
What doesn’t: it doesn’t pull in the nitty-gritty details about how the economy [...]

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My Latest shot at a framework:
The economy is like a game where players get to set some of the rules.
Let’s break it down.
Rules: either through the government or through other forms of power, players can set/change some of the rules of the game. Some of these rules benefit small sets of players, like [...]

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In bad times and increasingly even in good times, layoffs have become a way of life in the US, and until the Wall Street meltdown, Europe’s been under increasing pressure to follow our lead. But according to a Newsweek article by Stanford professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton,
there is a growing body of [...]

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When two feet of snow slowed DC life to a crawl last week, I started catching up on old New Yorker’s. In an interesting December article on China’s “crash program for clean energy,” one paragraph caught my eye:
[a] message is gaining currency in Congress; it frames American leadership as manifesting not so much [...]

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Snow isn’t the only thing in DC causing a little chaos. Rep. Paul Ryan, ranking member on the Committee on that Budget, has produced a Roadmap to eliminate the budget deficit. To do it, he turns Medicare and Social Security into voucher programs and cuts benefit increases. From the Executive Summary:
* Preserves the existing [...]

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Now that the Supremes have said the corporations can run wild with political spending, what’s our next move? Back in November, the Brennan Center’s Ciara Torres-Spelliscy made an interesting suggestion in Business Week — do what the Brits do and put more power into shareholders’ hands:
A law passed in 2000 requires British companies [...]

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Monday’s post was my last thought on where enviros should go next after Copenhagen’s failure. Grist ’s Jonathan Hiskes reports on what Enviro leaders are thinking post-Copenhagen:
In the month since then, I’ve been trying to find out how the outcome at Copenhagen changed the U.S. climate movement. Whether advocates thought it [...]

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[Part 8 of the Beyond the Underpants Gnomes series, a response to Bill McKibben]
There’s a lot more I was going to write about in this series: how to build a bigger base of supporters, media strategy, the importance of tackling race and class head-on, et cetera. But my energy is flagging a [...]

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