Rethinking the Economy

Grist writer and North Carolina farmer Tom Philpott, commenting on an American Prospect article, explains why consumer choice isn’t enough to bring about an organic, locally grown, sustainable food system:
the example of a New York State farmer named Morse Pitts. He sells the bounty of his 15-acre Windfall Farm in the Hudson [...]

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A nice, short explanation by Krugman of why the latest freak out over Social Security’s future makes no sense:
Social Security is a government program funded by a dedicated tax. There are two ways to look at this. First, you can simply view the program as part of the general federal budget, with the the [...]

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It’s time, says Robert Reich, to drop a Top Hat on the corruption spewed by the market:
In the words of lobbyist Lauren Maddox, “The policy process is an extension of the market battlefield.”
The answer is not necessarily found in broader or stricter “ethics rules” barring specific gifts to politicians. Such rules may have [...]

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When I lived in the Bay Area, I did what Mark Mykleby said we should do: I biked to work. I don’t in DC, and it isn’t just the awful summer weather. It’s simple — I don’t want to die.
In DC, I have friends here who bike to work every day. They tell [...]

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Mark Mykleby, a friend of Thomas Friedman who works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Office of the Chairman, published a letter in “his hometown paper, the Beaufort Gazette in South Carolina,” about the BP oil disaster. Friedman liked the letter so much he republished it in his column.
This isn’t BP’s or Transocean’s [...]

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Portland Mayor Sam Adams has an ambitious goal:
We’re also working to make every section of Portland a complete 20-minute neighborhood to strengthen our local economy. Two-thirds of all trips in Portland and in most American cities are not about getting to and from work. So if I can offer quality, affordable goods and services, [...]

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I’ve been doing a little thinking about how to talk about values and choice. For the hell of it, I decided to see how Republican Party websites do it. Most of them were cookie-cutter, negative, and pretty boring — cut taxes, cut government regulations, and cut wasteful spending. The Texas Republican Party put a little [...]

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Here’s my new working definition of a more democratic economy:
A more democratic economy is an economy where the major stupid decisions you have to live with are ones you helped to make.

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I heard an interview with Steve Hill, author of Europe’s Promise, in which he said Germany’s new chancellor Merkel, is in favor of the German policy that pushes companies to reduce the number of hours employees work rather than laying them off. A little Googling and voila, a NYT description of Merkel’s [...]

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