Rethinking the Economy

I’m taking this week off — to rest my hands and my brain, and to get some relief from the soup-like humidity of DC’s dog days of August. See ya next week!

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Seriously freaky:

I bumped into this because I want to see if Emotiv, a company that’s trying to create off the shelf mind-controlled gaming tools, had gotten any further since they blew their much-hyped launch a year or two ago. I’m interested because if I could read rss feeds & surf the web without using [...]

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You probably know the oil industry gets a lot of subsidies. But you may not know that, according to the New York Times,
an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.
[...]

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[Part 3 of the Promoting Broad Prosperity review]
The other thing I like about Topos’ Promoting Broad Prosperity framework is that they tested their ideas with opinion research. You’d think by 2009 this wouldn’t be a novel concept. If big corporations spend lots of time testing the best way to convince you to eat [...]

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This is pretty mind-blowing.
In 2008, the American National Election Study asked folks if Uncle Sam spent too much, too little, or about right in 12 areas.
The
results:
the respondents who identified themselves as “conservative” or “extremely conservative” had little appetite for specific spending cuts.
Very few conservatives said they favored reducing (or cutting [...]

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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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I’m stepping down the amount of pain medication I use for my hands. It’s a good thing — it means my hands are finally beginning to recover from the flareup 2 years ago — but it does mean I have to be extra careful right now.
So, I’m either going to skip blogging altogether or [...]

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In case you’re feeling the blues after last night’s elections, the Progressive States Network’s put together an interesting analysis of several polls taken in the last few months. The bottom line: “Progressive Values Dominant– But [We] Need to Rebuild Trust in Effectiveness of Government Action.” Some highlights:
•Six in 10 Americans believe that [...]

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[Part 4 of the Getting Green Done book review]
Unlike a lot of other books on the business of going green, Getting Green Done argues that government has to be a big part of the solution.
business is only one key to addressing climate change. Businesses are nimble, motivated (by profit), and powerful enough [...]

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Senator Edward Kennedy died last night. Robert Reich on just how deep a loss Kennedy’s passing is for our country:
America has had a few precious individuals who are both passionate about social justice and also understand deep in their bones its practical meaning. And we have had a few who possess great political shrewdness [...]

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