All essays that are primarily about economics
This past summer, we stayed at Oakland House Seaside Resort, in Brooksville, Maine, along the Eggemoggin Reach in Penobscot Bay. The property is large and consists of several business entities. We lodged in the hostel, which is a remodeled old farm house, with six private rooms, kitchen, dining/living area, and a small library. Room rentals […]
Thanks to the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders, economic inequality and socialism have become topics of political debate, capturing the attention of both the electorate and the media. Sanders has correctly perceived public dismay and disgust with the rapidly growing divide between the 1% and the rest of us. He has also accurately observed […]
Bernie Sanders has staked his campaign for the presidency on public disgust and anger over the unconscionable and rapidly growing gap between the richest Americans and most everyone else. He rails against the “billionaire class,” the big banks, and the multiple ways in which the 1% control the government and just about all other institutions. […]
Karen looked up from her computer, on which she had been reading newspapers from places where we have lived, and said, “Geraldine died.” I was lying in a hostel bed, relaxing after a ten-mile hike along the ocean, the beach flanked by tall dunes. It had been a picture-perfect afternoon, the sky festooned with great […]
Today is the 87th anniversary of the state-sponsored murder of Sacco and Vanzetti. What follows is a film review and essay that I wrote a few years ago. I think you will find it interesting. There are links for further study. “If it had not been for this thing, I might have lived out my […]
A recent article by New York Times journalist Neil Irwin finds that the housing market is still operating as a drag on the economy. While a few markets like New York City and San Francisco are booming and perhaps even reaching the “bubble” stage, most are not. One reason for this is the lower rate […]
A recent op-ed in the New York Times described the construction of “the mother of all luxury property developments,” on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, complete with branches of famous museums and a university. We learn that: Saadiyat’s extraordinary offer to the buyers of its opulent villas is that they will be able to stroll […]
Karl Marx’s famous dictum sums up my teaching philosophy: “The philosophers of the world have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” As I came to see it, Marx had uncovered the inner workings of our society, showing both how it functioned and why it had to be transcended […]
The name, “Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science,” tells us that those who give the prize believe that economics is a science. This is certainly what my professors thought when I was a student. One argued that every good economist is a good physicist. There was even a joke that an exceptional economist who dies […]
A left-wing economist with whom I have a marginal acquaintance sent me an email a few days ago. He was angry that I had accused him of being a “true believer.” This was in reference to what Karl Marx termed the “tendency of the rate of profit to fall.” Put simply, my accuser is certain […]