John Githongo warns that in Africa, uneven economic growth can lead to a combustible situation when inequality festers and is not well managed [ht:cr]: Across the world, as growth has spread and accelerated, so has inequality. It is clear that growth is often not enough to guarantee stable, cohesive societies. Rather than create a rising [...]
Archive for July, 2011
Wealth Breeds Rage
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Development on July 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
You Are What you Eat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food on July 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Photographer Mark Menjivar (h/t kms) has a great photo gallery exploring food issues at the most personal level- a person’s refrigerator. Mark writes, An intense curiosity and questions about stewardship led me to begin to make these unconventional portraits. A refrigerator is both a private and a shared space. One person likened the question, “May [...]
‘Wicked Smart’ and on her way out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged financial crisis on July 19, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Despite the loud calls for Obama to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she is now unfortunately on her way out. This is a huge loss for middle class Americans and another victory for Wall Street. Warren was the ideal leader of the CFPB, an concept which she helped inspire. There has been [...]
Fixation of Belief
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged philosophy of science on July 16, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Michael Shermer is promoting a new book, The Believing Brain: How we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths. The argument is that our brains evolved to first determine beliefs, and then find the evidence to justify those beliefs. This is why people have strongly held convictions about religion and politics, despite the inability to [...]
Ideological Crisis of Capitalism
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Economic Crisis on July 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Joseph Stiglitz has always seemed to me to be among the more reflective members of the profession. Here, he steps back to take a broader perspective on the relationship between economic theory and the economy: Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to [...]
Why Economics Must Loose the Shackles of Science
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alternatives, history and philosophy of economics on July 5, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Much post-crisis navel-gazing in economics has concluded something like, “economists treated economics as a science, even though it isn’t,” or, “it’s more like biology than physics.” The implicit assumption is that the hard sciences are science wrought certain and unassailable. In his book The Blind Spot, William Byers belies that notion by speaking to the uncertainties that scientists [...]
Your Local Economic Impact
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Local Economies on July 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
If every family in the South Bend-Mishawaka metro area shifted just $10 of its monthly spending to locally-owned, independent businesses, over $9,958,301 would be directly returned to the community. That’s the calculation from Independent We Stand, an organization of independent business owners who are trying to inform their communities of the benefits and importance of [...]
