Recently, NPR has attracted more and more of my time because they really do a great job of digging into modern culture. This project, All Songs Considered, is a good example of this. It is remarkable because it forces you to look at things you like with empathetic eyes and try to imagine if other people would really like them too. I've always enjoyed such thought experiments. I definitely agree with Pink Floyd, Bob Marley and The Beatles being on the list. I'm a big fan of De La Soul and Paul Simon, but not sure they if they were quite as transcendent.
Joseph Stiglitz's recent article in Vanity Fair is an excellent analysis of the western world's current economic problems. Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University and a Nobel prize winner . The article asserts a central tenet of modern economic theory that strikes me as elementary . That tenet is that a strong economy is based upon the spending of a robust middle class . That, historically, is what drives consumption . In America, the owners of businesses are short sighted to simply cut taxes to their own class, because their own class benefits most from a flush middle class . What they gain in the short term, they lose in the medium to long term. In addition, they condemn their businesses and the overall economy to more frequent and unnecessary boom and bust cycles in the process. The American economy is undermining its own engine of growth, consumption , in the hapless pursuit of immediate riches for the wealthiest Americans, who need the m...
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