The spirit of this blog can be summed up thus: Know thyself! These words were inscribed in the stones of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and they are the essential mystery of the human experience, both as an individual and as groups, throughout time.
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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