A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Economy

  • The oil crash: a very inconvenient truth

    I just finished watching this extremely well-done documentary (if you subscribe to Netflix you can stream it from their site as I did). If anything, it was more terrifying than An Inconvenient Truth. I think that’s because the consequences–drastic economic dislocation, a series of resource wars, etc.–are more immediate and viscerally disturbing. (Obviously the two Read more

  • Moyers on “Changing the way we eat”

    Bill Moyers interviews Michael Pollan about food policy, public health, climate change, and what, if anything, Barack Obama can, should, or might do to reform our food system. Read more

  • Less Friedman, more Schumacher

    Patrick Deneen calls for an economic re-thinking on the Right. It remains to be seen, I think, whether the Right or the Left will be the first to seriously re-examine the assumptions underlying an unlimited growth/unlimited consumption economy. The Left has a long history of attending to social justice issues and questions of equality, but, Read more

  • “A clear mandate for clean energy”

    Grist is hopeful about Obama’s energy plan: The key is the long game. Obama worked carefully, diligently, and adeptly to get elected on a clean energy agenda. Despite the many reasons he gave greens to recoil along the way, he got there. There is every reason to believe he will now work carefully, diligently, and Read more

  • Socialism and stuff

    Great piece by Hendrik Hertzberg on the “socialism” nonsense: The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent. The latter is what it would Read more

  • Production matters: the limits of locavorism

    Ezra Klein points out that eating locally is neither feasible for a lot of people, nor is it necessarily the best way to reduce carbon emissions with your food choices. (Granted, there are other reasons for eating locally.) Peter Singer and Jim Mason make a similar point in The Ethics of What We Eat (a Read more

  • Europe exporting its overfishing to Africa?

    This is terrible. It looks like European fleets, with the help of African governments selling lucrative fishing rights, are overfishing African waters and destroying the livelihood of small fishermen to boot. As a further consequence, many of these people, now deprived of a way to make a living, are coming to Europe as illegal immigrants. Read more

  • “Spread the wealth”

    Daniel Larison: […] the idea that the message of Spread The Wealth would be a political loser at the present time is bizarre, which makes McCain’s insistence on identifying Obama as the “spread the wealth” candidate even more bizarre. I mean, does McCain want to get crushed in a landslide? Let’s think about this. There Read more

  • Pollan’s open letter to the next president

    On food, farming, and health–here. Read more

  • Re-thinking free trade

    You should check out this TNR piece by Chris Hayes, Washington editor of the Nation (and friend of this blog). Chris talked to a bunch of economists from across the political spectrum and noted a distinct sea change in attitudes toward free trade agreements (FTA). In essence: FTAs provide a measureable, though slight, increase in Read more