Economics

Has Capitalism Created a Wasteful Excess of Managers?1
- Politics, Economics
- January 18, 2023
Have you noticed there seem to be a lot of managers nowadays? It’s not just you. Professors at the Harvard Business Review estimate there is one manager for every 4.7 employees and claim this excessive amount of paper-pushers leads to a total loss of $3 trillion dollars per year in the US. This amount of waste
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The Economics of ‘Mending Wall’3
- Politics, Economics
- January 17, 2023
Mending Wall, the endearing 1914 poem by Robert Frost, offers important lessons about economics and cooperation. While the poem contains lessons about balancing tolerance and acceptance, modernity and tradition, and perhaps the efficacy of national borders, it remains open to interpretation. The surface-level message, repeated twice in the poem, is that “good fences make good neighbors,” which
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Five-Dollar Eggs and the Gift of Productivity 2
- Culture, Economics
- January 16, 2023
A dozen eggs now cost five dollars at my local grocery store. I would complain, but given that some people are reporting nine dollar eggs, it seems like a better idea to just shut up, be grateful, and ration the eggs I do have. An even better move would be to consider how smart my neighbor John*
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Southwest Meltdown: End Airline Corporate Welfare 0
- Politics, Economics
- January 12, 2023
Southwest Airlines experienced an enormous meltdown over the Christmas holiday week last month, cancelling thousands of flights, and losing track of—or outright losing—countless pieces of luggage. The airline was full of excuses, of course. As has become fashionable for government and corporate screw-ups, airline management attempted to blame Covid for staffing problems. Southwest also blamed
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American Made: What Sort of Worker Are You?36
- Culture, Economics
- January 4, 2023
For Christmas this year, my daughter gave me an unusual gift. She hired a service to deep clean my house for four hours. At 9:15 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 17, a small car pulled into my driveway. Two men and a woman got out and removed buckets and supplies from the trunk, and we introduced
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The New-Normaling of Blackouts 2
- Politics, Economics
- January 4, 2023
On Christmas Eve, 2022, in North Carolina, something happened that had never happened before in living memory. People across the state were alerted by their power company, Duke Energy, that there would be rolling blackouts in the aftermath of a severe (but “not exceedingly rare”) winter wind storm. At least 12 other states received similar and previously unheard-of
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