Social distancing is giving us a lot of time to think. And except for keeping each other safe from this disease, what could be more useful than trying to learn from the pandemic for the future. This is not a commentary on the abject failure of the Federal government to deal with the pandemic in […]
Readers of Stirring the Pot know that I am deeply concerned about the issues of global climate change and inequality in the United States. Climate change, or the larger issue of global change, is an existential threat to modern human civilization. Inequality strikes at the very heart of the American ideal of “liberty and justice […]
I am inspired by students from Dalhousie University in Halifax who have been getting tattoos. These are simple tattoos, just three digits, placed somewhere conspicuous. The number is the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere in their birth year. Were I inclined to get a tattoo, mine would be 319. Since my birth […]
The trouble with taxes is that no one likes to pay them. We want the services of government (good roads, public schools, national defense, a functioning court system, etc.) but would rather that someone else pay for these things. Yet taxation is necessary in modern society. Taxes are needed to fund what economists call public […]
The new administration in Washington continues to limit immigration to the U.S.A. with policies questioning the suitability of people from various countries to become Americans. This made me think of immigrants in my own family. In 1913 my grandfather, William Oliver Anderson, immigrated to Massachusetts from Glasgow, Scotland. He made a career in the shade-grown […]
Robert Gordon’s 2016 book The Rise and Fall of American Growth is a comprehensive history of “the U.S. standard of living since the civil war.” Gordon, a Northwestern University economist, details changes in consumption of food, clothing, shelter, and transport during a period when Americans experienced unprecedented improvement in quality of life. From brutally difficult, […]
Presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to refuse releasing any of his income tax records. Pundits speculate about the reasons behind this secrecy. Perhaps he has not been as successful a business operator as he claims. Maybe he has not been as generous in his support of causes embraced in his campaign, like veteran’s groups, as […]
