As economic beings, are we wired for fairness or for greed?
One of the 20th Century’s most influential economists, Milton Friedman, spent a lifetime advocating that business has no legitimate goal except the pursuit of ever-greater profits. Should we be guided solely by self-interest or even greed in the pursuit of our economic lives? Continue reading
Asheville craftsman Brian Boggs is a man on a mission.
After 30 years of working in wood, Boggs is recognized as a premier designer and crafter of custom-built tables and chairs. Now he has his eyes on a bigger prize. He has set out to create a new kind of business structure that not only makes his own business better, but also provides a sturdier business umbrella for other independent woodworkers. He calls it the Boggs Collective. Continue reading
When historian Thomas Carlyle first called Economics “the dismal science,” his targets for scorn were the economists he feuded with in the mid-19th century.
If Carlyle were here today, he might observe that nothing much has changed. We are still plagued by mistaken beliefs that are passed along to us as something akin to gospel truths.
One of the zanier ones has popped up again. It goes something like this: it’s really good that rich people have lots of disposable income, because it is their investment and spending that creates all those jobs for the rest of us.
Of course, that is spectacularly untrue, but that does not stop its proponents from trotting it out, especially when there is talk of more taxes for the wealthy. Continue reading
Tomorrow is the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination near Dealey Plaza in Dallas, as he rode through the streets in an open car greeting the crowds who had come just for a glimpse of JFK and Jackie as the motorcade passed by.
It doesn’t seem possible that it was so long ago. The memories of that day and the days that followed are burnt deeply into the cells of my brain, as they are for so many of my contemporaries.
I don’t know if it is possible for young people today to quite understand how much we loved him. He was born in 1917, but he came to power in 1960, just as we were starting to claim our own power. For us, Kennedy epitomized the freshness and the optimism of the early 1960’s, and the break with the past that we all prided ourselves on. Continue reading
Imagine if you could find a healthcare plan that offered excellent coverage, didn’t exclude pre-existing conditions, incorporated several features to promote better health, and was incredibly affordable to boot?
Let’s call such a plan the Neighborhood Health Improvement Plan – NIP for short. Here’s how it works. A group of neighbors gather together to develop a more sensible and less-costly alternative to our crazy-quilt system of health insurance. They decide to join up with other neighborhood groups with similar intent to create a self-insurance system, which increases their buying power and spreads the risk across a wider number of people.
Each neighborhood NIP chapter pays a small monthly fee per member per month for medical coverage. Each chapter is also responsible for paying the first $5000 of medical expenses incurred by all the members in its group. After that deductible, NIP pays 90% of all expenses. Continue reading
One of my favorite pieces of technology is an IPhone app called Timewerks. I use it to manage billing for my consulting work. All I have to do is log my hours as I work, and then, at the end of each month, Timewerks calculates the billable hours and amounts, prepares invoices, emails them for payment, tracks outstanding bills, and archives all the data.
I love this software. It gives me a paperless, and easy-to-use billing system. It is, as they say, a “killer app,” and I bought it in the Apple Store for less than five bucks.
A year ago, I explored launching a business barter network for Western North Carolina. At the core of any barter network is a complex piece of barter management software that combines the following: an online barter marketplace; a database of participating businesses; a banking component that tracks all of the debits, credits, and fees on thousands of transactions and businesses; realtime statements; 24/7 access to the system; and an accounting system strong enough to withstand IRS scrutiny.
You can’t run a barter system without this kind of software. If you built it yourself, it would probably take several person-years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Last year, it was available on the web on a sliding scale that started at $50 a month, plus a small piece of the network’s action. Continue reading
Is the US economy running out of jobs? If it is, we may be saved by, of all things, a shift to a four-day week.
Here’s the background. It’s possible that we are headed for a future with a permanent shortage of work. There appears to be a growing gap between how many jobs we need and how many jobs our economy can produce. Continue reading
