Political Courage and Cowardice on Taxes

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 […]

Call Me a Luddite

Back in January I wondered out loud, Was the Internet a Good Idea?  To my way of thinking the information technology (IT) revolution of the past 25 years has been a mixed blessing.  It both created amazing tools for doing everyday tasks and introduced whole new means of mindless addiction and criminal opportunities. This IT […]

Reading Maine

For the New Year I have been reading again many of my old favorite works of fiction. Re-reading good books is a pleasure.  Included in my list are things like Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief (the great Canadian novel?) and John LeCarre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (every time I read the […]

Biomass Energy and Climate Change

The new administration in Washington is filled with climate change deniers.  They reject the consensus among scientists that human behaviors emitting greenhouse gases contribute significantly to climate change.  The reality — climate change is part of a larger problem better known as global change.  Over 9 billion humans, many living relatively sumptuous lifestyles like ours […]

The Most Important Economist You Probably Have Never Heard About

Economists become famous by winning the Nobel Prize (technically the Swedish National Bank’s Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) or becoming public intellectuals like John Kenneth Galbraith or Paul Krugman.  But economists do not have to be famous to be important.  Significant contributions come in many guises. The most important economist you […]

Two Facts and One Big Question About American Health Care

For several years, Republicans in Congress routinely made a show of voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which they pejoratively labeled Obamacare.  Having refused to participate in the crafting of health care reform, they offered no alternative to the ACA.  Nor did they suggest ways to improve the system despite the President’s call […]

Immigrants in My Family

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 […]

Be Happy You Didn’t Live in 1870

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, […]