Make free 1Mbps broadband for every citizen.

Or, we will be corporate forever.

Semper Fee.

The dark, dirty secret you learn when you run the program at Davos is that the vast majority of CEOs have nothing to say.

Changes in the Wealth and Income of Those at the Bottom Over the Past 30 Years

illicit is damn common

For General Electric Co., hawking subprime mortgages was a long way from making light bulbs and jet engines.

That didn’t stop the industrial giant from jumping into the subprime business in 2004, lending blue-chip respectability to the market for risky home loans by paying roughly half a billion dollars to buy California-based WMC Mortgage Corp.

What GE got in the bargain, former WMC employees say, was a place where erstwhile shoe salesmen, ex-strippers and even a former porn actress could sign on as sales reps and make big money pushing home loans.

Americans should know that people in the UK have a greater chance than we do of improving their financial circumstances – 42% of Americans never escape the lowest income bracket, compared to 30% of Brits.

The reality is that America is more class-bound than other advanced nations.

If you really want to achieve the American Dream, move to Denmark. A child born into the bottom fifth on the income scale in Denmark will almost certainly better his economic situation: only one quarter of those at the economic thin end stay there. The same is true of other Scandinavian countries.

American income inequality is becoming positively third world, with some of the richest US states having the largest populations of poor people. In California, 22% live in poverty. In Florida, it’s 20%.

When will success not merely be viewed in terms of ‘more’, but in terms of ‘better’?

Gross Domestic Product “measures everything… except that which makes life worthwhile.” —1968 speech by Robert Kennedy

Do Unions Kill Prosperity?

Not So Much.

Sarah Palin’s Socialist Utopia of Alaska is second only to the Evil Empire New York in union representation.

Compare union representation to GDP per capita, by state:

…in Ayn Rand’s world, a man who self-righteously instigates the collapse of society, thereby inevitably killing millions if not billions of people, is portrayed as a messiah figure rather than as a genocidal prick, which is what he’d be anywhere else. Yes, he’s a genocidal prick with excellent engineering skills. Good for him. He’s still a genocidal prick.

What I Think About Atlas Shrugged – Whatever.

1) Reporting has had one clear beneficiary: news organizations themselves.

2) We have crossed over into a new media era, one in which the rules, norms, forms, and whole institutions are in flux. There’s reason for both hope and despair.

3) But the question is not whether a reporter is either skeptical or cynical; the question is, About what?

The 1980s or 1990s economy will *never* miraculously reappear.

Total Credit Market Debt Owed

Food Price Volatility Hits the World

Why Oil Prices Are Killing the Economy

The OECD created a tower of debt, but no longer has the cheap natural resources to pay it back through growth. So, we’ll pay it with paper. —Gregor Macdonald