Category: Economics

spend time with poor people, be friends and neighbors
I love it when Eve Tushnet gets on her soapbox about poverty and virtue, and this great piece about the much-touted “success sequence” is no exception: The people I speak with believe they have a responsibility—there’s that word again—to achieve...

what it costs our kids
Since yesterday’s post was about the struggles of raising children overseas, here’s Tara Ann Thieke on the problems at home: But when I go home to my newspapers and social media feeds I read about how we need more early...

there are reasons why poor people eat what they eat
Those of us interested in public health and nutrition have heard a lot in the past few years about “food deserts” — places where it’s hard to get fresh and healthy food. It turns out that while poor people may...

follow the money, asthma prevention edition
The Washington Post explains why prevention gets shafted when it comes to treating chronic diseases like asthma: Both [major teaching hospitals in Baltimore] receive massive tax breaks in return for providing “community benefit,” a poorly defined federal requirement that they...

Sympathy for the Trump Voter
Should we sympathize with Trump voters? I found this essay from Rick Perlstein pretty enlightening, even if I disagree with a lot of what he had to say. In short, Perlstein writes about the captivating experience of dealing with a very intelligent Trump...

What Wendell Berry Gets Wrong About Wendell Berry
Tamara Hill Murphy’s Plough essay, The Hole in Wendell Berry’s Gospel, is well worth reading even if I disagree with much of it. She gives two principal concerns: The first accusation is of papering over the flaws of rural life...