Tag: economy
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How to Give Alms
Let’s start with some exegesis. Matthew 6:2-4. Go. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not…
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The Rubber Band Wallet
A friend recently suggested that I write a blog post about my wallet. Seemed like a good idea to me. When you look around at the literature on the internet about how to improve blog traffic, one of the suggestions that often comes up is to teach something that readers can use. And since The…
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Environmentalism as a Politics of Fear
My friend Bryan and I have been engaged in a discussion for several weeks now about the politics of environmentalism and the prospect of climate change. We are both of a rather ascetic bent, at heart—the sense that the only way forward for the human community is a simpler existence made of nonviolence, plant-eating, and…
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The Future of Publishing Round-up
This month I left my part-time job at The New York Times. Actually, now that I’m done, I can forget about Times style conventions and write “the New York Times” or even “the New York Times”! Very satisfying. Anyway. It was a fine place to work (particularly thanks to the cafeteria) but after a year,…
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Can Islam Save the Economy?
Today Religion Dispatches published an article that came out of my travels in the Middle East last fall. It’s about the financial and philosophical subculture of Islamic economics—the attempt to create an economic system consistent with religious law. This stuff has attracted a lot of attention lately because the very financial instruments that triggered the…
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Population Bombs
Population was to the 1970s what climate change is to today. Academia was in a frenzy, governments dragged their feet, and disaster seemed unavoidable anyway. The Al Gore of that period was Paul Ehrlich, a biology professor at Stanford who wrote the mega-bestseller The Population Bomb. After the mass starvations he had imagined for the…
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Have Your Markets and Your Health Care Too
Last night, a dear friend of mine told me that he may have lost his health coverage through Medicaid. No warning. He got a call from the pharmacy saying the insurance didn’t go through. If this is true, he may be in real trouble. He has cystic fibrosis, and he needs about $70,000/year in medicine…
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The Uses of Free Culture
Tonight I had the pleasure to attend one of Fred Benenson’s Creative Commons salons at the office of my old employer in the West Village. It was a treat of ingenuity, pizza, and beer, somehow paid for by “free culture.” The idea we’re supposed to take home with us is that great things can be…
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Times of Need
Tonight, quoth the president:”This is an extraordinary period for America’s economy.” Which you might think sounds good, until: We’ve seen triple-digit swings in the stock market. Major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse, and some have failed. As uncertainty has grown, many banks have restricted lending, credit markets have frozen, and families…
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Back on the Safety Net
Here’s to healthcare—yesterday, apparently, marks the beginning of my health insurance coverage through the Freelancers’ Union, a fine internet-based organization that helps out the growing ranks of independent workers. It comes six months, just about to the day, from when my graduate school insurance cut off and I joined the 48 million uninsured Americans. My…