I am lying in a meadow high in the Rocky Mountains. The sun is warm and comforting. I watch the clouds, puffy white in the blue sky, but soon pull a cap over my eyes…
Playing To Win
When I was a boy, I loved sports. Baseball was my passion, and I could be found in the backyard, even in the middle of winter, endlessly throwing a rubber-coated baseball into the air and…
Home Sweet Home
A recent article by New York Times journalist Neil Irwin finds that the housing market is still operating as a drag on the economy. While a few markets like New York City and San Francisco…
Markets Are the Problem (Not the Solution)**
A recent op-ed in the New York Times described the construction of "the mother of all luxury property developments," on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, complete with branches of famous museums and a university. We…
Class: A Personal Story
I was born in 1946 in a small mining village in western Pennsylvania, about forty miles north of Pittsburgh, along a big bend in the Allegheny River. The house in which I lived during my…
Teaching Workers
Karl Marx’s famous dictum sums up my teaching philosophy: “The philosophers of the world have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” As I came to see it, Marx…
Choosing an Occupation: The “Science” of Economics
The name, “Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science,” tells us that those who give the prize believe that economics is a science. This is certainly what my professors thought when I was a student. One…
Profits May Rise, Profits May Fall, the Capitalist…
A left-wing economist with whom I have a marginal acquaintance sent me an email a few days ago. He was angry that I had accused him of being a “true believer.” This was in reference…
In Search of the “Real America”
This past June, I attended the Left Forum at Pace College in Lower Manhattan. I used to love to go to this city. We visited often and moved there twelve years ago, planning to stay…