The Best, Brightest, and Least Productive?

NEW HAVEN – Are too many of our most talented people choosing careers in finance – and, more specifically, in trading, speculating, and other allegedly “unproductive” activities?

In the United States, 7.4% of total compensation of employees in 2012 went to people working in the finance and insurance industries. Whether or not that percentage is too high, the real issue is that the share is even higher among the most educated and accomplished people, whose activities may be economically and socially useless, if not harmful.

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Why Innovation Is Still Capitalism’s Star

CAPITALISM is culture. To sustain it, laws and institutions are important, but the more fundamental role is played by the basic human spirit of independence and initiative.

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Bubbles Forever

NEW HAVEN – You might think that we have been living in a post-bubble world since the collapse in 2006 of the biggest-ever worldwide real-estate bubble and the end of a major worldwide stock-market bubble the following year. But talk of bubbles keeps reappearing – new or continuing housing bubbles in many countries, a new global stock-market bubble, a long-term bond-market bubble in the United States and other countries, an oil-price bubble, a gold bubble, and so on.

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Owning a Home Isn’t Always a Virtue

ENCOURAGING homeownership has been considered a national goal at least since “Own Your Own Home Day” was introduced in 1920 by various business and civic groups as part of a National Thrift Week. The newly popular word “homeownership” represented a goal and a virtue for every good citizen — to get out of the tenements and into one’s own home. Homeownership was thought to encourage planning, discipline, permanency and community spirit.

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Want to Fix Social Security? Use the Right Wrench

SOCIAL SECURITY is expected to run out of reserves by 2033 — a mere 20 years from now. With the public apparently opposed both to tax increases and to benefit cuts, the main politically feasible way to avoid such a fate seems to involve some monkeying with obscure aspects of the definition of benefits.

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Austerity and Demoralization

The high unemployment that we have today in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere is a tragedy, not just because of the aggregate output loss that it entails, but also because of the personal and emotional cost to the unemployed of not being a part of working society.

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Reflections on Finance and the Good Society

After the financial crisis that began in 2007 many have expressed renewed doubts about the basic goodness of the financial sectors, doubts related to deeply-held moral principles and traditions of larger society. We need to reconcile these doubts with financial practice. We must acknowledge the important principle of reciprocity. We must understand that there are natural human tendencies towards aggression and hoarding, which no financial institutions and codes of ethics can completely eliminate. We must appreciate the important role of professional organizations in moderating these tendencies. When these principles are made part of financial education we can expect better public acceptance of the important role that finance plays in our society.

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