What’s a living wage? The president thinks $10.10 is the magic number. The governors of some states think it’s more. Some think it’s less. I’m not sure how our leaders come up with these figures but in my mind a living wage shouldn’t be a specific number. It should be a perc

“The book costs $129.” A clerk at the local bookstore looked at me with eyebrows lifted. He could probably tell by my shocked expression the price wasn’t what I’d expected. “What?”I resisted. “Are the pages made of gold leaf?”  The young man laughed. “It’s a textb

Politicians love to tug at our hearts with their concern for children’s welfare and the country applauds. But the end result is much ado about nothing. 1 in 5 children in the United States lives below the poverty line. What’s more, when compared to other industrialized nations, we

Almost everyone’s complaining about the high cost of college tuition, but little is being done about it. Worse, writer Jeff Madrick takes a hard look at the value of a college degree given that institutions of higher learning are being forced to “operate much more like ordinary co

James C. Scott, a Yale political science professor, has just published, Two Cheers for Anarchism. In it, he invites readers to consider the possibility that the greatest gains for human freedom have come not from the orderly exercise of democracy but from the “disorderly unpredictab