The Longest Run

At the New York Times, an early article from next Sunday's Magazine: The Big Fix . Absolutely worth a read. From the concluding paragraphs: The norms of the last two decades or so — consume before invest; worry about the short term, not the long term — have been more than just a reflection of the economy. They have also affected the economy. Chief executives have fought for paychecks that their predecessors would have considered obscenely large. Technocrats inside Washington’s regulatory agencies, after listening to their bosses talk endlessly about the dangers of overregulation, made quite sure that they weren’t regulating too much. Financial engineering became a more appealing career track than actual engineering or science. In one of the small gems in their book, Goldin and Katz write that towns and cities with a large elderly population once devoted a higher-than-average share of their taxes to schools. Apparently, age made them see the benefits of education. In recent decades,...

There's an excellent series of short articles on health care in the US on the New York Times web site - definitely worth a read. I think it's important to become familiar with the issues given that health care improvement is one of the stated goals of the new President. Links to the series are below. If you have any recommendations of other good writing on health care, let me know in the comments. Speaking of comments - be sure to check out the comments in each of these blog posts. Why Does U.S. Health Care Cost So Much? (Part I) - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com Why Does U.S. Health Care Cost So Much? (Part II: Indefensible Administrative Costs) Why Does U.S. Health Care Cost So Much? (Part III: An Aging Population Isn’t the Reason) Why Does U.S. Health Care Cost So Much? (Part IV: A Primer on Medicare) U.S. Health Care Costs, Part V: Can Americans Afford Medicare? U.S. Health Care Costs Part VI: At What Price Physician Autonomy? U.S. Health Care Costs Part VII: Reining in Doctors...