I also recommend reading Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class and Absentee Ownership. (Both available to read on-line for free).

In the first, Veblen accurately describes how the "Substantial Citizen" came to believe how they are above the rest and deserve what they have--just like Health Care and Wall Street Exec's justify their exorbitant pay schemes.

In the second Veblen outlines what will happen if business and finance are left to go unregulated and unaccountable--which is--gee--exactly what happened BEFORE the great depression and exactly what happened recently. There is also a great discussion on what happens when pay is no longer attached or related to production--brilliant and sad all at the same time. After reading about the "Substantial Citizen" and the "Captain of Industry" you can pretty much predict where these kinds of leaders will take the country and why there is so much resistance to reform in banking and health care.

Galbraith basically takes these observations (Veblen looked at economics as culture as opposed to rational choices) and applies them to what happened since Reagan (whose new advisors opposed his father JK Galbraith). Again--highly recommend these books.

Maybe not:

#1 Thorstein Veblen The Theory of the Leisure Class 1889
#2 Michel de Nostredame sometime before 1556
#3 Motonori Matuyama On the Direction of Magnetization of Basalt 1929
#4 Thorstein Veblen Absentee Ownership 1923
#5 Josephus Antiquities of the Jews--written sometime before his death in 100 AD

What happened here is exactly why we should "do the numbers thingy". If more Americans paid more attention in math (and yes, by the way, you do use math everyday--even algebra and especially calculus!) and were more math/economics/finance literate we would be better able to read contracts like mortgage documents and credit card agreements and understand what they mean and what exactly it is we are signing up for. If more people would get over themselves and their math phobias maybe they would be less influenced by marketing and people like Bernie Madoff who were promising investment returns that MADE NO SENSE. Good grief.

If more people understood how our economy really works and how businesses actually make money we would NOT be in the mess we are in now because we wouldn't let our government get away with giving away the store in terms of lack of and incompetent regulation.

If you read nothing else for the rest of the summer--I encourage reading Thorstein Veblen's books "The Leisure Class" and "Absentee Ownership". Yes--both were written like 100 years ago and yes Veblen is a little hard to get started reading--but Veblen describes the events that lead to the Great Depression (before it happened) and it is the same things that lead to this one. History repeated itself.

Everything anymore has a quantitative component--the whole mortgage mess was made possible through an ability to manipulate math/statistics/probability to the advantage of the financial sector and few people noticed precisely because we don't "do the math thingy."

If you don't "do the math thingy" it is up to you to learn. Go to your local community college and sign up for algebra then calculus then probability then statistics. The math you need to understand the world today is not that hard--and even if it is--isn't it worth it to know?

What happened here is exactly why we should "do the numbers thingy". If more Americans paid more attention in math (and yes, by the way, you do use math everyday--even algebra and especially calculus!) and were more math/economics/finance literate we would be better able to read contracts like mortgage documents and credit card agreements and understand what they mean and what exactly it is we are signing up for. If more people would get over themselves and their math phobias maybe they would be less influenced by marketing and people like Bernie Madoff who were promising investment returns that MADE NO SENSE. Good grief.

If more people understood how our economy really works and how businesses actually make money we would NOT be in the mess we are in now because we wouldn't let our government get away with giving away the store in terms of lack of and incompetent regulation.

If you read nothing else for the rest of the summer--I encourage reading Thorstein Veblen's books "The Leisure Class" and "Absentee Ownership". Yes--both were written like 100 years ago and yes Veblen is a little hard to get started reading--but Veblen describes the events that lead to the Great Depression (before it happened) and it is the same things that lead to this one. History repeated itself.

Everything anymore has a quantitative component--the whole mortgage mess was made possible through an ability to manipulate math/statistics/probability to the advantage of the financial sector and few people noticed precisely because we don't "do the math thingy."

If you don't "do the math thingy" it is up to you to learn. Go to your local community college and sign up for algebra then calculus then probability then statistics. The math you need to understand the world today is not that hard--and even if it is--isn't it worth it to know?

For every 10% increase in the generosity of the EITC there is a correlating 4% decline in wages in low-wage industries. So who is getting the subsidy? The employer or the employee? (See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=473445) When employees receive the EITC, Child Support and other subsidies and without unions to make the case, there is little pressure on employers to up wages--they don't need to. Employees use the EITC to make up for wage shortfalls. The EITC is such a bait and switch kind of program. Why is it we are spending billions of TAX dollars to prop up low wage industries? Lots of other research (that has been suppressed for the most part) shows that increases in minimum wage do not lead to massive job losses or that jobs lost are quickly recovered. With the EITC--there is less pressure to increase minimum wage.