Tag: economy

From Olive Trees to Overcapacity

A homogeneous global consumer culture flattens its victims. And, perhaps in the same vein, our meanderings around the dying furniture capital of Yecla turned up nothing: virtually everything on display fitted what has become the decorative style of contemporary Spain: the sort of stuff one might find in a Copenhagen dentist’s office.

The Politics of Ingratitude

Here is the great secret of my generation: What our parents gave us as a gift we have received as an entitlement. No one is not grateful for an entitlement. Indeed, everyone is resentful that it is not larger. Worse, we are resentful of everybody else's entitlements because they compete with our own. Politics because a matter of getting as large a share of the pie as you can, while giving as little as you can get away with.

The Economic Stork

The answers we get are dictated by the questions we ask, but there was one question which always grated on my wife's nerves, no...

The Other Side of China, and What It Might Say When...

As the heat of late summer subsides here in Nanjing and our university settles into the new semester, many look forward to the annual...

Risk Pool

It has been a year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the subsequent near-collapse of the international economic system followed quickly by the...

Closing the Circle: An Economy of Values, and Where to Look...

It is no surprise that many of us connected with FPR welcomed the release in mid July of Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas...

“On the Grid”: When Electricity (and Other Things) Came to the...

“Come in and look,” Quintín urged me, as he disappeared with a shuffle through the low doorway in his adobe house.  I got up...

A Nation of Slaves?

Difficult economic times force people to confront the problem of economic security. In fact, it’s easy to imagine that, in an ideal world, economic...

Mortgaged Myth and the Monuments of a Depauperate Republic

Washington, CT. In August of 1311, the Doge of Venice.... as big shots are wont to do.... decreed that a monument to the government...

Causes and Lessons of the Current Economic Crisis

ERIE, PA. As a new contributor to the Front Porch Republic, I would like to thank Mark Mitchell for his invitation to participate in...