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R.I.P. to Employer-based Health Care: Author Matt Miller Talks to RW
Has America has been in the thrall of “Dead Ideas”? That’s how Matt Miller sees it, and his book is a showdown with conceptual baggage that weighs us down. The Tyranny of Dead Ideas exposes outdated ways of thinking, from the notion that companies should provide health care and pensions for workers to the modern antitax obsession. Some of these Dead Ideas were born during an era when American businesses faced little global competition. Others grew out of the self interest of a small number of people who don’t want to share society’s resources. Miller, a leading business and political thinker and author of The Two Percent Solution, talks to Recessionwire about “Dead Ideas” we need to chuck and “Destined Ideas” we ought to embrace.
RW: Which Dead Idea do we most urgently need to get rid of?
The New Feel-Good Movie
It’s Friday after another long week in the recession. Boost your mood with films about these poor suckers who are far worse off than you could possibly be. Consider:
The Fly – You could be half-insect.
The Hanoi Hilton – You could be a P.O.W.
Recession Lexicon: Propportunity
What you get when you look at a problem as a potential opportunity.
Redux: Will the Recession Spark a Music Revolution?
Little known fact: Many of America’s quintessential cultural elements – the hamburger, the hotdog, Hollywood, baseball, horse-racing and rock-and-roll, to name a few – can be traced to Great Depression. We’ve been shocked into recalling that financial markets feature cycles of contraction and expansion. But culture does, too. Oddly, these cycles appear to be inverted. When the market contracts, culture seems to expand. Innovators emerge, values shift, and tastes change. People begin to play outside the box.
Recession Lexicon: Pre-Fired
We have plenty of synonyms for losing one’s job: laid off, fired, canned, made redundant, eliminated, dismissed, pink-slipped, discharged, and my personal favorite from a friend: “squirted out of the company.”
But new times demand new words, to describe concepts and situations we’ve never encountered before—like losing your job before you’ve even started it.
The Book Reporter: Crash Proof
Peter D. Schiff deserves a gold medal, while most of us deserve a dunce cap. Schiff, an economic commentator and stockbroker, was once dubbed “Mr. Doom” and “Chicken Little” by the media for his dire warnings about the real estate bubble and the shaky state of the American economy.
Nearly Free Art
Many of us are spending more time in our homes just as we have less to spend on our homes. Happily, there are creative ways to spiff up your walls without breaking out the college posters. Here, four works of art that practically cost pennies.
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