Some warming up means the engine of the US economy is running again. It is unrealistic to expect the ‘rest’ to rise homogenously – it won’t. Tailoring expectations can lead to happiness – but it might not be quite what you expected. Our future resilience depends on recognizing the critical importance (and fragility) of our biosphere. If we attribute a notional monetary value to our time-off, we might spend it more carefully.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Burning rubber to rejoin highway traffic is not the same thing as overheating the engine”. (Bradford DeLong about the US economic recovery)
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Bradford DeLong, Is the US Economy Recovering or Overheating?
(Project Syndicate, 4 May 2021)
The Berkeley professor thinks that core inflation rising on the back of substantial GDP growth and declining unemployment should not come as a surprise. Those who are wringing their hands about economic “overheating”, he says, should remember that an absence of price increases would reflect an economy that is still struggling. His conclusion: “The question is not whether there will be some inflation this year, but whether it will represent “overheating” of the economy as a whole. Most likely, it will not”. Read on to get to the substance of the argument (reads in 5-6 min).
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Ruchir Sharma, The Resurgence of the Rest
(Foreign Affairs, May-June 2021)
The global chief strategist of Morgan Stanley offers his views on whether emerging markets can find new paths to growth. His view is nuanced and premised on the observation that the “rest” were never likely to rise as a pack—or stagnate as a pack. Some emerging economies will fall, others will rise, and a few will stand out as genuine stars (reads in about 15 min).
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Chandran Nair, The Covid disaster in India shows that the future is biological, not digital
(CNN, 7 April 2021)
The founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow in Hong Kong argues that human intrusion into the biosphere is the real culprit behind the pandemic and the warning sign that “it is time to pull back from our assault on nature”. He also questions the common belief that “technology will solve major problems”. It will of course help, but only if we understand “that human survival is fragile and wholly dependent on a viable biosphere” (reads in 6-8 min).
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Jukka Savolainen, The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness
(Slate, 28 April 2021)
This is a good read for all those interested in wellness and wellbeing policies. The American / Finnish sociologist explains why the Finns are so skeptical about the notion that they are the world’s happiest people (as measured every year in the World Happiness Report) and contends that Nordic “happiness” is all about reasonable expectations. If you embrace modesty and reject excess – the culture that permeates the entire Nordic region – then you are happy because your expectations are low. But if your definition of happiness includes joy, love, and meaningful engagement with the people around you, then it’s a different story (reads in 7-8 min).
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Jessica Stillman, A Harvard Business School Professor’s Simple Trick to Stop Wasting Your Life
(Inc., 6 May 2021)
Countless thinkers have spent their lives wrestling with humans’ propensity for self-destructive behavior, but if our addiction is rather benign (like too much social media), a Harvard professor has a trick: to assign a monetary value to our downtime, which can then dissuade us from engaging in addictive pastimes we dislike. For example: if an American consumes the average amount of social media in the US (142 min per day) and earns the average hourly wage ($29.92), he’s effectively ‘spending’ $71 worth of time per day on this activity.” The idea is not to monetize our leisure time, but rather to remind ourselves that, like our earnings, it is precious and finite. Once spent, it’s gone, so it’s worth spending carefully (reads in 5 min).
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