Americans generally have more spending power now than 50 years ago, across almost all income levels. But the perception is that lower income families are losing ground. Of course, some are, but generally, pretty much all of us can buy more and better stuff than we ever could in the past. In 1909, many things [...]
Last weekend, I read When Consumers Cut Back: A Lesson From Japan in the New York Times. I was hoping it would be about the benefits of thrift, but the article starts off a little differently: As recession-wary Americans adapt to a new frugality, Japan offers a peek at how thrift can take lasting hold [...]
Lots of headlines are popping up predicting a US or global recession. I don’t claim to understand economic theory at more than a basic level – I took a few economics classes in college and manage our family investments, but that’s about it. We might go into a recession this year (my guess) or we [...]
Lots of talk in the news about alternative energy. I’m skeptical of Bush’s newfound passion for clean energy (much less his oops, I didn’t mean to cut funding and force dozens of layoffs at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory explanation), but money for renewables is money for renewables. That’s certainly better than no money spent [...]
As mentioned in an earlier post, if you store data, it is vulnerable. In the case of CardSystems Solutions and the recent massive data theft, they were particularly vulnerable since they failed to secure their network, even though they had been certified to a security standard set by MasterCard and Visa. Of course, that certification [...]
The NYT has more about the latest credit card data theft scandal. I’m sure that the folks at CardSystems Solutions thought that what they were doing was logical and fine. After all, they just wanted to “determine why certain transactions had registered as unauthorized or uncompleted,” which seems perfectly reasonable. But if you’re keeping data, [...]
Last week, EPIC hosted a conference on the recently signed REAL ID Act, which effectively mandates a National ID card. This should make any minimalist nervous, since it will almost certainly mean more databasing of our lives, worse identity theft (since one ID will be linked to everything), and abuse through expanding scope. Yes, in [...]
Slate’s Savings Glut: The self-serving explanation for America’s bad habits discusses the theory that our economic problems are the fault of foreigners salting away too much cash for the future. The core thesis is that the US is virtuously propping up the global economy by spending like banshees, while too much saving in Asia is [...]