Economics

What Do We Deserve?
Of particular relevance to market-based societies is the question, ‘What do we deserve?’ For our learning, natural talents, and labor, what rewards and entitlements can we fairly claim?

On Eating Animals
Raised unnaturally and inhumanely, over a million birds and mammals are violently killed in the U.S. every hour, yet the idea persists that Americans love animals.

Herodotus, the Iliad, and 9/11
A look at some curious parallels between the wars of the post-9/11 decade and the Trojan War as Herodotus saw it.

On Public Corruption in India
With findings from corruption research, Anna Hazare and his team, the Jan Lokpal Bill, and the anti-corruption movement.

War and the American Republic
With the end of combat operations in Iraq, a fresh look under the hood of American jingoism.

On Credit Default Swaps
Warren Buffet has called credit default swaps the "financial weapons of mass destruction", others call them "the dark matter" of the financial universe.

The Revenge of the East?
A review of Pankaj Mishra's "From the Ruins of Empire: The intellectuals who remade Asia."

Indians Abroad: A Story from Trinidad
A brief history of the Indian diaspora in Trinidad—today over half-a-million strong—from the colonial era to the present.

On Caste Privilege
Much has been written about the unearned privilege of race and gender. What does the privilege of caste look like in Indian society? How and why has caste been politicized?

An Indian-American in China
Impressions from a journey through China, and the hard-to-avoid comparisons with neighboring India.

The Last Empire
Much has been written about China's environmental crisis in recent years: vanishing forests, encroaching desert, depleting ground water, acid rain, toxic chemicals in polluted rivers, etc.

The True Cost of Our Gadgets
The next time we whip out our Blackberries, cell phones, gaming consoles, iPods, and laptops, we would do well to remember their true cost, beyond what we paid for them at the store. Each of these gadgets use an ore called coltan....

Global Democracy Index
The Economist magazine's intelligence unit has come up with a Democracy Index that rates 165 states and 2 territories on their democratic character. It examines 60 indicators across 5 broad categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government...

Land of the Free?
Which country has the highest incarceration rate in the world? The United States of course. The prison population in the US has more than quadrupled in the last quarter century. Some 2.2 million are behind

Amartya Sen on Globalization
Where does "our own" Nobel laureate in economics stand on globalization? Earlier this year, I reviewed The Argumentative Indian by A Sen, a wide ranging book with sixteen essays on Indian culture, history, and identity.

Free Market News
The newspaper business has changed radically in recent decades. Most newspapers are now owned by a handful of large corporations, even by "holding companies", with parallel interests in cement, telecom, real estate, etc.

 


Designed in collaboration with Vitalect, Inc. All rights reserved.