Must Read
- Jared Bernstein, Guideposts on the Road Back to Factville, 2013 Edition
- Paul Krugman, Why Corporations Might Not Mind Moderate Depression
- Jesse Eisinger, The 0.03% Solution to Washington’s Budget Problems (Related: Harkin and DeFazio’s bill, S.410, died in committee but it was an excellent idea.)
Should Read
- Dean Baker, Bill Keller’s Center-Left Is the Reason We Are Growing Less Rapidly
- Economic Policy Institute, The 13 Most Important Charts of 2013
- Mike Konczal, It’s still too early for Congress to stop worrying about unemployment
- David Kocieniewski, Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Reward
MA politics
- Boston.com, IG report: State agencies routinely used longterm temp workers to evade hiring rules
- Boston.com, Mass., Vt., take action against health site firm
Economics
- Paul Krugman, The Fear Economy
- Paul Krugman, Bitcoin Is Evil (and a Bitcoin-related quote: “Right now, merchants seem to accept Bitcoin for three main reasons: They want press coverage, they’re libertarian fellow travelers, or they’re selling drugs.”)
Politics
- Chris Longenecker, In San Francisco and Oakland, Residents Fight Back Against Tech Giants (see also Tim Egan’s NY Times column a few weeks back)
- NY Times, A Rare Elected Voice for Socialism Pledges to Be Heard in Seattle
SNAP Benefits (a.k.a. Food Stamps)
A conversation the other day motivated me to look up some numbers and a blog thread from a few months back:
- The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Average Monthly Food Stamp Benefits Per Person
- Applied Statistics, 50% of kids are on food stamps at some point in their childhood
- Here & Now, Panera CEO Takes The Food Stamps Challenge
- Mark Palko, I know Ron Shaich’s heart is in the right place, but…
Education
- Alex Reinhart, Shut Up and Listen to Your Students
Miscellany
- RealClimate, Marcott et al. respond to criticism of their paper, “A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years”
- Boston.com, McDonald’s employee website warns workers away from its fast food (And then there’s this. And this. Nice.)
- NY Times, A Winter Bouquet, Locally Grown
- Boston.com, Mass. couple promote new craft beer business model
- Chad Finn, Random Red Sox notes as 2013 closes