A Day Made of Glass

Dow Corning's vision for the future with specialty glass at the heart of it. (Thanks, Jamie)

2010 American Economic Association humor session

Nerdy, but hilarious if you like econ jokes. (Thanks, Tom!)

Can America regain most dynamic labour market mantle?

Postwar, the US maintained lower unemployment than the Europeans and a higher rate of jobs turnover, enabling it to get away with more meager benefits; "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay" was within the grasp of most.

That gave the US a booming middle class that until recently was the most important engine of global demand. No longer. Today, somewhat remarkably, US joblessness is higher than in much of Europe.

And the US consumer is mired in high personal debt. As the jobs crisis deepens, so too does US political polarization. Allegations of "class warfare" are a staple of Washington debate. In contrast to the 1960s, dominated by protests for peace and civil rights, today's battles are economic.

Yet there are few signs that either policymakers or economists are closer to finding answers. Indeed, the signs are that the problem is intensifying. In the words of David Autor, a leading labor economist at Harvard University, the labor force is suffering from a growing "missing middle."

Read more in the Financial Times.

Global Food Disparity: A Photo Diary

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina. Food expenditure for one week $341.98.

Chad: the Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp. Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23.

Meet the The Manzo family of Sicily. Their weekly expenditure is 214.36 Euros or $260.11. Note the copious amount of bread.

See more families in the Daily Kos. (Thanks, Joyce)

Anonymous donors pay off Kmart layaway accounts

"At Kmart stores, Santa gets help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers' layaway accounts." It's a heartwarming holiday story!

Read more in Yahoo Finance. (Thanks, Liz!)

Forbes: 30 under 30 in Energy

Congrats Dave Barry (Clean Line co-founder), Tom Steiner (former McK BA), and Jason Ethier (Duke and DVF alum)!

Read about the winners in Forbes. (Thanks, Claire)

Coke's new ad: What if you got your Christmas wish?

A couple tears! (Thanks, Anna!)

The poor are doing better than you think

A provocative article following on the tails of the OWS movement. Read more in the Globe and Mail. (Thanks, Tom)

Baby Seal Enters House and Naps on Couch

Annette Swoffer fell victim to a home invasion – of cuteness! Read more in ABC News. (Thanks, Jules)

Romney Honed the Right Skills in Private Equity

Read more in Bloomberg.

Plan B: When Politics Beat Science

"President Obama came into office promising to restore scientific integrity to policymaking, but his Administration has allowed politics to trump science several times—including with this week's move to keep the emergency contraceptive Plan B from being sold without a prescription.

"But science—in climate change and in other areas—can only tell us so much. Ethics and values—and politics—are what really control policymaking, and it's on climate advocates should focus their energy on changing those, instead of harping on the science."

Read more in TIME. (Thanks, Tom)

A Message to Women From a Man: You Are Not "Crazy"

Interesting perspective in the HuffPo:

You're so sensitive. You're so emotional. You're defensive. You're overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You're crazy! I was just joking, don't you have a sense of humor? You're so dramatic. Just get over it already!

Sound familiar?

(Thanks, Gloria!)

The Neuroeconomics Revolution

Read Robert Shiller's piece in Project Syndicate.

Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married – A Record Low

"New Marriages Down 5% from 2009 to 2010." Read more at Pew's Research Center site. (Thanks, Scott!)

Rebooting Philanthropy in Silicon Valley

References a lot of companies that have come up on this blog recently: Kiva, DonorsChoose.org, Samasource and Causes. Read the NYT article.

NYC Now Offering Financial Counsel

"In post-recession New York, financial counselors have emerged as the city's newest breed of social workers. Advice on how to get out of debt hasn't traditionally been part of city-run programs for domestic-violence victims, former prison inmates or those facing foreclosure. But money troubles are often at the root of those ordeals, so city officials have moved to pair interventions with financial counseling." Read the WSJ article here.

Jimmy Kimmel strikes again

(Thanks, Jamie)

They Call It the Reverse Gender Gap

Read more in the NYT. (Thanks, Jules!)

You can unlock the potential of India’s Dalit girls, but where can they use it?

Breaking the Caste. Read more in the Globe and Mail. (Thanks, Tom)

Five Truths about Our Energy Future

"Fatih Birol - the Turkish-born chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA) - has one of the toughest jobs in the world. Birol helps put together the IEA's annual World Energy Outlook, a much anticipated report that gathers trends in global energy use and tries to project them into the future.

"A lot of the trends highlighted in the new report are worrying. Time discusses five of them with Birol: shifts in oil security as the US imports less oil while Europe and China import more; a promising future for gas put at danger by the risks of fracking; decreasing energy efficiency; increased use of coal and, with it, increased pollution and continued global warming; and lack of any access to modern energy for 2 billion people." Read more in TIME Science.

Women and Work: Too Many Suits

"Across Europe the proportion of women on company boards averages around 10 percent, though with large variations: from less than 1 percent in Portugal to nudging 40 percent in Norway, thanks to that country's much-cited quota system. America, at 16 percent, does somewhat better than the European average, and most emerging markets do less well.

"One reason is that female managers tend to work in so-called functional specialties (such as HR) rather than line management, which is the main hunting ground for the very top but often involves extensive travel and unsocial hours. More importantly, boards have traditionally been made up of white middle-aged males of similar backgrounds who are comfortable with each other and recruit new colleagues in their own image.

"Women, even if they can be found, "are a bigger risk," says Joanna Barsh, a director in McKinsey's New York office; they have a different style and are more visible, so if something goes wrong everyone notices. Some women find the culture of organizations so off-putting that they see little point in rising to the top." Read more in the Economist.

Consultant Nation

Read more Consultant Nation in the NYT. (Thanks, Griffin)

Where Are the Women Executives in Silicon Valley?

Meg Whitman, left, chief of Hewlett-Packard, Marissa Mayer, center, head of local products at Google, and Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook.

Read more in the NYT.

Forbes' List of the Top 30 Social Entrepreneurs

Check out the Forbes Top 30. (Thanks, Jules)

CEO of Acumen: Jacqueline Novogratz

Check out this Forbes cover story about CEO Jacqueline Novogratz. Oh, and she is married to the founder of TED... nbd.

(Thanks, Jules!)

10 Things 90s Kids Will Have To Explain To Their Children

"While most things we experienced as tots in that headiest of eras seems pretty self-explanatory (plaid was everywhere, Leonardo DiCaprio was the molten ball of light around which the solar system turned, and there was no color too bright for your sweatpants) there are some things that will be a bit harder to explain. Here, a primer for when your future children want to know what the hell you were doing with your boxy, multicolored electronics."

More on the Thought Catalog. (Thanks, Caro!)

25 And Over

A fun, but sobering list, for those of us reaching... or past the age of 25:

...#14. Have something to talk about besides college or your job. College is over. The war stories have their amusements, but not over and over and not at every gathering. Get a library card, go to the movies, participate in the world. Working is not living. Be interested so that you can be interesting.

Read more in the Tomato Nation. (Thanks, Lucy)

The Entrepreneurial Generation

It's SO good but unnerving! I bet it will describe a lot of your life and your friends. Read the NYT article. (Thanks, Jules!)

Generation Jobless: Students Pick Easier Majors Despite Less Pay

For today's college graduates, the message is clear: If you want a job, the best thing you can do is build a career in rigorous disciplines of science, technology, engineering and math. Read the article in the WSJ. (Thanks, Tom!)

Project Syndicate

Project Syndicate is an international not-for-profit newspaper syndicate and association of newspapers. It distributes commentaries and analysis ("opinion pieces") by experts, activists, Nobel laureates, statesmen, economists, political thinkers, business leaders and academics to its member publications, and encourages networking among its members.

Thanks, John!

Our Reckless Meritocracy

Ross Douthat writes an NYT Op-Ed piece about the American view of meritocracy -- if you keep working hard and have good values you can rise to the top. But what happens when good values become hazy?

Thanks, Joyce!

Why Aren’t There More Female Entrepreneurs?

This blog post was written by Mark Suster in FastCompany.

Can’t buy me love: Study shows materialistic couples have more money and more problems

"Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at,” says Jason Carroll, a BYU professor of family life and lead author of the study. “There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other."

Read more in the WSJ. (Thanks, Tom)

The Fraying of a Nation's Decency

Ever wonder how the Amazon boxes reach your house so quickly? Read a controversial story in the NYT.

Living like the other half

"Three weeks ago, two city-bred, upper-class aspiring entrepreneurs from Bangalore embarked on a mission: learn more about India, by subsisting for a month on what the average Indian does – just 100 rupees ($2.04) a day." Read the full NYT story. (Thanks, Claire)

The BlackBerry outage last month made everybody safer

Don't text and drive: the multi-day BlackBerry texting system outage has been linked to a significant reduction in accidents in some of the affected areas. Read the Discovery Post.

Rules of The Game

“The best swordsman does not fear the second best, he fears the worst since there’s no telling what that idiot is going to do.” Read more in the Freakonomics blog.

Beltway Earnings Make U.S. Capital Richer Than Silicon Valley

A statistic that helps a lot of things make sense: "Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show.

The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046."

Read more in Bloomberg. (Thanks, Tom)

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

"As protests against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable..."

Read more in the New Scientist. (Thanks, Joyce!)

The Jensen Family Get a Huge Surprise

Something to make you smile. I can't embed the YouTube video, but you can check it out here.

(Thanks, Claire)

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

Check out Mona Simpson's eulogy for Steve Jobs in the NYT. (Thanks, Julia)

Land of the wasted talent

"Japanese firms face a demographic catastrophe. The solution is to treat women better." A couple surprising statistics:

Nearly half of Japanese university graduates are female but only 67% of these women have jobs, many of which are part-time or involve serving tea. Japanese women with degrees are much more likely than Americans (74% to 31%) to quit their jobs voluntarily. Whereas most Western women who take time off do so to look after children, Japanese women are more likely to say that the strongest push came from employers who do not value them. A startling 49% of highly educated Japanese women who quit do so because they feel their careers have stalled.

Read the Economist article. (Thanks, Tom)

The Hillary Moment

"President Obama can't win by running a constructive campaign, and he won't be able to govern if he does win a second term." Read the WSJ argument. (Thanks, Tom)

FastCustomer

Tired of waiting on hold? Use the FastCustomer app and have the company call you when the hold time is up! Best. tool. ever. (Thanks, Jules)

Where All Work Is Created Equal

In Manhattan, Zu Dong taught calligraphy to members of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York’s Community Connections TimeBank, which lets people exchange services.

(Thanks, Julia)

Why Do Harvard Kids Head to Wall Street?

There have been a lot of theories floating around as Occupy Wall Street becomes bigger. Check out James Kwak's perspective. And here are some thoughts complied by DealBook.

(Thanks, Julia)

What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?

I couldn't agree more! So often we are coddled and protected from failure. Check out the NYT article.

Reflections on Army Life

Liz McNally, a former Army captain and current Engagement Manager at McKinsey, reflects on her life in the military in 85 Broads. She's an inspiring leader.

The Surge of Ideas

General David H. Petraeus gave a speech when accepting the AEI award on the state of our milary. Read the full speech here.

(Learn more about the speech writer Liz McNally.)

TED Talk: Sheryl WuDunn's our century's greatest injustice

Thanks, Claire

TED Talk: Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom

Thanks, Lucy!

TED Talk: Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice

Thanks, Lucy!

High Bank Fees Give Wal-Mart a Money Aisle

Americans say they are fed up with banks. They are protesting on Wall Street and raising a ruckus over outsize fees. Now there is a surprising beneficiary: Wal-Mart. Read the NYT article.

All the Single Ladies

Recent years have seen an explosion of male joblessness and a steep decline in men’s life prospects that have disrupted the “romantic market” in ways that narrow a marriage-minded woman’s options: increasingly, her choice is between deadbeats (whose numbers are rising) and playboys (whose power is growing).

But this strange state of affairs also presents an opportunity: as the economy evolves, it’s time to embrace new ideas about romance and family—and to acknowledge the end of “traditional” marriage as society’s highest ideal. Read more in the Atlantic. (Thanks, Scott)

Super cute: boy calls 911 for help with math

(Thanks, Chris!)

3 Ways to Think Like an Innovator

HBR's Management Tip of the Day: Most people struggle to do what innovators excel at: connecting the unconnected. Here are three ways to get in the habit of making new associations:

• Just do it. Force associations across different ideas when they don't come naturally. Ask yourself: What else could this idea be connected to?




• Shake it up. When associations don't emerge, try forcing them to surface. Put seemingly unrelated ideas or words together and see what comes to mind. The creative combinations may spark a new idea.
  




• Repeat. Research shows that if you practice associational thinking long enough, the task will energize you rather than exhaust you.

The best obnoxious responses to misspellings on Facebook

Check out more at HappyPlace. (Thanks Alessia)

Halloween costume ... gaping hole in torso

Freaky!

(Thanks, Mike)

Financial Inclusion Proves both Worthy and Profitable

"Mobile technologies continue to play a huge part in the effort to extending banking services to previously 'unbanked' communities and the role of mobile technologies in doing so.

"New technologies have allowed banks in Africa, Brazil, and India to reach out to remote rural populations without easy access to a bank branch. But for Ed Cutrell, head of the technology for emerging markets team at Microsoft Research India in Bangalore, inexperienced customers need a great deal of help and education to use these services effectively.

"Better financial education would help the poor and decrease their reliance on costly, informal alternatives - such as credit at usurious rates from local shopkeepers. It might also reduce their vulnerability to being mis-sold financial services that they do not need."

Read more in the Financial Times.

The Daughter Also Rises

"The emerging world is home to many self-made businesswomen who have risen from low-level jobs to leadership positions and personal fortunes. Seven of the fourteen women identified on Forbes magazine's list of self-made billionaires are Chinese. Many firms in emerging markets do a better job of promoting women than their Western rivals, some surveys suggest.

"In China, 32 percent of senior managers are female, compared with 23 percent in America and 19 percent in Britain. In India, 11 percent of chief executives of large companies are female, compared with 3 percent of Fortune 500 bosses in America and 3 percent of FTSE 100 bosses in Britain.

"Turkey and Brazil come third and joint fourth (behind Finland and Norway) in the World Economic Forum's ranking of countries by the proportion of CEOs who are women. In Brazil, 11 percent of chief executives and 30 percent of senior executives are women.

"Wise firms focus on the two biggest problems for working women in emerging markets: looking after their aging parents, which is typically more of a problem than child care, and commuting."

Read the rest in the Economist.

No, 9/11 Did Not Change the World

"Just about everything has changed since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC 10 years ago, writes Philip Stephens. The contours of the geopolitical and economic landscapes have been redrawn. The curious thing is how little the changes owe to 9/11.

"Osama bin Laden grabbed a decade's worth of headlines, but the future was being written in Beijing, Delhi, Rio and beyond. The world has indeed been turned upside down, but Afghanistan, Iraq and the badlands of Waziristan have been a smokescreen, obscuring the bigger story of the past decade.

"The changes that have mattered have been in the rising states of Asia and Latin America. Ten years on, the strategic challenge to the US comes from the rapid reallocation of power. The global order no longer belongs to the west."

Read the full article in the FT.

An Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer

It sounds like science fiction -- to train a body to kill off all the cancer cells and start over, but some researchers have seemingly been able to create this effect. Inspiring story in the NYT research section. (Thanks Julia!)

Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?

I do!

... "Three men doing time in Israeli prisons recently appeared before a parole board consisting of a judge, a criminologist and a social worker. The three prisoners had completed at least two-thirds of their sentences, but the parole board granted freedom to only one of them." Guess which one in the NYT article.

Neil Pasricha: The 3 A's of awesome

You know I love the 1000 Awesome Things website. Here is the founder's TED talk. Just as good!

(Thanks, Gloria)

Do Happier People Work Harder?

Find the answer in the NYT.

This might be the cutest thing I have seen all week

And it gets even cuter when she met Nicki...

(Thanks, Jillian!)

"I am the 1%"

Check out the article from a Duke student in the Chronicle. (Thanks, Jamie)

What percent are you?

With the Occupy Wall Street movement growing, do you know what percent you are? Take the WSJ poll here. (Thanks, Katie)

The Handel Halvorsen Passacaglia Music Video

Arianna Warsaw-Fan, violin, and Meta Weiss, cello, perform in a music video of The Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia.

Ten years on, Enron remains an open sore

Ernon collapsed 10 years ago, but the lessons still ring true today. Read the FT article. (Thanks, Claire)

What Women Do

"A recently published World Bank report finds that, although particular groups of ill-educated young men are doing badly, and although women's lives have improved a lot in the past 20 years, sexual inequality at work is remarkably stubborn. Globally, women earn 10 to 30 percent less than men. They are also concentrated in "women's" jobs.

Annoyingly, ehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifconomic growth does not seem to narrow the gap. This is surprising. You might expect that as countries get richer, women would become better educated and jobs requiring brute strength would become less important. Rich countries also have larger public sectors, where the wage gap is smaller.

Yet overall, the gap is no smaller in rich countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands than in poor ones such as the Philippines. The World Bank suggests three explanations for these findings: discrimination, unequal education, and constraints on women's time, which is disproportionately filled with housework and child care." Read the full Economist article.

Inspiration: Leila Chirayath Janah (Samasource CEO and Founder)

Check out the story behind Samasource.

This video was great, too:

At Elite Schools, Easing Up a Bit on Homework

It's about time!

Homework debates are both evergreen and charged in top-tier schools, but several private-school watchers say the recent moves to ease up are a marked shift. There remains a significant cadre of parents — call it the Tiger Mom camp — who see hard work as a rite of passage, part of what they pay $40,000 for and essential to making their children competitive. (One father commented wryly that it was unlikely that parents in India and China were fretting about overwork.)

But for the first time in recent memory, many see an edge by the other camp, fueled in part by the 2010 documentary “Race to Nowhere,” which focuses on the detrimental effects of overprogramming students who lack sleep and joy.

Read the NYT post.

Unreasonable, Maybe, but It’s on a Social Mission

Myshkin Ingawale, center, attended the Unreasonable Institute and leads a company in India that makes a medical testing device. The institute teaches commercial methods for tackling global issues.

And the founder of Unreasonable Institute is only 25! I have ramp up my game. Read the NYT article to learn about more social investors... who are profitable. (Thanks, Jules)

The Long Haul: Spenders Become Savers, Hurting Recovery

Good stats on how the recession has turned us into (more responsible) savers:

"Since the financial crisis erupted, millions of Americans have ditched their credit cards, accelerated mortgage payments and cut off credit lines that during the good times were used like a bottomless piggybank. Many have resorted to a practice once thought old-fashioned -- delaying purchases until they have the cash.

As a result, total household debt -- through payment or default -- fell by $1.1 trillion, or 8.6%, from mid-2008 through the first half of 2011, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York"

Read the WSJ article. (Thanks, Tom)

M-Pesa processing more payments in Kenya than Western Union globally

Mind-blowing stat. Huge advancement for financial inclusion (microfinance) via mobile technologies. Check out the full article.

Locals to big oil: We want our town back!

"For those who have spent their entire lives in the previously quiet farm towns that dot the northwestern corner of North Dakota, the discovery of oil in the Bakken formation has been anything but fortuitous.

The thousands of people from around the country flocking to these boomtowns has led to a housing shortage and an increase in traffic, crime and frustration among the locals who feel like their small, close-knit towns are now gone forever."

Check out the video on CNN Monday. (Thanks, Mom)

How to Measure a Storm's Fury One Breakfast at a Time

Disaster Pros Look to 'Waffle House Index'; State of the Menu Gives Clue to Damage. Read the WSJ article. (Thanks, Jamie!)

HBR Management Tip of the Day: Ask for a Favor

Really liked this one:

"Entrepreneurs or executives often hesitate to ask for help because they worry about being intrusive or appearing needy. The truth is that it's innately satisfying to assist others, and most people want to help. Next time you want to make a connection with someone, ask them for a favor. Request that they serve as a reference or provide a testimonial of your work. Hit them up for new client referrals or job leads. Don't be shy about it. Asking for favors can be a powerful way to get people to like you better, because they become invested in your success."

Extra! Bizarre Sales Spike for 2 Papers

"It is possible there is some larger lesson for ailing newspaper sales in the sudden good fortune of The Suffolk Times and The Riverhead News-Review, two modest Long Island weeklies that saw an unprecedented sales spike last week as mysterious buyers swooped in to buy every copy they could."
Read more about the mystery in the NYT. (Thanks, Gaurav)

Steve Jobs on rules for success

(Thanks, Claire)

Bioethicist Bets Bachmann $10,000 on HPV Vaccine Link to Damage

Why does she make these types of unfounded claims?

Bioethicist Art Caplan is challenging Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann with a $10,000 bet to prove a claim that a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer caused mental retardation.

Bachmann chastised Texas Governor Rick Perry at a Sept. 12 Republican debate for requiring girls in his state to get Merck & Co.’s Gardasil in 2007 to ward off a sexually transmitted virus that causes cancer. The next day in television interviews, Bachmann said a woman told her the shot, usually given at age 12, triggered mental retardation in the woman’s daughter.

Read the entire Bloomberg article.

First, Make Money. Also, Do Good.

Do "corporate responsibility" and profits have to be at odds? NYT author, Steve Lohr, doesn't think so.

"If You Wouldn’t Do Your Job For Free, Then Quit"

A couple familiar words of advice:

• An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two, and an hour of work before noon is worth two.
• Always pick your kids up from school. That's when they want to talk.
• Never let your skill exceed your virtue.
• Never take less than two weeks off when you have a child or for your honeymoon. Don't let them talk you down.
• When you mess up, admit it frankly and quickly, and move on.
• Always do your very best in your job, but if you don't like what you're doing enough that you would do it for free, quit. (This seems extreme, but at the same time mentally liberating.)

Read David Fuhriman's Lifehacker post.

When Roommates Were Random

Read the NYT article. (Thanks, Claire)

"Find What You Love," Steve Jobs' at Stanford University

Steve Jobs, who stepped down as CEO of Apple Wednesday after having been on medical leave, reflected on his life, career and mortality in a well-known commencement address at Stanford University in 2005. This was my favorite section:

...Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life...

Read the full text in the WSJ. (Thanks Alex and Nikhil)

Why governments don't get start-ups

The overwhelming number of entrepreneurs and startups in the United States are still small businesses. There are 5.7 million small businesses in the U.S. They make up 99.7% of all companies and employ 50% of all non-governmental workers.

Even with this in mind, the government still misses the mark on regulation for small business. Why?

Read Steve Blank's thoughts. (His breakdown of the types of start-ups is particularly good!)

The Business of Austerity

"There are those, on both the left and the right of the US political spectrum, who would argue that Republicans have been pushing for austerity in the debt ceiling debate because, whatever its consequences for workers and borrowers, it serves the interests of business and the wealthy. But it doesn't serve those interests at all. Decades ago, America's rich were a true rentier class.

"They got most of their income from bonds and lived off their investments, and their main priority was keeping inflation low, regardless of anything else that happened. So austerity suited them nicely. The rich of today, by contrast, get much more of their income from their jobs and from the stock market, which means that they do better when growth is strong. And, while companies have figured out how to make money even during steep downturns - during this very weak recovery, corporate profits have rebounded strongly - overall corporate profits are below where they were in 2006.

"That's been reflected in the stock market, which, even before last week's precipitous tumble, was nearly 25 percent below its 2007 peak. In fact, the S&P 500 hasn't really budged in a decade. So, while corporate America has been doing well relative to everyone else, it would be doing much better, and investors would be much happier, if growth were stronger and unemployment were lower, even if inflation and government spending were higher. Austerity during an economic slowdown isn't just bad for the unemployed. It's also bad for business."

Read the New Yorker article.