“The rich are better off with a smaller percentage of a fast-growing economy than a larger share of an economy that’s barely moving. That’s the Labor Day lesson we learned decades ago; until we remember it again, we’ll be stuck in the Great Recession.”

Agreed. I wonder though — could it really be this simple?

So anyway, NG did some analysis and found “The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. Lack of health insurance is a factor in life span and contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year.”

The chart is shocking:

“The rejection of hard-won knowledge is by no means a new phenomenon. In 1905, French mathematician and scientist Henri Poincaré said that the willingness to embrace pseudo-science flourished because people “know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether illusion is not more consoling.” [...] Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly. Being rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense.”

“A survey by the Centre for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy, found that between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of employees who professed loyalty to their employers slumped from 95% to 39%; the number voicing trust in them fell from 79% to 22%.”

The article puts the primary blame on the poor economy, but also suggests that micro-measuring employees (how many times did you smile at a customer today?) and mixed messages about company loyalty play a significant role.

Bob Sutton discusses the data further. Particularly, he is interested in how companies will fare when the economy returns.

“One of the surprising things we found in that survey was that those who are the most technologically adept and those who are the most engaged with information actually are not in the echo chamber pattern; they are actually seeking out and finding out more arguments opposed to their views than those who are less technologically adept and less interested in political information.”

Or perhaps another way to say it: those who are technologically adept tend to have more balanced viewpoints.

[via Climate Progress]

I found it an enjoyable idea to ponder. Considering Apple’s market share is vastly greater (80B) than the “Big Three” put together (Ford at 7B, Chrysler at 7B?, GM at 3B), one has to wonder what the fuss is all about.

These are the 12 “foreign,” or so-called transplant, producers making cars across America’s South and Midwest. Toyota, BMW, Kia and others now make 54% of the cars Americans buy. The internationals also employ some 113,000 Americans, compared with 239,000 at U.S.-owned carmakers, and several times that number indirectly.

The international car makers aren’t cheering for Detroit’s collapse. Their own production would be hit if such large suppliers as the automotive interior maker Lear were to go down with a GM or Chrysler. They fear, as well, a protectionist backlash. But by the same token, a government lifeline for Detroit punishes these other companies and their American employees for making better business decisions.

According to the Porter Hypothesis strict environmental regulations can induce efficiency and encourage innovations that help improve commercial competitiveness. The hypothesis was formulated by the economist Michael Porter.

According to this hypothesis, strict environmental regulation triggers the discovery and introduction of cleaner technologies and environmental improvements, the innovation effect, making production processes and products more efficient. The cost savings that can be achieved are sufficient to overcompensate for both the compliance costs directly attributed to new regulations and the innovation costs.

This is exactly why I am thrilled when the price of gas goes up. The sooner, and higher, the better.

He calculates $1 trillion could pave the entire U.S. interstate highway system with gold – 23.5-karat gold leaf. It could buy every person on the planet an iPod. It could give every high school student in America a free college education. It could pay off every American’s credit card. It could buy a Buick for every senior citizen still driving in America.

[via Made to Stick]

“This was never going to be a bill that was going to make people happy,” he said. “No solution to a problem can be more elegant than the problem itself. We are dealing with a very difficult problem.”

Do you think this is true? I can’t say one thing for or against the bailout, but it seems to me that problems are never elegant, and solutions (at least the good ones) are always elegant.

While we still have enormous innovative energy bubbling up from the American people, it is not being supported and nurtured as needed in today’s supercompetitive world. Right now, we feel like a country in a very slow decline – in infrastructure, basic research and education - just slow enough to lull us into thinking that we have all the time and money to play around in Tbilisi, Georgia, more than Atlanta, Georgia.

[...]

As Chuck Vest, the former president of M.I.T., said to me: “Both candidates have spoken a lot about ‘change,’ but in most areas of need, innovation is the only mechanism that can actually change things in substantive ways. Innovation is where creative thinking and practical know-how meet to do new things in new ways, and old things in new ways.

[emphasis added]

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, to innovate means:

make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products : the company‘s failure to diversify and innovate competitively.
• [ trans. ] introduce (something new, esp. a product) : innovating new products, developing existing ones.

When a person is addicted to crack cocaine, his problem is not that the price of crack is going up. His problem is what that crack addiction is doing to his whole body. The cure is not cheaper crack, which would only perpetuate the addiction and all the problems it is creating. The cure is to break the addiction.

Ditto for us. Our cure is not cheaper gasoline, but a clean energy system. And the key to building that is to keep the price of gasoline and coal — our crack — higher, not lower, so consumers are moved to break their addiction to these dirty fuels and inventors are moved to create clean alternatives.

“With my patented “Ignore for a Week, Then Just Delete” system, you’ll get through your email faster than with any other system, guaranteed.” John Gruber via Twitter

“Let’s just have some ridiculous touchy-feely resolution.” Merlin Mann MacBreak Weekly #42

Aaron Mentele via Twitter

“A great way to think about what your principles are is to complete this sentence: “I would give others totally free rein to do this as long as they …” – what?” Getting Things Done by David Allen p66

“Fear, in other words, is a tax, and al-Qaeda and its ilk have done better at extracting it from Americans than the Internal Revenue Service…Never before have so few terrorized so many with so little.” Here’s How America Looks to the World By Josef Joffe

“everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change.” Robert Rauschenberg

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” George Patton

In Al Gore’s brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act.

A must see.

Motorists reminded to use zipper method to merge during single-lane traffic on Highway 61 bridge at Hastings

Extraordinary law enforcement planned for traffic control

ROSEVILLE, Minn. – Motorists traveling across the Highway 61 Mississippi River bridge at Hastings are encouraged to use both lanes of the roadway until the merge point at each end of the bridge, according to state transportation officials.

Using both lanes of Highway 61 when approaching the bridge and then merging at the bridge will allow more traffic to cross the bridge in each cycle of the portable signal system. This “take turns” technique, known as the zipper method, is used when traffic is congested. In this instance, drivers should use both lanes all the way to the designated merge point and then take turns merging.

Drivers are also reminded not to play vigilante by blocking or denying access to other drivers who are using the other lane of traffic prior to the bridge. Minnesota State Patrol officers will patrol the work zone to enforce traffic laws and respond to incidents. Extra law enforcement throughout the construction zone will increase safety for the traveling public and construction workers on site. Drivers also are reminded that fines are doubled for infractions in the work zone.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always felt a bit guilty when I passed up long lines prior to any kind of merge, but no more. If there is an open lane I’ll fly right by, guilt free. Sit in line as long as you like.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”

I’m sure you know plenty about this historic document already, but if you’d like a refresher, check here or jump straight into the annotated text.