Almost Classical

I am a "serial entrepreneur" by nature. As early as junior high, I was trying to sell my services as a computer tech and programmer. I also knew I wanted to sell my creative writing. Business fascinated me — I tracked the stock market, the precious metals, and the general commodities when I was in the fifth grade. Not everyone is an entrepreneur; I understand that. Unfortunately, many people don't seem to understand what motivates entrepreneurs and how we help economies and society overall. On an older blog post, the following comment was recently posted: So instead of viewing him [the entrepreneur] as a 'job creator', he's just another consumer. He may consume other peoples' labor (time/skill/effort) in creating a corporation to earn him profits, but he's not a job creator. The market demand creates jobs. Not entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs just chase demand and buy labor in order to earn even more revenue and make profit.  Entrepreneurs do not creat...

When Paul Krugman and other progressives talk about the risks of austerity in Europe, they are forgetting a basic fact: Europe and Japan are getting grayer and grayer. There are more retirees than young people, and that means lower and lower rates of productivity. I often cite two authors willing to confront this truth: Megan McArdle and Robert Samuelson. In the April 2012 issue of The Atlantic, McArdle bluntly assesses the issue of a graying population in the Western nations. It is a problem the United States will soon experience, too. First, a few paragraphs from the lengthy McArdle piece. You absolutely should read the entire article. (If you don't read The Atlantic, you should.) Europe's Real Crisis The Continent's problems are as much demographic as financial. They won't go away soon. By MEGAN MACROCELL  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/europe-8217-s-real-crisis/8915/   Italy's fertility rate has actually been inching up from it...