For most of the past century, the United States and continental Europe have followed different paths. Social Democrats often ran European governments, which typically taxed and spent a greater share of their national incomes on social programs, such as public health care. more

Recently, a press release by the governor’s office, which was based on calculations by the R.I. Department of Labor and Training, stated that employment here is not doing as badly as had previously been thought. Instead of employment continuing to decline on a year-over-year basis, as the “official” DLT data have been indicating for quite some time now, we were informed that employment here has actually been rising for some time. more

Watching Democrats and Republicans hash out their differences in the public arena, it’s easy to get the impression that there’s a deep disagreement among reasonable people about how to manage the U.S. economy. more

In various parts of the world, politicians are waging war on the economic statistics that help people assess the performance of their leaders. Over the past few years, the Argentine government has reported inflation rates more than 12 percentage points below private-sector estimates, and has filed criminal charges against statisticians attempting to publish their own data. more

Morpheaus, the mysterious leader of the human resistance in the iconic movie “The Matrix,” holds out his hands to Neo, the young seeker of truth, offering him two pills. The red one holds the truth of the world, and the blue an escape back to the carefully constructed world of the Matrix. We learn fairly quickly that the “real” world is a nightmare compared to the dream of the Matrix. You don’t need to see this movie to grasp the meaning of choosing one pill over the other. more

Global regulators have a peculiar way of assessing the soundness of big banks: Ask bankers how risky their investments are, then figure out if they have enough capital to absorb the potential losses. more

While I do not ever profess to having the be all and end all of solutions to major as well as minor social issues, I am never afraid to think outside the box and put my ideas in front of you for what hopefully shall be constructive evaluation and refining. more

A “moral hazard” is defined as a lack of incentive to guard against risk where one is protected from its consequences. more

School is out and summer jobs are in. But are they? more

What’s the best way to care for patients and their families? Our two organizations have been working to answer that question for 140 years. Now, we’ll be doing it together. And the people who will benefit most will be the patients and their families who we serve every day. more