Some people think winning the Lottery - or coming into a bunch of "un-earned" money, can be "bad" for you; reduced motivation to work, reduced sense of personal worth, etc.

On the other hand, people who HAVE a lot of money, rarely get rid of it because it would be better for them (more motivation to work, etc.).

The studies seem to show that winning the lottery generally is a "good thing" - and that people are even a little happier and more secure.

Future home of reporting on spending for US Economic Recovery.

Ballmer talked about the BRIC countries in answering a question at the Churchill Club. I hadn't heard the term before (coined in 2001).

Austan Goolsbee (what a cool name), is an Economics Professor at University of Chicago and Barack Obama's economic advisor. It is refreshing to have a presidential candidate who surrounds himself with SMART people, for a change.

Watch this interview and you'll have a lot more faith in the depth and quality of Obama's economic strategy, if you were skeptical before.

Marc Andreesen says this is one of the most important books he's ever read.

Quoted: Amazon.com: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life, First Edition: Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Books

Harvard Center for Risk Analysis did a cost-benefit analysis of airbags. Despite the fact that the public overwhelmingly believes airbags to be a safe and cost-effective enhancement to a modern vehicle, this study found that driver's side airbags cost $70,000 per "year of life saved" and passenger side airbags cost $400,000 per year of life saved.

The latter figure is one that obviously is not one that could be economically justified for the general population. Even for the driver's side airbag, I think the cost seems to be much higher than other life-saving expenditures we can be making.

Why did Nader believe so strongly that air bags needed to be installed in cars? It seems irrational to me. At this point, I think his ego is so tied up with airbags that he would never come out against them no matter how detrimental or expensive they turn out to be.

Quoted: air bags kill more children than they save according to the "best available evidence,"

I think the whole carbon offset business is a scam. Planting a tree just defers carbon emissions (assuming the tree survives) to the date the tree burns or decomposes. True carbon sequestration costs between $40 and $200/ton (1 ton = amount of CO2 each human puts into the air just by living, and coincidentally, is about the same amount that a car puts into the air each year by driving 10,000 miles).

The best way to deal with this through regulation is to create a carbon tax of $50/ton on ALL carbon emissions activities (NOT a credit, or "cap and trade" system - which give current emitters a free pass). Most likely, the best use of the tax revenue is to fund research to improving the cost of solar, nuclear, and battery technologies (to move to an all-electric economy from clean sources).

Quoted: Corporations and shoppers in the United States spent more than $54 million in 2007 on carbon offset credits, but where exactly is that money going?

click to play

Excellent video about Global Climate Change risk of inaction. But, I don't agree with the analysis for several reasons:

- The cost of action is greater than he portrays. Column "A" includes massive world-wide deaths through starvation and exposure.

- Column "A" has no "smiley face": outcome. Even if we are "right", the scale of economic sacrifice is paid on both row 1 and row 2 -> he'd avoiding saying that though I'm sure he knows it's true (this was just dishonest on his part).

- Column "B" worst-case scenario is not as bad as he portrays it. The effects of global temperature increase are likely those we can accommodate - and some of those effects are actually GOOD!

- Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we may not have ANYTHING we can actually do to significantly reduce the human output of CO2 emissions. Our real choice is more like "how much should we spend to marginally slow the increase of human emissions of greenhouse gases over the next 100 years". There is no plan that can actually create significant reductions that will have ANY effect (short of mass executions/sterilization of humans).

The US is in debt over $9 Trillion. That's about $90,000 for EVERY HOUSEHOLD in America. If you subtracted $90,000 from everyone's assets - how many of us would be bankrupt?

$400B per year ($4,000 per household) is going to pay current interest on the national debt.

Each year, the debt is climbing by $200B ($2,000 per household) because we are spending too much and collecting too few taxes.

Let me summarize. For the average US household the federal government has put you in the position of:

- $90,000 in debt
- Charging you $4,000 per year to partially service that debt.
- Increasing your debt each year by $2,000.

Quoted: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress today that the U.S. government will hit the current debt ceiling of $8.965 trillion on Oct. 1, 2007. Paulson urged quick action to increase the limit.