"Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff."

"Republicans will supposedly have an incentive to make concessions the next time around, because defense spending will be among the areas cut. But the G.O.P. has just demonstrated its willingness to risk financial collapse unless it gets everything its most extreme members want. Why expect it to be more reasonable in the next round?"

"When you build up large stocks of mistrust and ill will, nothing can happen for a very long time. But when something does happen, it’s much quicker and much worse than anybody could have anticipated."

Great essay on bubbles and lifestyle by Umair Haque.

Ireland's economic collapse has hit hard and it may be years, or even a generation, before it recovers.

"In the graph below, the Department of Education has concluded that despite only having 12% of total enrollments, for-profit schools disproportionally account for 48% of total student debt defaults."

"This is not ok. You bought and paid for a computer game, but you never got to play it. You bought and paid for a research article, but you never got to read it. This violates the fundamental idea of a market – that if you buy one, you should get one."

"But if prices in Dubai seem inflated, they have nothing on Luanda. Last year Angola’s capital was the most expensive city in the world, according to Mercer, a New York-based consultancy."

"If everyone has everyone’s attention the value of attention is nullified." This is why we should save, invest, and be conscientious of the attention we give things.

"Yes, you will have incredibly lucrative job offers in this bubble. That's the easy part. As Startup.com and Code Rush illustrate, the hard part is figuring out why you are working all those long hours. Consider carefully, lest the arc of your career mirror that of so many failed tech bubble companies: lived fast, died young, left a tired corpse."

Unemployment and poverty rates are rising the fastest in some unlikely places. It’s no longer cities like Detroit that are facing the largest jumps in unemployment.

"With 22 tickets available at that price, the total to buy them would have been $2.42, though service and delivery fees would have increased the total purchase to a whopping $12.37."

Extraordinary photos of Detroit's ruin.

"Decades of decay, corruption, and failed get-rich-quick schemes have made the city one of the most intractable disasters in the U.S."

"I have often said that Rs 2000 is what I pay to my maid servant who comes to clean my house and wash the utensils twice a day. She works one hour and walks away with Rs 2000 a month. The poor farmer works 24x7 with his family of five members and yet is unable to earn more than what a maid servant makes in one hour of daily work. This is how we treat our farmers, our annadata."

"Finally, the thought hit me that every time and in every way that the telecommunications careers have had power or control, we the people wind up getting screwed."

Stowe Boyd summarizes a Pew study that correlates internet usage with income level.

Quite interested feature on investment banking and the change in what banks do.

The disparity between wealth and poor in India can be seen in the largest home in Mumbai.

What qualifies as the actual middle class? Hint, it's not even remotely close to the $250,000 figure Obama proposes.

Wealth disparity is now worse in America than many countries generally thought of as far less developed and egalitarian.

How China's economic growth could be leading it toward a situation like Japan's in the 1990s.

"So the clear and present danger isn’t that the G.O.P. will be able to achieve its long-run goals. It is, rather, that Republicans will gain just enough power to make the country ungovernable, unable to address its fiscal problems or anything else in a serious way. As I said, banana republic, here we come."

"Those investors who limit themselves to what seems normal and reasonable in light of human history are unprepared for the age of miracle and wonder in which they now find themselves. The twentieth century was great and terrible, and the twenty-first century promises to be far greater and more terrible. Classic investment strategies no longer work in a world where ordinary economic cycles are broken."

What the Times fails to ask is how many of these unemployed tech sector people are only looking for jobs in their current location.

Perhaps these tough economic times are what will finally end tenure.

The data show that growth in China is not dropping at the same rate as industrialized Western countries.

"If you decide not to bother, if you opt out of using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, et al, then there’s now an opportunity cost: you miss making connections that have personal or economic value. That’s why people quite willingly give up what we used to think of as privacy: because it’s worth it to them. These are the new economics of privacy."

The current economic situation necessitates an economy that is driven by something more than GDP and product.

We're in desperate need of some new economic benchmarks in order to better understand current economics.

The SEC is working harder to understand and regulate the impacts made upon financial markets by algorithmic trading.

Interesting discussion of the ramifications of choice. Seems that most of the time extra choice makes little difference to consumer decisions.

Perhaps there's better things we can be doing with our investments than funding children. h/t @danielbachhuber

"In the 20th century, never-ending mass-marketing, monopoly, and mega-politics came together to convince us, each and every one, that we're not really free: just free enough to choose between different flavors of the same old toxic junk. It was a trick, a ploy, a television hallucination. We're the freest people in history. It's time to use it like we meant it."

A collapse in the Euro is suddenly seeming like a more plausible option.

Alex Payne is leaving Twitter to start a bank. Sounds interesting.

Unpaid internships in journalism are bad enough. The idea of people paying in order to have one is just plain disgusting.

"I'd like to advance a hypothesis. Call it the Efficient Community Hypothesis. It says: where efficient markets incorporate 'all known information,' efficient communities incorporate 'the best known information.'"

Ryan Chittum at Colombia Journalism Review analyzes the different ways the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and McClatchy describe the recent ratings-agency investigation news.

"The Walla Walla Tea Party Patriots held a rally outside the county courthouse on Thursday, April 15, to demand fiscal responsibility from the government."

"Tea Party groups used Tax Day Thursday to stage rallies around the country where they pledged to turn their nascent movement into a powerful force to root out politicians they do not consider fiscally responsible."

"But the Tea Party supporters now taking to the streets aren’t the ones feeling the pain.

In the results of the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, they are better educated and wealthier than the general public. They are just as likely to be employed, and more likely to describe their economic situation as very or fairly good."

John A. Paulson, the man who made billions off of selling high-risk mortgages through Goldman Sachs, is not targeted in a federal suit against the firm.

Thomas L. Friedman makes a compelling case for adding more room and encouragement for experimentation in the American economy.