She was always reading Noam Chomsky but would get furious when I would tell her than her effective marginal tax rate was over 80% because of child care & transit expenses and claw-back of low income benefits. I lied. Her actual marginal rate was probably more like 200 or 300% because I figured child care at minimum wage rather than the opportunity cost of my foregone income. Maybe I should have read Becker.
All I know is I had a screwy job last Spring at $10 an hour and was mad as hell. I've got a screwy job this Fall at $500 a day and it's just fine with me. This too will pass.
If people happen to have a notion of what Adam Smith meant by the invisible hand, what Thomas Jefferson meant by the pursuit of happiness or what Karl Marx meant by surplus value; what they think is probably wrong. But I suppose most people have not heard of the invisible hand, the pursuit of happiness or surplus value.
On the other hand (metaphorical, but not otherwise invisible), I was traveling on a bus a few weeks ago and overheard a conversation between complete strangers about whether Minnesota had ever won the World Series. At one point one of men called to his son -- who looked about 20 -- for the definitive word on a particular series and the son answered that Minnesota had lost it in the seventh game to the Dodgers and Sandy Koufax had been pitching. When I was a teenager, I saw Sandy Koufax pitch a no-hitter against the Giants. I'm over 50. So there's no way that twenty-year old could have ever watched a World Series on T.V. that Koufax pitched in. It's "book learning".
So here's the $64,000 question (in four parts):
a. What year did Minnesota lose the World Series in seven games to the Dodgers, with Sandy Koufax on the mound?
b. What did Adam Smith mean by the invisible hand?
c. What did Thomas Jefferson mean by the pursuit of happiness?
d. What did Karl Marx mean by surplus value?
Remember, if you think you know the answers to b., c. or d. you are probably wrong. Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213