Yesterday evening I participated in an interesting meeting at Columbia University to talk about the efforts of the Committee on Global Thought. While the name does sound somewhat ominous (vaguely Orwellian? Stalinist?), I believe it is important to call out “global” explicitly. The three most pressing challenges of the world are global in nature: technology’s impact on the economy and society, climate change and infectious diseases. These each have wildly varying local impacts but are fundame...

I have been wanting to write about the sequester for a couple of days and have been stymied by not knowing where to start because I deeply disagree with both sides. It’s a bit like observing two of our kids fight with each other when both are clearly in the wrong – who do you turn to first? So here is my attempt at blurting it all out in condensed version. We need to change pretty much everything about the federal budget: how much money goes through government, how it is raised, what we spend...

There is a lot in the FY 2010 US budget and it will take some time to digest. But one thing that is clear right away is that there is a big tax hike coming for folks at higher income levels. I for one have never been upset about paying taxes. That’s probably in part because growing up in Germany my Dad, who was a teacher and – like all teachers in Germany at the time – a government employee, instilled a sense that paying taxes was a civic duty right up there with voting. I still believe that ...

Yesterday evening I participated in an interesting meeting at Columbia University to talk about the efforts of the Committee on Global Thought. While the name does sound somewhat ominous (vaguely Orwellian? Stalinist?), I believe it is important to call out “global” explicitly. The three most pressing challenges of the world are global in nature: technology’s impact on the economy and society, climate change and infectious diseases. These each have wildly varying local impacts but are fundame...

I have been wanting to write about the sequester for a couple of days and have been stymied by not knowing where to start because I deeply disagree with both sides. It’s a bit like observing two of our kids fight with each other when both are clearly in the wrong – who do you turn to first? So here is my attempt at blurting it all out in condensed version. We need to change pretty much everything about the federal budget: how much money goes through government, how it is raised, what we spend...

There is a lot in the FY 2010 US budget and it will take some time to digest. But one thing that is clear right away is that there is a big tax hike coming for folks at higher income levels. I for one have never been upset about paying taxes. That’s probably in part because growing up in Germany my Dad, who was a teacher and – like all teachers in Germany at the time – a government employee, instilled a sense that paying taxes was a civic duty right up there with voting. I still believe that ...