The size of the U.S. national debt is getting a lot of attention lately, and for good reason. Deficit spending through the COVID pandemic was enormous, pushing the total outstanding debt to a staggering $31 Trillion, with a T. A better way to measure the size of the debt is as a percentage of our…

The debt ceiling debate is about to take over the news cycle. House Republicans are dug in and demanding spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit. President Biden is adamant that the debate about spending cannot be tied to a debt ceiling increase. And Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the country…

I’ve been thinking about sustainability a lot in recent years. If capitalism relies on MORE – more production, more consumption, more people – to succeed and grow the pie, then is capitalism at odds with sustainability? And since the planet is required for our survival as a species, does that mean we must abandon capitalism?…

In college, I took a course called the Economics of the Environment. I wanted to avoid the mathematical grind of econometrics, and I needed an economics elective to complete my finance degree. The class has been invaluable to me, not because I figured out how to solve climate change, but because I learned about incentives….

What is money? I found myself asking this question watching my husband check the price of his Dogecoin over the weekend. His phone became a 24-hour casino game, complete with red or green flashing lights and 20%+ moves each day. Across the country, millions of young-ish men were playing the same video game, trying to…

There is a lot of buzz going around about the size of the latest Covid relief bill and the national debt. $1.9 Trillion is a lot of money. Democrats call it the minimum amount of support needed to help individuals struggling through the pandemic, while Republicans call it a “liberal wish list” of pork barrel…