Charles Duhigg wrote a fantastic article about habits and marketing for The New York Times Magazine based his book entitled Habit. You should read the whole thing, but below are some excerpts that are most relevant for marketing: Andrew Pole…
Blog Archives
How to demographically target marketing to achieve persuasion
Posted in Managerial Micro, Public Finance
Myth, religion, and fascism
Yuval Noah Harari is the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. The basic thesis of the book is: The truly unique trait of Sapiens is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe…
Posted in Philosophy and ethics, Public Finance
How democracy dies
Hungry? Photo by James Lee Freedom House’s most recent survey of the state of democracy in the world says: Democracy faced its most serious crisis in decades in 2017 as its basic tenets—including guarantees of free and fair elections, the rights…
Posted in Pence2018, Public Finance
Government debt hits all-time record. You now owe $63,000!
Although Forbes magazine regularly opines that US government debt is at crisis levels, most Americans don’t seem to care these days. If we divide up the total government debt by the population and adjust for inflation (using the 2018 value of the dollar),…
Posted in Public Finance
Radical political ideas that could make the world better but can’t get political support
Henry George promoted a revolutionary plan for the tax system that economists generally agree would be more fair and efficient, but 120 years after his death, still (almost) nobody cares about his great idea. Pigouvian taxes are another idea beloved…
Posted in Managerial Micro, Public Finance
Policing crime vs immigration?
Do you fear crime? Do you fear terrorism? Do you feel safe? It turns out that the government is much more afraid of immigrant groundskeepers and farm workers than terrorists or violent criminals: Congress… has elected to spend more than…
Posted in Labor, Public Finance
Rising dominance of fewer corporate behemoths.
The number of publically traded corporations used to grow with the US population as you might expect. More people means more customers and more workers which creates opportunities for more corporations. But the number of public corporations peaked in 1996…
Posted in Managerial Micro, Public Finance
Medianism 