Better? Better! (Overview)

People feeling helpless and scared is not good for our economy or our democracy. It is perhaps too easy to point out that people who earn their living by providing detailed arguments about why people should feel this way are a bigger problem than the underlying economic debacle. Regardless, the arguments prophesying the end of the world are extremely dull and all too common. Let’s talk about reasons that people have to be be engaged, investing in the future. I feel strongly that those reasons abound: we are going grow closer to our friends and family, we are going to cast off the economic shackles that have bound us since the 1850’s, we are going to see more people economically engaged and rising productivity, we are finally going to make a virtue of diversity and we are going to become happier and more civically engaged. We may even solve some of the most vexing policy problems that face us. Think I am smoking something? Possibly. Want some?