My grandfather used to sing to me, “Good, better, best / never let them rest / till the good is better / and the better is best.” I appreciated that lesson and have been applying it to try to make sense of a recent bill signed by California governor Gavin Newsom. While the bill may be the result of Newsom’s grandfather singing to him about “bad, worse, and worst,” I have determined it is more likely a case of bad/worse/worst economic thinking. It exposes a level of bad that most economics teachers likely never bother to discuss.

For a number of reasons, the French Revolution is a kind of Rorschach Test for educated people. One cause of this phenomenon, if I may pile on metaphors, is clearly the blind man/elephant problem. There are so many parts of the Revolution, so many stages, so many protagonists, so many ideas, so many policies—often quite contradictory—that we are sometimes confused not only as to how to interpret it, but as to what part to interpret as well. Ultimately historians tend to explain the Revolution according to their predilections, or even their heroes.

There’s a growing palpable sense of optimism among many economists and journalists that the United States economy is heading toward a growth phase while avoiding recession.

Trading, forecasting, aggregating, and innovating—referred to from here on out as the Four—are activities that people have engaged in since the beginning of humanity. They are part of the human fabric because they stem from mankind’s peculiarities—heterogeneity, inclination to forecast, sociality, and inventiveness. The Four are key social interactions in human life at both the individual and aggregate levels.

Europe currently faces several challenges that potentially harm the quality of life for people in general but especially for young individuals, preventing them from developing their lives autonomously and independently. The housing crisis, reflected in overcrowded accommodation affecting 28 percent of young people aged 15 to 29, is just one example.