Juggling Dynamite

Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke with USA TODAY outside of the Capitol about her new book, the issues she’s most focused on and whether she’ll run for president. Here is a direct video link.

With many c-suites still fixated on financial engineering to borrow long and buy back their own shares to goose short term earnings in a world of shrinking sales, some offer a glimpse of what is possible when we focus energy and resources on true engineering that actually solves world problems.

“Computer chips aren’t just for your laptop and phone anymore. Doctors are implanting these technologies in our brains to restore sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf.

Soon, they could give people super senses and radically improved memory and focus.

“Brain implants today are where laser eye surgery was several decades ago,” write Gary Marcus, an NYU professor of psychology, and Christof Koch, chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, in a recent essay for The Wall Street Journal. See: Brain implants

As well as this remarkable video clip of a deaf woman hearing her own voice for the first time after her brain chip is activated.

A New York Times article this week features data on the declining middle class in America, see: The American Middle Class no longer the world’s richest.

“The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.

While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.”

Keep in mind that the definition of middle class in the US today is a family of 4 with household income of 40K a year. Canada has fared better over the past decade. But lest Canadians gloat, it is important to note that today its middle class is the most indebted in the world and hence particularly vulnerable to the next economic downturn when income and asset prices will fall, but debt burdens will persist. This clip offers a good discussion on the topic. Here is a direct video link.

Bill Maher also recently offered this characteristically irreverent yet astute summary of the new rules of America’s vanishing middle class (starts at 2:15 in the clip). See this direct video link.