UGA Tester

Have you been watching the TV series, Mad Men? It’s a wonderfully crafted period piece.  It’s set into the early 1960′s.  In some sense, it’s about the growth and impact of TV on society, and how the rise of our modern “consumer culture” is driven and fueled by the marketing and advertisement industry. Frankly, for [...]

Given that many of the major reforms of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will not be enacted until 2014 there has been much discussion of potential changes to the existing legislation.  This ranges from subtle modifications of small details of the bill to the Republicans’ recent vote to repeal the entire legislation.   In [...]

John Kenneth Galbraith’s classic book The Affluent Society argues that in the post-Depression, post-World War II era capitalism in America is primarily driven by the production and sale of private consumer goods. Capitalism, says Galbraith, is driven by constant production and consumption. Or, to put it another way: Capitalism is sustained by workers producing a [...]

I told myself that I wasn’t going to write a blog on New Year’s resolutions.  After all, making resolutions is a bit of a cliché, and statistics tell us that people who make them – break them within seven days.  Besides most New Year’s resolutions focus on cosmetic changes: work on my abs, lose ten [...]