Free market worshippers never miss an opportunity to propose their “trickle-down” economics of unfettered greed as the panacea solution to a complicated problem, viz., preserving the environment, improving education, providing healthcare, ending poverty. Now, though, they’re heading boldly where no debunked economic theory has gone before: proposing their brand of “entrepreneurialism” as the solution to the declining marriage rate.   Read more

I answered a New York Review of Books personals ad from a “young writer” who was “in need of a patron for fun and pleasure.”  She turned out to be much younger than I am (her late 20s to my mid 50s), very abused by her family (her mother is a born again Christian psychologist, her father an agoraphobic, alcoholic lawyer), and very creative (a Yale MFA with a novel coming out). Read more

A former Asian girlfriend desperately wanted to get out of her off-the-books, grossly-underpaying job for a Chinese construction company and start her own business. So I jumped in, unsolicited, and designed a chain of take-out stores featuring Char Siu Bao, delicious brioche-type buns baked with scrumptious roast pork inside. The perfect item for a commuter on the go, or a quick snack, the bun is the “holder”; you don’t even need a napkin. Read more