Connections have been vital this year. Outside in-person, on Facetime, Zoom, or other platforms, or through Facebook and LinkedIn – any opportunity to connect mattered as the pandemic limited everything else. But here is a conundrum about connections. Facebook suggested I “invite as a friend” a woman who shares almost one hundred Facebook friends with me, and I did not recognize her face or name. Other suggestions do not surprise me, such as the four connections I have with the brother of my nephew’s wife. Twenty-two connections with a Madison woman who belongs to a woman’s networking group of which I was a part. That makes sense. Three with the wife of a close college friend who lives on another coast and five with a young woman whose last name is the same as my ex-husband’s cousins. Twenty-five with my mortgage broker for a…
Build ??? Back Better
With a COVID vaccine in sight, economic recovery in 2021 is a reasonable expectation. But is there a way to build a better economy, not merely a larger one? It is a promise of the incoming Biden administration. Some elements economists would include in creating a better economy are listed below. Raise the standard of living for non-college-educated workers. It’s fallen by a lot. The result is worsening health statistics and growing family food insecurity, issues that existed even before the pandemic. Raising the minimum wage, rural development strategies and investments, and more affordable healthcare and housing are critical strategies for accomplishing this objective. Democrats propose changes to the tax system as the best way to achieve this aim. CEOs like Mark Benioff of Salesforce, on the other hand, argue that business and job creation is a better strategy, and there is truth…