On June 16, 1723 (June 5 according to the old Julian calendar), Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of political economy Adam Smith was born. He is one of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and is best known for two classic works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) · http://yovisto.blogspot.de/2013/06/adam-smith-and-wealth-of-nations.html

Gegen den Wachstumswahn Nachhaltigkeitsforscher über den notwendigen gesellschaftlichen Wandel Reinhard Loske im Gespräch mit Jan-Christoph Kitzler Die Wachstumsraten in den Industriestaaten werden "so sicher wie das Amen in der Kirche" zurückgehen, sagt Reinhard Loske, Vorsitzender der Studiengruppe für Globale Zukunftsfragen. Er kritisiert die Fixierung der Politik auf Wachstumsstimulierung und Wachstumsbeschleunigung. Neue Lebensformen wie gemeinschaftliches Wohnen oder Car Sharing seien dagegen eine ermutigende Entwicklung. · http://www.dradio.de/dkultur/sendungen/interview/1880624/

At an increasing number of companies, the hiring boss for rank and file jobs is now an algorithm -- and the computers are considering factors that are very different than what applicants have come to expect. · http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443890304578006252019616768.html?mod=rss_Technology

In 1914, a business executive named Henry Ford did a startling thing: He announced that he was going to more than double the wages he was paying his employees, from $2.34 to $5 a day--the equivalent of $120 a day in today's money. The country was as shocked by this then as it would be today. · http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-ford-salary-increase-2012-8

Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani decided two years ago that the employees at his company, Rakuten Inc., should work almost entirely in English. The idea, he said, was a daring and drastic attempt to counter Japan's shrinking place in the world. "Japanese people think it's so difficult to speak English," Mikitani said. "But we need to break the shell." With the move, which took effect at the beginning of last month, Mikitani turned his e-commerce company - an Amazon competitor - into a test case for corporate Japan's survival strategy. As Japan's population declines, all but guaranteeing ever-decreasing domestic business, companies here are grappling with how they should interact with the world and whether they can do it successfully. · http://www.newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/97750.php

For one thing, Poland has substantially bigger government than the US; in 2007, that is, pre-crisis, the Polish government spent 42 percent of GDP, compared with 37 in the United States. And despite what Romney claimed, there was no obvious trend toward smaller government; Polish spending as a share of GDP was about the same in 2007 as it had been in 2000. Oh, and universal health care too. Beyond that, there’s a good explanation of Poland’s relative resilience in the crisis compared with most of Europe: currency depreciation, or as Republicans put it, debasing the currency (note that a rise here is a fall in the zloty): · http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/poles-apart-2/

READERS IN COUNCIL Global infrastructure crumbling By RICHARD WILCOX Tokyo Kevin Rafferty's May 2 article, "Inviting economic suicide?," is correct on the main points: Japan is in an economic tailspin and this is of grave concern for our well-being. But so, too, is the rest of the industrialized world as the 500-year-old banking system, which is based on fraudulent accounting tricks, comes unraveled. This process runs parallel to our civilizational technospheric breakdown, witnessed by the crumbling and cracking of global infrastructure. The two issues are related and rooted in a flawed economic model based on greed and materialism, whereby affluence becomes the instrument of global environmental and human destruction. · http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/rc20120506a3.html