It was shocking to realize how many low-income Americans don't have savings accounts.

A very simple bad decision is to get into debt. And that is very expensive.

But because human being tend to focus on short-term benefits and our own immediate needs, such tragedies of the commons occur frequently .

In total, by giving people $30 bonus, Intel lost almost 5 percent of productivity. That's a lot. Now, think about it. You give money because you think this would increase motivation. It actually decreases motivation.

When parents have college savings accounts for their kids, their kids show higher social and cognitive performance.

What kind of people would be able to rationalize better than other people? Better storytellers, right? Creative people, right? Because if you're creative, you find more ways to cheat and still yourself a story about why this is okay.

When we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to it - meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.