Turbulence is a condition that we all experience during a flight when the plane is bouncing around by competing air currents. By analogy, the economy may bounce around a lot because of competing currents of public moods and investments. One week everyone might be optimistic and then suddenly something happens to turn everyone into pessimists. Investment dries up and investors become risk averse. A sudden piece of good news then turns around the public mood.

In working on any one problem, such as higher minimum wages, so many other issues come into play, such as some businesses possibly closing down, thus creating fewer jobs and more unemployment and incentivizing companies to import more goods from abroad, which leads to even less employment at home, and so on.

Every company should work hard to obsolete its own product line - before its competitors do.

Our legislators have become a set of "whores" open to the highest bidders. The problem is that if we try to limit lobbying, we are in effect limiting free speech.

Our infrastructure of bridges, roads and ports has been given a D-level rating by many civil engineer societies. The government should shift some money from the Defense budget and hire companies to fix our infrastructure. As for non-construction workers, we need to do job retraining in those growing areas where more skilled workers will be needed.

Requiring the payment of higher wages will lead to a loss of some jobs and a raising of prices which drives companies to search for automation to reduce costs. On the other hand, those receiving higher wages will spend more (the marginal propensity to consume is close to 1 for low income earners) and this will increase demand for additional goods and services. Henry Ford had the clearest vision of why companies can actually benefit by paying higher wages.

People are more comfortable with the familiar. It takes selling a big dream that comes with excellent income possibility to get someone to leave his or her comfort zone.