Everywhere we turn at Yale, leadership is the prism through which our success and worth are evaluated. Professors praise and academic prizes reward classroom leadership. Student culture is far worse: I watch classmate after classmate fall into a sickening rat race of institutional ladder-climbing.

The message we are receiving is overwhelming: If by the time you graduate you have not been the musical director of an a cappella group, the editor-in-chief of a publication, the captain of a sports team, the president of a cultural group and the chairman of a political society, then you probably shouldn’t have been admitted in the first place.

On its most basic level, leadership culture suffocates individual students, pushing us in ill-fitting directions and creating bizarre incentives. How many of us find ourselves devoting hundreds of hours into causes we care little about in a desperate climb to official leadership? In the process, we lose hundreds of irretrievable hours we may have spent studying and serving causes closer to our hearts. Worse, we perform our duties shallowly and opaquely, looking for accolades and positive feedback rather than genuine accomplishment. This is an impressionable time, and these are the worst sorts of work habits we could possibly be forming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/why-are-harvard-graduates-in-the-mailroom.html

Ours is a society of strivers - the so-called "job lottery." All jobs are essentially becoming a high stakes lottery. At the same time, middle-class Plan Bs are being whittled away.

At some point I need to decide whether I believe in determinism or free will. I came to this thought because I don't often believe that I have much control over my own life but I want to believe that I can and should fight the easy slippage into routine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/opinion/brooks-america-is-europe.html

Supposedly America is a bigger welfare state than Europe when tax breaks are taken into account.

Be a planet not a satellite!

Many people have argued that these changes have led to a culture of atomization, loneliness and self-absorption. That’s overdrawn. In “Going Solo,” Klinenberg nicely shows that people who live alone are more likely to visit friends and join social groups. They are more likely to congregate in and create active, dynamic cities.

It’s more accurate to say that we have gone from a society that protected people from their frailties to a society that allows people to maximize their talents.

The old settled social structures were stifling to many creative and dynamic people (and in those days discrimination stifled people even more). But people who were depressed, disorganized and disadvantaged were able to lead lives enmeshed in supportive relationships.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/opinion/brooks-the-talent-society.html?src=me&ref=general

Is this the end of market democracy?

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/is-this-the-end-of-market-democracy/

"Overall, Autor has found that the combination of three trends — automation; the emergence of a trade-based international labor force; and the movement of jobs offshore — has polarized the job market. There is growth at the high and low ends, but the middle collapses."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp

The results were dramatic. Over the next four months, those participants who deliberately identified cues and rewards spent twice as much time exercising as their peers. Other studies have yielded similar results. According to another recent paper, if you want to start running in the morning, it’s essential that you choose a simple cue (like always putting on your sneakers before breakfast or leaving your running clothes next to your bed) and a clear reward (like a midday treat or even the sense of accomplishment that comes from ritually recording your miles in a log book). After a while, your brain will start anticipating that reward — craving the treat or the feeling of accomplishment — and there will be a measurable neurological impulse to lace up your jogging shoes each morning.

Education Gap

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?pagewanted=all&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

Jeremy Lin

http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2010/01/lives-of-others.html

Mark-to-Market Tax

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/opinion/the-zuckerberg-tax.html