As its title implies, Baumol’s final contribution sees the problem largely through the health care prism. But the determinants are pretty much the same, and triangulation from another sector can be edifying. Besides: have you seen much sanity on this topic recently?

And by way of something hopeful:
David Sax: The Revenge of Analog (Public Affairs, 2016). Sax reports on the still-limited but expanding revival of the real, the tangible, the touchable amid the virtual, the digital, the untouchable in several cultural sectors (vinyl analog recordings; paper, including books and magazines; film; craft-based work; bricks-and-mortar retail; live, not online, education, etc.). The tide will never be turned back, but patches of beach are being reclaimed, and much of the energy for the pushback is coming from the young. And this is surely the biggest selling point for the live performing arts–those are real people up there, in real time, in a real space with you.

NEXT POST: Friday, Sept. 29: I promised that after we confronted the above grubby topic, we would return to Die heilige Kunst. And so we do, with one of the artists most intimately connected with that very phrase (for she “created” the role of the Komponist in Ariadne auf Naxos). This will be the first of two on the subject: LOTTE LEHMANN AND THE BONDING OF THE “REGISTERS.”