Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

.
1. Is our author, James Stone, obviously a Jack Nicholson fan?

2. After earning a PhD in Economics from Harvard, did James Stone serve as Massachusetts State Insurance Commissioner and then Chairman of the U.S. Government’s Commodities Futures Trading Commission before returning to Massachusetts to found the Plymouth Rock Insurance Company which writes more than $1 billion/year in auto and homeowners’ insurance?

3. Thesis Questions -- In trying to make his book title sound like “Five Easy Pieces” (the classic 1970 Jack Nicholson movie that received Oscar nominations for Best Picture & Best Actor), James Stone picks 5 of the nation’s most challenging problems -- fiscal balance, inequality, education, health care and financial-sector reform -- and, for each, posits a thesis of allegedly-easy solutions.

For each of the 5 theses, please ask yourself the following questions --

3-a. Did James Stone identify the cause of the problem correctly?

3-b. Whether or not Stone identified the cause correctly, do his proposed solutions help to solve the problem?

3-c. Are there better solutions to solving the problem?