bodner088

Regardless of what we are always being told by the venerable Pantheon of pedigreed Economists out of Washington, DC , Wall Street , and academia (as well as by the seemingly cynical grumblings of self-professed "Main Street" economists -- I am one of those myself -- and I have growing misgivings regarding the utility of my undergraduate degree in Economics ) regarding the state of the our sovereign finances , most of us develop a powerful "feel" for how well the machinery of monetary and fiscal policy are working by our own personal finances . If my income is increasing, but at a lower annual rate than my ordinary living expenses (including my repayment of the debts which I incurred to either live beyond my means or to purchase investments that my neighbor (a smart fellow) said were " sure things ") are increasing, I feel a decline in my sense of well-being. My finances are continuously getting tighter. This seems to make sense (except to people who...

Your mind is a muscle. You must use it to strengthen it. If you don't, it will atrophy and hasten your descent toward dementia (which is not the name of a town in the Midwestern USA ). Following are a pair of practical problems involving Pizza, Pi and Packaging . Try 'em. Background : Fabian Focaccia (not his real name, which is Sal Monella)  is a struggling 'artist' who is working at a neighborhood pizzeria in Brooklyn, New York (not his real location, as he is in the Federal Witness Protection Program , but which is still the best geographical location to make a pizza purchase if you/ youse should ever get around to it) to pay his bills until he can sell one of his paintings. He is faced with a decision and needs your help. He has cardboard boxes for 'take out' pizza (this pizza parlor does a big take-out business -- even for Arizona...oops!) which are each three inches deep (irrelevant for solving this problem) and measure exactly 20 inches by 20 inche...