by Robert E. Wright
The American Institute for Economic Research
I do not mean the title in an alarmist Neil Ferguson-type way. I mean it in a Pink Floyd way, specifically in its song “The Great Gig in the Sky,” where a voice whispers, “If you can hear this whispering you are dying.”
Well, duh, we are all dying all the time. Life is in many ways the process of dying. Sometimes death comes quickly and sometimes it comes slowly. Sometimes it comes “early” and sometimes “at a ripe old age.” Billy Joel claims that only the good die young but he shouldn’t be taken literally as any of us could die at any time from myriad causes.
Only two things, it is said, are inevitable, death and taxes. I admit the former but believe, along with John Lennon in “Imagine,” the latter is far from necessary.