Recommended economics writing

I don't have a comment about Cowen's silly post on aliens, but on his latest book about the "Great Stagnation" I found this in a book from 1950:

“It is conceivable that the depression [Great Depression] that hung over this country for a decade was not merely the result of the various forces analyzed above…Some have held that capitalism has reached a turning point and that the driving forces that made it such a powerful engine of economic well-being have lost their vigor…In short, progress, so characteristic of the nineteenth century, may have been interrupted, and the long upward trend checked at last.
“This problem of what has come to be known as ‘secular stagnation’ was presented by Alvin H. Hansen in his 1938 Presidential address to the American Economic Association, and we may well follow his analysis.14
“The great economic expansion of the last century was based on the triple foundation of: (1) technical innovation and the rise of new industries based thereon, (2) the opening up of new territory or new resources in old territory, (3) the growth of population. These three sources were the prime causes of that great and continuous increase of capital formation and investment that gave the period its vigor. Through them was made possible not only a continued rise in the level of real income, but also a fairly full employment of the productive resources, human and other, of the country. Apparently, only through great capital investments has reasonably full employment been reached…
“These foundations of our economic structure, it is argued, are beginning to be threatened. Population growth is declining, even in the United States…The world’s frontiers are closing. The era of development and settlement of new territory is coming to an end…Technology and invention will have to be responsible for perhaps twice as much capital investment as when population and new territory played their part.
“As stagnationists see the matter, this is asking too much from technology. With well-to-do societies continuing to accumulate harge volumes of savings, and with newer industrialized areas adding their quota to the flow of saving, the pressure on investment outlets will continue to be severe.”

14. A. H. Hansen, “Economic Progress and Declining Population Growth,” American Economic Review, March 1939, pp. 1-15.

From “Business Cycles” by James Arthur Estey pages 135, 136. Prentice-Hall 1950.

The post on Renting vs. Buying is excellent in that it is basically just sound common sense of the variety that is all too uncommon.

It shouldn't take a financial wizard to point out that there's something seriously wrong with paying $20000+ a year in mortgage interest, property taxes, and other non-equity building costs when you can rent the same house for $10000 a year. It's not like present value theory is some esoteric topic; it's pretty much the fundamental theory of investment.