The Backward Art of Spending Money

Nearly 85 years ago, Wesley Clair Mitchell, the acknowledged leader of American economists during the first half of this century, wrote: "Important as the art of spending is, we have developed less skill in its practice than in the practice of making money. Common sense forbids our wasting dollars earned by irksome efforts; and yet we are notoriously extravagant. Ignorance of qualities, uncertainty of taste, lack of accounting, carelessness about pricesà. Many of us scarcely know what becom...