We live like gods, and we don't even know it.

We fly across oceans in airplanes, we eat tropical fruit in December, we have machines that sing us songs, clean our house, take pictures of Mars. Much the total accumulated knowledge of our species can fit on a hard drive that fits in our pocket. Even the poorest among us own electronic toys that millionaires and kings would have lusted for a decade ago. Our ancestors would be amazed. For most of our time on the planet, humans lived on the knife-edge of survival. A crop failure could mean starvation and even in good times, we worked from sun up to sundown to earn our daily bread. In 1600, a typical workman spent almost half his income on nourishment, and that food wasn't crème brûlée with passion fruit or organically raised filet mignon, it was gruel and the occasional turnip. Send us back to ancient Greece with an AK-47, a home brewing kit, or a battery-powered vibrator, and startled peasants would worship at our feet.

And yet we are not happy, we expected more, we were promised better. Our economy is a shambles, millions are out of work, and few of us think things are going to get better soon. When I graduated high school, in 1975, I assumed that whatever I did, I would end up somewhere in the great American middle class, and that I would live better than my father, who lived better than his. Today, my son doesn't have nearly the same confidence. Back in those days, you could go off to India for seven years, sit around in an ashram, smoke pot and seek spiritual fulfilment, and still come home and get a good job as a copywriter at Ogilvy and Mather. Today kids need a spectacular resume just to get an unpaid internship at IBM. Our children fear any moment not on a career path could ruin their prospects for a successful future. Back in the 1970s, pop stars sang songs about of the tedium and anomie of factory work. Today the sons of laid-off autoworkers would trade anything for that security and steady wage.

Austerity has failed. It turned a nascent recovery into stagnation. That imposes huge and unnecessary costs, not just in the short run, but also in the long term: the costs of investments unmade, of businesses not started, of skills atrophied, and of hopes destroyed.

What is being done here in the UK and also in much of the eurozone is worse than a crime, it is a blunder. If policymakers listened to the arguments put forward by our opponents, the picture, already dark, would become still darker.

Sweden should stand up to the United States and offer Edward Snowden asylum, former GOP Sen. Gordon Humphrey said in an e-mail to POLITICO.

"Respectfully, I say to Sweden, 'America has done wrong in this instance. Stand up to her. Grant Edward Snowden asylum. You will do the people of the United States a great favor to resist their government in this matter and at this moment," Humphrey wrote Wednesday morning.

Humphrey said Sweden would be the "ideal country" for the NSA leaker because it is only a one hour flight from the Russian border and "no overflight is necessary of countries likely to cooperate with the U.S. in forcing down an aircraft carrying Mr. Snowden to asylum."

Additionally, Humphrey said Sweden "has a reputation for high-mindedness" and "a strong tradition of justice."

What does Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have in common with Rihanna, Justin Bieber, John Lennon and B.B. King? He will appear on the cover of the August issue of Rolling Stone.

On newsstands Friday, the issue features Tsarnaev leaning against a wall and staring blankly at the camera. Below his image is the headline "The Bomber." The subheading reads, "How a popular, promising student was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster."

Northeastern University criminologist Jack Levin told MyFoxBoston.com that the cover sends the wrong message to Americans.

"If they want to become famous - kill somebody," Levin said of the message.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, will not appear on the cover of the Russian version of Rolling Stone magazine, its editor-in-chief said Wednesday.

The magazine's US version used a photograph of Tsarnaev for the cover of its latest issue - followed inside by a lengthy story about the life of the 19-year-old, who has roots in Russia's Caucasus region - prompting a squall of angry comments from readers and bloggers.

The Russian cover will feature US actor Matt Damon instead, although a translated - and truncated - version of the Tsarnaev story will come out on August 1, editor-in-chief Alexander Kondukov said.

"The decision [not to run the story on the Russian cover] was purely a marketing move," Kondukov told RIA Novosti.

The U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act seeks to co-opt foreign banks as long-arm enforcement agencies of the IRS.

Beware the sledgehammer used to crack the nut. In this case, the nut is the U.S. government's laudable goal of catching tax evaders. The sledgehammer is the overreaching effect of legislation that is alienating other countries and resulting in millions of U.S. citizens abroad being forced to either painfully reconsider their nationality, or face a lifetime of onerous bureaucracy, expense and privacy invasion.

The legislation is Fatca, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. To appreciate its breathtaking scope along with America's unique "citizen-based" tax practices, imagine this: You were born in California, moved to New York for education or work, fell in love, married and had children. Even though you have faithfully paid taxes in New York and haven't lived in California for 25 years, suppose California law required that you also file your taxes there because you were born there. Though you may never have held a bank account in California, you must report all of your financial holdings to the State of California. Are you a signatory on your spouse's account? Then you must declare his bank accounts too. Your children, now adults, have never been west of the Mississippi but they too must file their taxes in both California and New York and report any bank accounts they or their spouses may have because they are considered Californians by virtue of one parent's birthplace.

Extrapolate that example to the six million U.S. citizens living around the globe. Many, if not most, don't know about these requirements. Yet they face fines, penalties and interest for not complying - even if they owe no U.S. taxes, own no U.S. property, have no U.S. bank account and haven't lived there in years - if ever.

Was Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, the much-discussed Saudi national once identified as a "person of interest" in the Boston Marathon bombings, at the White House for a 4th of July celebration for military heros and their families?

Apparent pictures posted on the Internet and a Saudi news outlet say yes.

A Twitter feed appears to show photos of the young man posing before the edifice - decorated with red, white, and blue banners to celebrate the holiday - in addition to close-up photos of the first couple.

They come from the Twitter account of an individual claiming to be Alharbi's father, though that information has not been confirmed.

According to a professional translation of the account's information, however, the given name is "'Ali Al-Salimi Al-Harbi," and the description reads: "Father of Abd Al-Rahman who was injured in the Boston bombings."

It's time to drive a stake through the heart of this one

Historian Stephen Davies names three persistent myths about the Great Depression.

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" panel derided Sarah Palin's hinting at a potential U.S. Senate run, including wondering what would happen "if someone asked her where the Middle East was."

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Nicolle Wallace, a senior adviser to John McCain's 2008 campaign who afterward notoriously criticized Palin as unsuited for the vice presidency, said Wednesday that if Palin were to run any statement she made would dominate the news cycle.

"If Sarah Palin injects her voice into a national conversation in any form, it's obviously going to bleed across the spectrum," Steele said. "That piece of it is largely irrelevant, because the press will make her relevant to any conversation the minute she says something."

Papal court handling pardons for sins says contrite Catholics may win 'indulgences' by following World Youth Day on Twitter

In its latest attempt to keep up with the times the Vatican has married one of its oldest traditions to the world of social media by offering "indulgences" to followers of Pope Francis' tweets.

The church's granted indulgences reduce the time Catholics believe they will have to spend in purgatory after they have confessed and been absolved of their sins.

The remissions got a bad name in the Middle Ages because unscrupulous churchmen sold them for large sums of money. But now indulgences are being applied to the 21st century.

But a senior Vatican official warned web-surfing Catholics that indulgences still required a dose of old-fashioned faith, and that paradise was not just a few mouse clicks away.