As the beautiful days of summer fly by, I hope you’ve found a little time to step out of your routine and enjoy them. It’s a great way to recharge your batteries and go at your life with fresh insights. To put you in a good mindset for just that, how about a few thought-provoking articles?

1. Let’s just jump right into the deep end and look at a very comprehensive examination of Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem by Charles Murray in the Wall Street Journal.  Do you think there’s something wrong with capitalism itself, or are we just doing it wrong?

2. A.J. Sull had a really interesting article in The Financial Post entitled Buy and Hold Investing: Lessons from Japan. He outlines the secular bear market thesis that I often write about, explaining that we are 10 years into a market that is essentially range bound with a slightly negative bias. As a result, money has been flowing out of stocks and into bonds. At some point, Mr. Sull believes that investors will realize that the return they are receiving on bonds is less than they can achieve with solid dividend-paying stocks. I have to agree with him, although I also concur that “it is not yet that time.”

3. Mark from My Own Advisor is a big believer in dividend investing. He recently answered a Reader Question – Why Don’t You Just Buy Dividend ETFs. This is a great question and Mark offers a great answer. In the process, he also gives readers a wonderful explanation of the pros and cons of buying individual dividend-paying stocks vs. buying exchange traded funds that track various dividend indices. (For the record, I don’t see a problem with doing either – or both!)

4. The Financial Post shared 10 Rules about Investing and Personal Finance You Might Want to Ignore. I guess there are exceptions to any rule, but these guys seem to argue that some of these shouldn’t be rules at all. Have a look and see what you think.

5. The Psy Fi Blog took it one step further and did a whole series on Things Investors Should Hate.

6. Long term China bulls might want to take a look at this Also Sprach Analyst article on China’s Demographic Perfect Storm: The Ultimate Growth Killer. “China’s demography now is quite similar to that of Japan in early 1990s . . . which was one of the big reasons that made us become pessimistic about China, not just in the short-run, but the long run.”

7. Jason Brick at EZ Texting had some good Time Management Tips for Entrepreneurs, but I’m sure we could all benefit from these.

8. Thinking of starting your own business? Here are the Four Business Types in Canada courtesy of Clark from Million Dollar Journey.

9. Have you read the comments section of some blogs and most major media sites? Apparently I’m not the only one wondering Why Is Everyone on the Internet So Angry? The folks at Scientific American looked into this and came up with some interesting factors contributing to the bull market in nastiness.

10. Perhaps we should all take a deep breath and read Michael Michalko’s article at The Creativity Post: Change the Way You Look at Things and the Things You Look at Change. I’m putting myself on a snark diet – in my own writing, in what I read and in whom I follow on Twitter. Maybe we’ll arrive at the truth faster if we work together rather than tearing each other apart – just a thought.

Thanks for reading Balance Junkie. I hope you enjoyed this month’s selections. Feel free to comment below.