A collection of 66 posts
A pandemic-driven shortage of parts and labor has combined with a congested transport system to create an inflationary spike, with shipping rates doubling on some routes.
Frustrated owners have pled for more advance notice of lockdowns and re-starts, so as to allow them to plan their work schedules, inventories, staff management, and customer communications.
The result of these two trendlines—the dominance of luxury-belief-driven status competition in a period of extended economic stagnation—was a brew of identity politics, political tribalism, and cultural warfare that would have been bad enough on its own.
Taking advantage of the post-pandemic era may start with securing national health but will depend over time on creating better conditions for adaptive grassroots businesses.
In his 2000 memoir A Personal Odyssey, Sowell recounts a parable that was read to him as a young boy and which he never forgot.
As the global population has grown, resources haven’t become scarcer—they’ve become more abundant.
With the threat of plant closures hanging over negotiations like the sword of Damocles, union priorities have shifted from bargaining for wage increases to bargaining for job and pension security.
The core city will retain its appeal, but to stay safe, “social distancing” will likely curtail the once boisterous streetscape with its capacity for casual contacts, unique shops, and restaurants.
Material benefits can always be translated into political power because the political world has always been interwoven with the cultural world.
Republicans balk at the idea of UBI because it seems like an extreme version of your standard government handout. But it isn’t.
The suggestion that we ought to be suspicious of Gates’s work on global health—work that has saved millions of lives—because he made a slightly ambiguous comment about U.S. politics is not only absurd, it is also pernicious.
The drive against bourgeois aspirations underpins an emerging neo-feudal system in which people remain renters for life.
It is hard to emphasize how chillingly inept this remark is, especially for someone with a degree in economics.
Rand and her largely philosophical economic views have been consigned to history as an interesting relic of sorts—a compelling, well-articulated fantasy that has no basis in reality.
Amazon would still have paid tax revenue, and, more likely than not, other tech startups would have followed, growing the taxable population even further.