Nikki Haley is coming for your retirement
It feels like years ago, but actually only a few months have passed since many big Republican donors seemed to believe that Ron DeSantis could effectively challenge Donald Trump for the Republican...
The decline of the Pax Americana
When Hamas attacked Israel, Republicans knew whom to blame: President Joe Biden. Donald Trump asserted that the attack wouldn’t have happened if he were still in the White House; Mike Pence, while...
Will AI transform the economy, and if so, how?
So, will artificial intelligence transform the economy? Today I thought I’d take a break from my usual preoccupation with ongoing crises to engage in a bit of bigthink about how technology may...
Manufacturing jobs and unions
Are the United Auto Workers justified in seeking higher wages and benefits? Definitely. Is the union overreaching? I don’t know — partly because I’m not an expert on auto industry economics,...
America betrays its children again
I’ve been writing about economics and politics for many years, and have learned to keep my temper. Politicians and policymakers often make decisions that are simply cruel; they also often make...
Superstar cities in the age of Zoom
On Friday morning, I spoke to a conference of the Regional Science Association in Alicante, Spain. Notice the choice of preposition: “to,” not “at.” Given family commitments, I couldn’t...
Science, technology and war beyond the bomb
If you’ve seen the movie “Oppenheimer,” which you should — trust me, it’s gripping even though it’s three hours long and you know how the story ends — you probably noticed several...
Can Biden change the economic narrative?
Back in the 1970s, Arthur Okun, an economist who had been a policy adviser to Lyndon Johnson, suggested a quick-and-dirty way to assess the nation’s economic condition: the “misery index,” the...
Dude, where’s my recession?
Almost a year has passed since the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which estimates gross domestic product, announced that real GDP had declined over the previous two quarters — a phenomenon that is...
De-dollarisation debunked
The US dollar is, in a real sense, the money of moneys — that is, in many ways it is to other national currencies what money in general is to other goods and assets. Most of us rarely engage in...
The rich are crazier than you and me
Robert F Kennedy Jr is a crank. His views are a mishmash of right-wing fantasies mixed with remnants of the progressive he once was: Bitcoin boosterism, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, assertions...
The eyes of the world are upon Ukraine
Seventy-nine years ago, Allied paratroopers began landing behind the beaches of Normandy.World War II was a long time ago, but it still lives on in America’s memory. And the anniversary of D-Day, on...
How to think about green industrial policy
The Biden administration’s signature policy achievement, at least so far, has been the Inflation Reduction Act, enacted last August. Despite its deliberately misleading name, the act was mostly a...
How immigrants are saving the economy
BLURB: The immigration surge has probably been a significant contributor to the economy’s ability to continue rapid job growth without runaway inflationAlthough many politicians will never admit it,...
On the meaning of the superyacht
Recently ProPublica, a nonprofit, independent newsroom that has partnered with The New York Times on occasion, released a remarkable report about the relationship between Justice Clarence Thomas of...
AI may change everything, but probably not too quickly
“Artificial intelligence (AI) is already having a significant impact on the economy, and its influence is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.... Overall, the effects of AI on the...
The trouble with sunsets
My latest column was about President Joe Biden’s remark that some Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare (and, indeed, all federal legislation) after five years, and the howls of...
Problem(s) with China’s population drop
China’s population declined last year, for the first time since the mass deaths associated with Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward in the 1960s. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say...
What Ukraine teaches us about power
Credit where credit is due: Make America Great Again was a brilliant slogan, precisely because nobody knew what it meant. Was it about bringing back jobs in manufacturing? Was it about restoring...
The football game theory of inflation
If you don’t think of economists as party animals, you’re right. Or at least that’s the conclusion one might draw from the fact that several prominent economists carried on a thoughtful, earnest...