Demographics

While topics like “The Great Resignation” and “the labor shortage” have gained traction in popular discourse, much of these discussions overly simplify trends that have been brewing for decades.  read more »

With inflation soaring, trust in governments plummeting, and the global economy teetering on the brink of collapse, one might expect to see the masses out in the streets, calling for the heads of their rulers. But instead of rage and rebellion, we mostly see apathy. Rather than getting radicalised, people are dropping out.  read more »

Like all physical conflicts, the current war in Ukraine is also an ongoing war of narratives, in this case one making heavy use of visual imagery.  As they have played out, the threads of these narratives have a telling sequence of their own, revealing the tragic arc of most wars as they confront the ultimate—and ultimately gendered and classed—victims of modern warfare:  women, children, the elderly, the poor and working classes.  read more »

Like many of the world’s largest cities (Note 1), public policy seeks to densify Toronto, which is already the densest urban area (the international term) or population centre (the Canadian term) in North America (as used here, north of Mexico). An urban area is continuously built up urbanization and is routinely at the core of a metropolitan area (in Canada, a Census Metropolitan Area, or CMA).  read more »

When mapping the concentration of superentrepreneurs in the world, we find a paradox in Europe. Half of the top-ten countries with the most superentrepreneurs are found in Europe, yet Europe is far behind the US and Canada when it comes to high-end entrepreneurship. Another perhaps surprising fact is that gender equal Europe has a particularly strong deficit of women superentrepreneurs.  read more »

In newsletter #63 I discussed the managerial revolution, or the way that we transitioned from an entrepreneurial capitalist system dominated by owners to a bureaucratic system dominated by managers and technocrats spanning the public and private sectors.  read more »

The Seoul metropolitan area (also called the Seoul Capital Area) has continued its strong population growth over the past decade, with the 2020 census indicating an annual increase of 1.0%.  read more »

Joe Biden may have once bragged about his cooperative relations with segregationists, but he still arguably owes more to African-American leadership and voters than any politician in recent history.  read more »

Out in the rolling country just east of Columbus, Ohio, a new—and potentially brighter—American future is emerging. New factories are springing up, and, amid a severe labor shortage, companies are recruiting in the inner city and among communities of new immigrants and high schoolers to keep their plants running.  read more »

My monthly deep dive newsletter will be out next week and looks at one of the gaps in our society’s thinking about femininity. In preparation for that, I wanted to highlight again the way that conservatives have failed to account for the impact of industrialization on the household in their thinking about gender roles.  read more »