Economics

A The New York Times editorial wonders why foreclosure rates are so high in the two Long Island counties it rightly calls the “birthplace of the suburban American Dream.” After all, the area has “a relative lack of room to sprawl.” which in Times-speak should be a good thing, since “sprawl” is by definition both bad and doomed.

Yet it is precisely the constraints on new housing that has served as a principal cause for Long Island problems.  read more »

By Nima Sanandaji, Johnny Munkhammar, and Peter Egardt

The American academic Richard Florida has gained international attention for his theories about the “creative class”. According to Florida, the key to urban success lies in attracting certain groups of people, such as artists, scientists and twenty-something singles. Florida insists that this can be accomplished through nursing a specific type of culture within a city: hip cafes, art galleries and other manifestations of indigenous street-level culture.  read more »

By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

It’s time to throw away red, blue and purple, left and right, and get to the real and traditional crux of American politics: the battle for resources between the country’s many diverse regions. How President-elect Barack Obama balances these divergent geographic interests may have more to do with his long-term success than his ideological stance or media image. Personal charm is transitory; the struggle for money and jobs has a more permanent character.  read more »

With the prospect of a long, deep recession staring us in the face, are there any reasons for optimism?

You betcha!

The central characteristic of the American economy – resiliency – is now being severely tested. But there are ample reasons to believe it will pass that test. Simply put, even after this crisis the US will still have the world's largest, most dynamic, most productive, most innovative, most technologically advanced, most competitive and most venturesome economy.  read more »

No brief outline can do justice to weaving together the potentially convergent strands that compose the key elements of the remaking of the American economy. None of the policy prescriptions here are original, but it is important to see them as complimentary parts of a larger whole:  read more »

Will this historic election alter the American physical landscape as well as the electoral one? Much will depend on whether the Obama Administration will focus on trying to revive the economy or move to reshape it.

Bold leadership sounds great in the abstract, but embarking on profound changes in the economy is both politically risky and economically daunting. Government, especially the one the new president will inherit, is severely limited in its competence and capacity to reshape the American share of the global economy.  read more »

Back in 2002, I compared housing to gold. The surge in home buying in the 2000s looked like the 1970s rush to buy gold. Like the current times, the 1970s were a time of great economic uncertainty, followed by the rapid inflation of prices in the 1980s. Regardless of the actual return on investment, many people bought gold as a hedge against financial and economic turmoil. When Americans bought houses in the 2000s, they believed homes would provide some of that same protection, in addition to being a place to live.  read more »

Stimulus fever is in the air, and with the election of Sen. Barack Obama to become the 44th US president, it’s now reaching a fever pitch. US automakers have already made the rounds on Washington DC, meeting with Congressional leadership to generate political support for another $25 billion in government subsidy to avoid bankruptcy. Now, congressional leaders and some economists are clamoring for $150 billion to $300 billion in additional stimulus to goose the national economy – all this on top of the $700 billion financial services “rescue package” passed in October.  read more »

Twenty-five years ago, along with another young journalist, I coauthored a book called California, Inc. about our adopted home state. The book described “California’s rise to economic, political, and cultural ascendancy.”

As relative newcomers at the time, we saw California as a place of limitless possibility. And over most of the next two decades, my coauthor, Paul Grabowicz, and I could feel comfortable that we were indeed predicting the future.  read more »

Rust Belt communities are obsessed with brain drain. The demographic losers of economic restructuring, cities are employing a variety of strategies to stop the bleeding and keep the talent from leaving the region. Akron, OH recently voted down a proposal to lease the city’s sewer system in order to fund a scholarship program designed to plug the holes of out-migration. The voters balked at the initiative partly as a result of the 30-year residential commitment necessary to reap the full benefits of the funding for post-secondary education in Akron schools.  read more »