Economics

If Biden’s American Family Plan becomes law as he proposed it, my grand-niece Harri will finally have a “modest yet adequate” standard of living based on a new commitment from the federal government to provide social wages.  read more »

There continues to be a perception among many that America’s suburbs and exurbs are overwhelmingly White-Non-Hispanic, with little minority population. Nothing could be further from the truth, is indicated by an analysis of major metropolitan area growth, using the City Sector Model  read more »

Urban advocates have long sought more federal money for cities. Now, they are getting it – bigtime. The aid being provided to cities under the coronavirus relief act represents a major test of the thesis that federal aid can be transformative for urban America. Cities should make the most of this opportunity. If they can use these funds to move the needle on substantial change, this would create a strong case for future aid. But if the money is simply frittered away, there’s no reason to expect such extensive help in the future.  read more »

In America and across the globe, COVID-19 is diminishing people’s prospects, exacerbating inequality and creating ever-more feudal societies as the pandemic ravages the health and the pocketbooks of the poor and the poorly educated.  read more »

The near hysteria, though justifiable, among conservatives concerning the imposition of racialist Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools fails to address how this theology both reflects and contributes to the “systemic” decline of education itself.  read more »

In Europe, North America, Oceania and East Asia, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a tragic, wrenching experience, creating more depressed and divided societies. Yet, as we have been gazing obsessively at our own problems, a spectre infinitely worse is emerging in the most populous, fastest growing and least resilient parts of the world.

Covid has caused a deep crisis in the already suffering developing world, which contains nearly half of all humanity. And this will have serious implications for the future of the world economy and political order.  read more »

Millennials have long been cast as the great progressive hope, or "New Progressive America: The Millennial Generation," as one study would have it.  read more »

Although master-planned communities are quite common on Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, they are few and far between in California thanks to strict land-use laws and an anti-development mentality.  read more »

These are times, to paraphrase Thomas Paine, that try the souls of American optimists. A strain of insane ideologies, from QAnon to critical race theory, is running through our societies like a virus, infecting everything from political life and media to the schoolroom.  read more »

There are two key lessons that the US can learn, from the competition amongst European countries to attract knowledge-intensive jobs. One lesson is that it is possible to encourage the growth of knowledge-intensive jobs in regional clusters.  read more »