Economics

At this time of year, with Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas, there's a tendency to look back at our lives and those of our families. We should be thankful for the blessings of living in an America where small dreams could be fulfilled.

For many, this promise has been epitomized by owning a house, with a touch of green in the back and a taste of private paradise. Those most grateful for this opportunity were my mother's generation, which grew up in the Great Depression. In her life, she was able to make the move from the tenements of Brownsville, Brooklyn, first to the garden apartments of Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay, and, eventually, to a mass-produced suburban house on Long Island.  read more »

A recent visit by President Obama to an Ohio steel mill underscored his promise to create 1 million manufacturing jobs. On the same day, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker announced her department’s commitment to exports, saying “Trade must become a bigger part of the DNA of our economy.”  read more »

Its image further enhanced by the recent IPO of Twitter, Silicon Valley now stands in many minds as the cutting edge of the American future. Some, on both right and left, believe that the Valley's geeks should reform the nation, and the government, in their image.  read more »

Europe's demographic dilemma is well known. Like East Asia and to a lesser degree most of the Western Hemisphere, Europe's birth rates have fallen so far that the population is becoming unable to replenish itself. At the same time, longer  life spans have undermined the poulation’s ability to withstand a growing  old age dependency ratio, challenging the financial ability (and perhaps even willingness) of a smaller relative workforce in the decades to come.  read more »

When I arrived in Los Angeles almost 40 years ago, there was a palpable sense that here, for better or worse, lay the future of America, and even the world. Los Angeles dominated so many areas — film, international trade, fashion, manufacturing, aerospace — that its ascendency seemed assured. Even in terms of the urban form, L.A.’s car-dominated, multipolar configuration was being imitated almost everywhere; it was becoming, as one writer noted, “the original in the Xerox” machine.  read more »

When Bill De Blasio won New York’s mayoral election a few weeks ago, it came as no surprise to anyone. His impassioned analogies to New York’s “Tale of Two Cities” and his call for a city that provided not just for the wealthiest one or two percent, but for all, appealed to the growing sense that New York is an increasingly unfair and unequal place.  read more »

Obamacare's first set of victims was predictable: the self-employed and owners of small businesses. Since the bungled launch of the health insurance enrollment system, hundreds of thousands of self-insured people have either had their policies revoked or may find themselves in that situation in the coming months.  read more »

With the social media frenzy at a fever pitch, people may be excused for thinking that Silicon Valley is still the main engine for growth in the technology sector. But a close look at employment data over time shows that tech jobs are dispersing beyond the Valley and its much-celebrated urban annex of San Francisco.  read more »

Not long ago there were pretty clear boundaries between the personal sphere and the commercial one, as well as more clear boundaries between public and private space.  read more »

Silicon Valley has been well recognized as the nation’s hub of technology, having easily surpassed both Southern California and Massachusetts, but it’s now Seattle that may emerge as its greatest rival. Home to tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon, Seattle has attracted creative and entrepreneurial talent, which has been the foundation to its low unemployment rate of 5.9% and continuous economic growth.  read more »