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"You want people working. You don't want them sinking deeper and deeper into depression," says Michael Lind, policy director of the economic growth program at the centrist New America Foundation (NAF). Furthermore, he said in an interview, "Employers want to hire people who've been working recently. The longer you've been unemployed, the less attractive you are."

Michael on Politics Daily

Joel on The Marriage Debate

Joel Kotkin, urban scholar and a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, has written an interesting article in the current issue of Newsweek. In "There's No Place Like Home," Kotkin argues that a generational shift from Americans regularly moving in order to take advantage of job opportunities is giving way to a new settledness.

"In 2005, it ranked No. 1 on the "Best Places for Doing Business in America," an annual list compiled for Inc. magazine by California public policy analyst Joel Kotkin.

In the latest rankings, published on Kotkin's NewGeography.com Web site, Reno is No. 314. Sacramento is No. 297."

Joel in The Sacramento Bee

If you own stock that pays a dividend, you can even look at your dividend check to see if your shares are real. If you see a line that says "PIL" — meaning "Payment in Lieu" of dividends — your shares were never actually delivered to you when you bought the stock. The mere fact that you're even getting this money is evidence of the crime: This counterfeiting scheme is so profitable for the hedge funds, banks and brokers involved that they are willing to pay "dividends" for shares that do not exist.  read more »

Mobility, a genetic fact of American life, is part a new and lasting trend referred by author Joel Kotkin as “new localism.”
He writes: “The basic premise; the longer people stay in their homes and communities, the more they identify with those places, and the greater their commitment to helping local businesses and institutions thrive, even in a downturn.”

Joel in The Napa Valley Register

"Michael Lind has a better word for it: 'Nothing could be more repugnant to America’s traditions as a democratic republic,' he writes in The American Way of Strategy, 'than a grand strategy that can be sustained only if the very existence of the strategy is kept secret from the American people by their elected and appointed leaders' (my emphasis)."

Michael Lind on CATO

“Perhaps nothing will be as surprising about 21st-century America as its settledness,” writes Joel Kotkin in Newsweek. “For more than a generation Americans have believed that ’spatial mobility’ would increase, and, as it did, feed an inexorable trend toward rootlessness and anomie.”

Joel in The New York Times

"There’s an interesting essay in the latest Newsweek by urban thinker Joel Kotkin, who argues that, for reasons familial, economic and technological, often-rootless Americans are entering a time when we’re more likely to stay put. And that this will have all sorts of implications for the communities we call home."

Joel in Saint Louis Today

"'There is no question that her willingness and ability to use social network media, including the latest flap on her [pictures] on Twitter, makes her much more credible and accessible to the Millennial Generation,' says Morley Winograd, a fellow at the think tank NDN and co-author of 'Millenial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics.'"

Morley on CSM