Growth of negative-yield bonds
All over the world now you can enjoy the privilege of buying government debt that pays you a negative yield. In effect, you are paying a small premium to the issuing government for the privilege of...
View ArticleUnintended consequences of the solar revolution
In 2014, for the second year in a row, solar power was the largest source of new energy in the US. Solar power delivered by utilities doubled last year and the growth is accelerating. Last week, Tesla...
View ArticleThe European Model
Life in the social democracies of Western Europe is nice…really nice. Beautifully neat, well-organized cities are connected via plentiful and inexpensive mass transit. Work-life balance is an obsessive...
View ArticleA 4th Era of Capitalism
A century ago in 1916, after decades of deadly protests, union railroad workers won the right to an eight-hour a day, six-day work week. Other workers would not earn the same rights until 1933. The...
View ArticleIncome Inequality: Missing the Big Picture
Across a large swath of both the left and right this notion has become so accepted that it is treated as self-evident: a tiny percentage of very rich Americans are reaping all the rewards of global...
View Article1957
In quiet suburbs white children played on the lawn with Hula Hoops and Slinkies. Teenagers visited the soda shop for a chaste night out. Mothers had dinner on the table when dad came home from work....
View ArticleWhy I live in a white neighborhood
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound like you’re a white guy.” In her clipped, Back of the Yards accent, our realtor began to communicate her concerns about our initial choice of...
View ArticleRepublicans are missing our ride
Wouldn’t it be great for Republicans to line up behind a massively popular force that pits entrepreneurship and innovation against corrupt political interests? Even better, what if that same force was...
View ArticleEnding the era of the “job”
When my late grandmother was a girl in rural Arkansas, no one had a job. Everyone old enough to walk and carry a pail worked from dawn to dusk. Work was endless, cruel and utterly universal, but a...
View ArticleBeyond jobs
The modern workplace Does capitalism, with its accompanying technological disruptions create more jobs than it destroys? Our conventional wisdom assumes that each new wave of innovation brings new jobs...
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