May 17, 2012
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Commentary
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Aging, Population
Of all the fantasies indulged in by a society speeding toward self-destruction, none is as consequential as the idea that continuing growth — both in population and size of our economy — has a happy-ever-after ending. Yet, when overpopulation is discussed at all, it is discussed as a problem limited to the developing world. Indeed, a growing chorus of “pro-natalist” or population growth ideologues insists that, in the U.S. and other parts of the developed world, population stability or decline represents a demographic crisis that needs to be reversed.More
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Politics, Redistricting
The Governor has a 69 percent approval rating, totes around an adoring press corps, and has been described as the tamer of New York's dysfunctional legislature. But preventing a repeat of the state's usual gerrymandering process in this redistricting cycle was just not important enough to Cuomo. So he has broken his promise to veto cynical plans to reproduce the status quo.More
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Civil rights, Education, Law, Race
As the Supreme Court looks ready to restrict or eliminate race-based affirmative action in its 2012-13 session, supporters of such preferences have a tool they have (puzzlingly) not yet deployed: race-based affirmative action as a means to compensate for the disproportionately negative impact of current-day "legacy admissions" policies on minority applicants.More
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Cultural values
Do all cultures celebrate cheating as much as we do? Has "getting away with it" always thrilled us to the extent it does now? I’ll concede in advance the danger of falling into the this-is-the-worst-it-has-ever-been trap, and even acknowledge, on a moment’s reflection, that our time and place has no patent on pretense, disingenuousness, and deceit. But we are still in staggeringly bad shape.More
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Economy, Labor
Apple's lack of any sense of obligation to support American workers — indeed, the lack of any national loyalty at all — is appalling. Yet that’s not even the truly frightening part of the recent New York Times story. Most troubling is the broader, underlying narrative conveyed and ultimately encouraged by the story: there is nothing that America as a nation can or should do to alter the trajectory of events.More
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Alternative models, Labor
Our article on German automakers in the U.S. (lower wages, non-union) versus the same automakers in Germany (higher wages, fully unionized) generated a series of questions and criticisms, including some from readers who couldn't believe that there is an alternative to companies outdoing one another in reducing wages and benefits for workers.
We do, of course, have choices. BMW workers don't earn more in Germany because the nice managers work in Germany and the mean managers work in the U.S. What has happened is that the U.S. has become remarkably anti-union and remarkably laissez faire — a real outlier among advanced democracies — at the same time that Germany has continued to allow workers to be valued.More
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Politics
...can keep Congress and the press from shortsightedly focusing on "balanced" budget reductions despite a stalled economy and both long-term and short-term experience with the folly of austerity. It's like one of those arguments where you may think you're making headway, but where you get to the end and you might as well have saved your breath. Can anything prevent Democrats from seeking to give up hard-won gains?More
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Income inequality, Media
A perennial conceit of the mainstream press is “we don’t make the news, we only report the news.” A just-released poll, however — revealing that Americans overwhelmingly believe income and wealth should be more equally distributed — underlines how much real news got ignored this year by reporters preoccupied with centrism and compromise as all-weather solutions.More