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America’s economic structure, the labor market and the American workplace have changed greatly in the last twenty years and will likely change even more in the twenty years to come. Some of these changes are unpredictable; others look baked into the cake. But as the blue social model continues to fade, the question of jobs will rise even higher on the national agenda. The American economy will not only need to create new jobs, it will need to create new kinds of jobs and new relationships between workers and employers as we work to build the next version of the American dream.
Earlier this week I was in Washington, teaching a class and attending some events connected to the visit of China's vice president. It was an instructive time; in meetings with U.S. officials and experts who follow China closely, and at the State Department luncheon where Vice President Xi was the guest of honor, I was able to get a close up view of some of the factors at work in shaping what just about everybody on the planet considers—in a hackneyed phrase—the most important bilateral relationship on planet Earth.
The tension between the United States and Russia over post-Soviet Eurasia has significantly undermined the prospects for mutual trust and cooperation on global security issues between Washington and Moscow, as well as stunting the region’s development. Much of the rancor is rooted not in an inevitable clash of interests, however, but rather in the way the two governments conduct their policies in the region. Both U.S and Russian modi operandi, or at least the aspects that cause trouble, flow in large part from certain habits that have proven extremely hard to break.
John Gray explains why he thinks the world’s traditional religions will be alive and well when evangelical atheism is dead and long forgotten.
John Glenn recently reunited with the Mercury workers who helped launch him into orbit fifty years ago today.
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, U.S. policy has been in deep confusion on the question of state sovereignty—when we should violate it, and when we shouldn’t.
In spite of the recession (or perhaps because of it), online dating is a thriving, billion-dollar industry. Too bad the fancy algorithms and “expert” profile-matching are so much snake oil.
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Kim Jong-il is dead. Does the succession of his son Kim Jong-un present a moment for tougher sanctions, hard containment, more robust engagement, or continued patience and caution? North Korea watchers from China, Japan and the U.S. State Department game out short- and long-term solutions to the DPRK conundrum.
Books
The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted
As the Arab Spring erupted last year, technophiles waxed triumphant about the transformative power of the internet and social networking to free oppressed peoples around the world. Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Delusion debunks their misplaced enthusiasm and shows how these technologies can even be a boon for authoritarian regimes.
Books
Little Brother Is Watching
Online marketers are using social profiles to target consumers in ever more intrusive ways—and largely without public outcry. How have we come to tolerate such breaches of privacy?
Books
Apocalypse Still
Millenarian optimism and apocalyptic foreboding are twin poles of thought running throughout human history. Whether Rapture or Armageddon, American culture, too, remains fixated on the end times. It’s a fascination not to be taken lightly, for it isn’t just the province of the Left Behind novels and fringe-dwelling eccentrics.
Books
The Great Sea
The Mediterranean has for millennia been an action-packed meeting ground and battleground, a place where numerous empires rose and fell. An epic history of “The Great Sea” recounts the rivalries and partnerships that propelled civilization from the Bronze Age to the 21st century.
Retroview
A Night in Arzamas
Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, inspired by the author’s own brush with death, was hailed as an artistic masterpiece in its own time. A century later, modern psychologists and physicians can still plumb its insights to help dying patients confront mortality.
