On Thursday the 28th I went to a lecture by the celebrated economist Thomas Piketty at Columbia University. Author of the best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty emphases his work on wealth concentrations and distribution over the past 250 years. He says that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently …
With this appearance on CNBC last week, the Legend of Elizabeth Warren continues. Look how she shoots down these two smart-alecks who dare come at her armed with nothing more than some producers’ notes and a little cocktail party conversation. “No!” Elizabeth says, and they are gobsmacked. You know, I love Hilary Clinton, but whenever …
(This piece originally appeared on washingtonmonthly.com on July 7th.) It seems to me that the two potentially big outrage stories of the spring—the politicized IRS story and the data-mad NSA story—now have two things in common. First, they have both petered out as little or no evidence of nefarious activity has been discovered. Second, both …
(This first appeared on washingtonmonthly.com on July 6th.) We woke this morning to find that Edward Snowden (Mr. Around the World in Rrrrrrrrrrr! [sound of a screeching stop]) has been offered asylum first in Venezuela, and then in Nicaragua. Perhaps the only person entirely happy about this result may be John Logan, author of the …
At some point in high school, in one of those endless bifurcations people come up with to make sense of society, I realized that all the smart guys at my school could be divided up into two categories–word guys and numbers guys. Both word guys and numbers guys could get good grades in both the …
(This article first appeared on the site of The Washington Monthly on May 26, 2013.) I liked what President Obama said in his national security speech the other day. I thought it was amazingly courageous for him to talk in terms of ending the war on terror, if for no other reason than that it …
(This article first appeared on the site of The Washington Monthly on May 26, 2013.) Last week David Brooks had an interesting column about a couple of studies that surveyed key words in a body of writings. (No, we’re not talking about tax examiners looking for Tea Party among applications.) He describes the “two elements” …
This was first published on The Washington Monthly’s site on May 25, 2013. I have three laws of politics. I don’t know if they explain everything, but they often explain something, and that’s enough for me. Malanowski’s First Law of Politics is that the rich and powerful will always act in their own self interest. …
In the Times a couple of weeks ago, Thomas L. Friedman wrote one of the most interesting, alarming, and possibly prophetic pieces I have read this century. Let me quote it at length: “It’s hard to have a conversation today with any worker, teacher, student or boss who doesn’t tell you some version of this: …