Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
“I tried to register for the 2016 election, but it was beyond the deadline by the time I tried to do it,” a man named Tim, age 27, explained to New York magazine last fall. “I hate mailing stuff; it gives me anxiety.” Tim was outlining the reasons why he, like 11 other millennials interviewed…
San Francisco police officers wait while homeless people collect their belongings Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in San Francisco. Photo: Ben Margot (AP) In spite of some public bellyaching over perceived fairness on behalf of several high-profile, wealthy technology company heads prior to election day, the voters of San Francisco have cast their ballots in favor…
The inside story of how England’s oldest university picks its students, and why it needs to change The opening scene of the latest Abba jukebox musical, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, is set in one of Oxford University’s ancient panelled dining halls. Lily James is, in flashback, the young Donna, graduating from New College (founded…
Once a year or so, the economist Diane Swonk ventures into the basement of her 1891 Victorian house outside Chicago and opens a plastic box containing the items that mean the most to her: awards, wedding pictures, the clothes she was wearing at the World Trade Center on the day it was attacked. But what…
In the past two decades there has been a sharp drop in the share of national income going to working- and middle-class Americans. As the discontent among these workers begins to affect their livelihoods and the entire nation’s politics, policy makers must either hope the market will somehow fix wage stagnation or enact policies to…
In an ultra-rich-person moment at his latest forever-campaign rally in Tampa on Tuesday night, President Trump claimed you need photo ID to buy groceries in this country as part of a meandering argument for voter ID laws. Trump started by telling his crowd, where conspiracy theorists and Jim Acosta haters were unsurprisingly well represented, that…
EVEN before the Supreme Court piled in, American unions were in a bad way. In their heyday in the mid-1950s, more than 30% of workers were members. Today just 11% are. With only a toehold in the private sector—where they cover a mere 7% of workers—unions have become increasingly reliant on faithful public-sector employees, 34%…
Illustration: Jim Cooke (GMG) Today is Amazon #PrimeDay, home to all of Amazon’s greatest deals. You only have one chance to do this right! First, buy this 50 pack of Pacon Super Value Poster Board and a pack of black Sharpie Magnum Permanent Markers. Write “UNION” on each poster. Unionize your coworkers in the Amazon…
Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of…
That means that as people reach their mid-60s, they either have to dramatically curtail their spending or keep working to survive. “This will be the first time that we have a lot of people who find themselves downwardly mobile as they grow older,” Diane Oakley, the executive director of the National Institute on Retirement Security,…