The plumbing of progress is always invisible until it becomes indispensable. When telegraph cables first crossed the Atlantic, they seemed like curiosities. Within a decade, no ship’s captain could afford to leave port without consulting the latest wire from London. The Suez […]
Margaret Chen has spent thirty-two years teaching fourth grade in San Bernardino. She retired last June with a comfortable pension from CalSTRS, California’s teacher retirement system. What she discovered in her first quarterly statement might have surprised her: among her largest investments […]
Most Americans don’t spend their mornings thinking about sovereign wealth funds. Yet this wonky Washington concept has suddenly entered our national conversation, thanks to recent government moves to buy stakes in companies like Intel and U.S. Steel. President Trump made it official […]
Every once in a while, a problem comes along that is so big, so intertwined with everything else, that we stop seeing it. Housing in America is like that. It’s the air we breathe, the floor beneath our feet, the backdrop of […]
Most people think of inflation as a four-letter word in economic form. Prices go up, wages struggle to keep pace, and that weekly grocery bill becomes another gut punch to working families. Politicians love to wave inflation around like a bloody shirt, […]
What happens when we stop asking how much people make and start asking how fairly it gets shared? That question drives the new web-based dashboard “Who Shares the Wealth?” at gini.commandos.cloud, a free, public tool that explores global income inequality before and […]
A $5 billion war chest. Global investors from Saudi Arabia to Singapore. And LeBron James at the center of it all, potentially plotting the most audacious challenge to the NBA’s dominance in basketball history. James has made no secret of his interest […]
There’s an old saying in the semiconductor world: chips are the new oil. That metaphor, like most good ones, has limits. Oil runs downhill. Chips run on demand. And sometimes, as in the case of Samsung’s stunning recent slump, the demand disappears […]
Not long ago, I sat down with the director of a small nonprofit working on food insecurity in a mid-sized city. The organization was lean, focused, and well-respected in the community. They had strong relationships with local families, a steady roster of […]
Washington debates often revolve around numbers. Trillions in spending. Billions in cuts. A line item here. A policy adjustment there. Out in rural America, the numbers feel less abstract. They signal the difference between a hospital with lights on and one with […]