Attention to the Unseen

The Wall Street Journal reports: Many Americans are pinching pennies, exhausted by high prices and stubborn inflation. The well-off are spending with abandon. The top 10% of earners—households making about $250,000 a year or more—are splurging on everything from vacations to designer handbags, buoyed by big gains in stocks, real estate and other assets. Those consumers now account for 49.7% of all spending, a record in data going back to 1989, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. Three decades…

Read More Read More

  Jess Bidgood writes: The music was booming. The ballroom was packed. And Elon Musk was onstage, waving a chain saw in the air. I had already seen other surreal sights at the Conservative Political Action Conference — a man with a cat on his shoulder, freshly pardoned Proud Boys roaming around — but it was clear that this would be one of the indelible images of the annual MAGA confab. Musk roared — or was he just making a…

Read More Read More

The South China Morning Post reported in November: China and the European Union should address their disagreements and form a united front against a “triumphant” Donald Trump, said a former chief of the World Trade Organization, calling the incoming US president a threat to global trade. The assessment from Pascal Lamy – director general of the Geneva-based multilateral trade organisation between 2005 and 2013 – comes as worries mount over the future of globalisation after the US presidential election last…

Read More Read More

Reuters reports: Days after U.S. President Donald Trump ended duty-free entry for cheap Chinese goods entering the U.S., his administration put the order on hold after more than a million packages piled up at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was the result of a rushed, confusing policy change that proved unworkable on short notice. Government officials are now scrambling to implement the order in a way that won’t cripple America’s hyper-efficient import system. Trump’s executive order took…

Read More Read More

David Dayen writes: It hasn’t gotten much attention, but one of Elon Musk’s major DOGE initiatives is a massive fire sale of federal office space. Despite forcing federal employees back to the office by abolishing telework programs, Musk and company want to unload a large number of unused properties and recoup that money for the budget, a process that could expand if worker purges continue. That theoretical win-win, however, will soon come into contact with the realities of commercial real…

Read More Read More

Graham Steele and Emily DiVito write: Elon Musk’s unprecedented access to the US Treasury’s payment system deserves the public outcry that it has received. As former Treasury officials, we fear the situation is even more dire than it might appear. Musk’s recent actions, days after the Office of Management and Budget’s government funding pause that a federal judge quickly blocked, suggest a big and broad vision for a dramatically consolidated and politicized Treasury. This could have widespread effects on our…

Read More Read More

By Rodney Coates, Miami University Americans consume more illicit drugs per capita than anyone else in the world; about 6% of the U.S. population uses them regularly. One such drug, fentanyl – a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine – is the leading reason U.S. overdose deaths have surged in recent years. While the rate of fentanyl overdose deaths has dipped a bit recently, it’s still vastly higher than it was just five years ago….

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: As Donald Trump threatens to slap steep tariffs on many countries, he is boasting that his taxes on imports will be a boon to the US economy, but most economists strongly disagree – many say Trump’s tariffs will increase inflation, slow economic growth, hurt US workers and result in American consumers footing the bill for his tariffs. “Virtually all economists think that the impact of the tariffs will be very bad for America and for the world,”…

Read More Read More

A Council on Foreign Relations brief: According to an American Immigration Council analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, immigrants—almost 48 million of whom now live in the United States among an overall population of roughly 335 million people—generated some $1.6 trillion in economic activity in 2022, the most recent year for which such data is available. They also contributed more than $579 billion in local, state, and federal taxes. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that increased immigration could reduce the U.S. federal…

Read More Read More

Timothy Noah writes: Donald Trump’s election provides a useful occasion to examine the difference between what rich people want and what constitutes a thriving economy. The stock market, which is where rich people live, has been climbing since Election Day. On November 6, the day Trump was declared the winner, the Dow rose 3.6 percent; the S&P 500 scored its biggest gain in two years; and the world’s 10 richest people, nine of whom live in the United States, saw…

Read More Read More

Reuters reports: Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Thursday she and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump had agreed to maintain a good relationship in a friendly phone call that appeared to ease tensions between the top trading partners amid tariff threats. Sheinbaum struck a more conciliatory tone a day after saying Mexico would retaliate if Trump carries out his pledge to impose a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports. “It was a good conversation and we are going to keep…

Read More Read More

Joseph Stiglitz writes: As the shock of Donald Trump’s victory sinks in, pundits and politicians are mulling what it means for the future of the US and global politics. Understanding why such a divisive, unqualified figure won again is crucial for the Democrats. Did they go too far left and lose the moderate Americans who make up a majority? Or did centrist neoliberalism – pursued by Democratic presidents since Bill Clinton – fail to deliver, thus creating a demand for…

Read More Read More

NBC News reports: In the home stretch of the 2024 election, voters who’ve been weighing both campaigns’ proposals to tackle living costs are now hearing a new pitch from the Republican side: accept some short-term economic pain to rein in government spending. That message has emerged from former President Donald Trump’s wealthiest backer, Elon Musk, who says that the GOP nominee’s plans to put the U.S. on firmer fiscal footing would likely entail “temporary hardship” for ordinary Americans. At a…

Read More Read More