If the current high levels of economic, job, and income growth continue, the 2020 midterms could look different than most are predicting.

Last month, a bit past the peak of fall foliage, I went to Vermont to visit family. Along the way I decided to stop by one of the many small cemeteries that dot the state to see the only monument to the 1918 Pandemic in the US. Hope Cemetery was beautiful, graced with stone gates, on a shining autumn day and a place where the eternal and the impermanent exist side by side.

COP26 critics, step to the side. From the get-go, few of us expected that the two-week UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, which ends Friday, would deliver the ultimate solution to climate change tied up in a big red bow and marked for extinction no later than 2050. There are too many variables, timetables, individual government and private sector interests at stake. But that doesn’t mean we are not on our way. We are. 

The military component of international engagement by the People’s Republic of China has long proceeded cautiously, in support of the economic engagement led by PRC-based SOEs. Some have anticipated the imminent establishment of a base by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Panama since the Chinese firm Hutchison Whampoa won concessions to operate two ports there in 1999, or in El Salvador, since the announcement of Chinese plans for a megaproject at La Union.

Today, for the first time in history, human beings must adapt to a rate of change beyond our natural capabilities. Weaving digital technologies into the fabric of daily life to ease adaptation, reduce stress and promote well-being is the challenge of our times. Big challenges require big solutions.

The frustrating deterioration in on-time mail delivery has become part of the ugly partisan brawls that animate Washington these days.  From the left, many see it as part of a plot by Donald Trump and his hand-picked Postmaster General to depress mail-in voting by sabotaging the postal system.  On the right, many view the U.S. Postal Service as a prime example of a bloated, unionized public bureaucracy incapable of doing a decent job.

Japan stands apart. In the rest of the world, countries seeking to boost growth encourage foreign companies to set up new facilities on their soil or buy domestic companies, ventures known as inward foreign direct investment (FDI).

A failure to realize that this is not your father’s economy

In 2003 David Hale and I wrote an oft-cited article in Foreign Affairs, China Takes Off. Nearly two decades later, has China’s inevitable deceleration begun?