Our Mad Aristos
In the past, ruling classes sought to protect the system that secured their coveted positions. But sometimes, as in the era before the French or Russian Revolutions, some in the ruling circles stopped...
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Poverty Level Workers Use Cars in Commuting More than Others
One of the principal justifications of public subsidies for transit has been to provide mobility for those with low incomes. There continues to be a presumption that low-income workers rely principally...
View ArticleOhio and the Battle for Populist America
This midterm year, in which many states have to choose between non-entities and the certifiably insane, Ohio is blessed by a real political dogfight. The Senate battle between representative Tim Ryan...
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California's History of Water Discrimination
In 1976, my ethnically diverse, working-class county where blue-collar union households worked in factories and refineries, owned homes and sent their kids to college, agreed to string a 6-mile long...
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Europe Struggles to Catch Up to China and the US in Entrepreneurship
Together with the USA and China, Europe is one of the three leading global economies. Yet, while Europe has a significantly larger population than the US, it is behind in economic production, and even...
View ArticleVienna's History Lesson for American Cities: Embrace Instead of Erase
There’s a museum dedicated to Esperanto in Vienna—an archive and testament to one of the more ambitious movements to enter the world’s consciousness in recent centuries.It’s presented modestly—an...
View ArticleCalifornia Governor Newsom Just Getting Started with Green Energy
California Governor Newsom became further convinced that voters continue to support his bizarre energy policies when they defeated the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election on September 14,...
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Housing Affordability in California: Part 1 — The Situation
There is probably no issue more requiring resolution in California than poor housing affordability. It is a threat to the preservation of the middle-class and the competitiveness of the state.Housing...
View ArticleRobbing Grandma to Pay Gaia
Energy has to come from somewhere.This may come as a shock to some, but if one plans to eliminate fossil fuels from the production equation, that energy creation capacity must be replaced.But there is...
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The California Headquarters Exodus Continues
A new Hoover Institution (Stanford University) report indicates that California continues to shed corporate headquarters locations to other states.Hoover Institution Senior Fellow and UCLA...
View ArticleFrom Boris to Trump, Yesterday's Men Won't Go Away
Boris Johnson may not be the UK’s next Prime Minister, but he could easily become the Tory choice after the party’s likely drubbing whenever the next general election happens. Or perhaps earlier, if...
View ArticleHow Big is the Working Class — and Why Does It Matter?
Americans without bachelor’s degrees outnumber college grads 2 to 1. But if you and most people you know and have ever known are college graduates, you might not realize that most Americans are not...
View ArticleThe Real American Divide
Elections are never easy to predict. But whatever the outcome of America’s Midterms next month, it does seem certain that vast swathes of the American electorate will be largely ignored. In state after...
View ArticleMcESG?: Chicago HQ Exodus Shows a 'City in Crisis'
Even in the era of digital marketing and online home-page “takeovers” by brands with something to announce, it’s full-page ads in major newspapers where companies still turn when they want to make an...
View ArticleFinding Third Places Across America
Returning to New York City from a trip to Salisbury, Maryland, it is clear why so many younger Americans are so open to giving up the displeasures of a dense metropolis—high crime, high costs, and...
View ArticleBiden, Trudeau Choose Green War on Oil and Gas Over Working Class
Canadians, outside of dual citizens, can’t vote in America’s midterms, but the results may well shape the country’s trajectory in the years to come.The current crisis around inflation, a probable...
View ArticleBeyond Crime and Punishment
Every politician, pundit and other apparatchik should have heard the elderly lady who didn’t even say a word about politics during my encounter with her on the streets of Manhattan.They should have...
View ArticleIs America Entering a New Age of Democratic Capitalism?
Most everyone outside the Biden administration knows that a recession is now more than likely. We could be entering what economist Noriel Roubini describes as the “Great Stagflation: an era of high...
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Housing Affordability in California: Part 2 — Urban Land Markets
Harvard’s William Alonso showed that the value of residential land tends to increase from the rural uses on the urban fringe1 to centers of economic activity, such as central business districts.2Urban...
View ArticleWest Coast Blues
Few regions have been more consistently Democratic than the West Coast. Even compared with the Northeast, where Republicans occasionally win governors’ offices, the appropriately named “left coast” has...
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