In The News

Wages are largely stagnant. Data suggest that growing profits earned by corporate investors is coming from shrinking incomes of workers. “Labor's share of national income has been falling slowly since the 1970s in rich countries around the world,” writes Daniel Altman for Foreign Policy. Increasing technology along with global integration and competition has pressured unions and eroded labor...

Household final consumption represents about 70 percent of US gross domestic product, yet “Cheaper fuel and raw materials are boosting manufacturing, making the U.S. more of a competitor to emerging-markets nations and less a reliable consumer of their goods,” reports Simon Kennedy for Bloomberg. The US recorded its lowest current-account deficit since 1999, assisted by new supplies of domestic...

The 9/11 attacks, followed by long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have left the United States exhausted, which has transformed its approach to the globe. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen cites political theorist Antonio Gramsci who suggested that transitions, during which old ways resist new approaches, can magnify crisis. The United States, and other nations, too, have taken an “inward turn...