Few annual events produce more paranoid commentary than the World Economic Forum’s recently completed Davos conference.  read more »

Racial divisions have become the stalking horse of our politics and social discourse, with racism defined as white on black (often extending to Western vs. non-Western ethnicities). Google Trends reveals how the online topic of racism has steadily risen over the past decade, spiking like a seismic reading of an earthquake in June, 2020 that marked the George Floyd tragedy and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed.  read more »

In countries where Asians and Jews immigrated in large numbers, they have long followed a common path. Both groups occupy a dual position: discriminated against for standing out, while at the same time held up as models of success.  read more »

For decades, Canadians moved to the larger cities (census metropolitan areas, or CMAs) with their economic opportunities.  read more »

In September 1977, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company announced the first major shutdown in the American steel industry. It was closing its largest mill, the Campbell Works, displacing over 10,000 workers.  read more »

Antisemitism has always partly been driven by envy; Jews attract a unique resentment for their disproportionate intellectual achievements in literature, science, education and, particularly, finance. At the same time, however, this success can be inverted.  read more »

The overwhelming majority of the money involved in the energy and climate debate in the U.S. today is not on the side of traditional energy producers. Instead, the money, the media, and the momentum are clearly on the side of the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.  read more »

As if proliferating spy balloons and insidious TikTok feeds weren’t enough, America’s economic relationship with China also is going to get more complicated. And as usual when things are really important, Flyover Country will be right in the middle of it.  read more »

Los Angeles has been restored to the position of densest major urban area (over 1,000,000 population) in the nation, according to Census Bureau data (complete file).  read more »

“From the Beginning, California promised much. While yet barely a name on the map, it entered American awareness as a symbol of renewal. It was a final frontier: of geography and of expectation.”
— Kevin Starr, “Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915” (1973)  read more »