Middle Class

The metropolitan areas that form the “Texas Triangle” —Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio— are emerging as distinctive models of 21st century urbanism.  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 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 »

“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 »

One of the enduring mysteries of contemporary society centers on the seeming disassociation of so much of the labor force from the economy.  read more »

I’m old enough now to have grandnieces and nephews, and almost all of them have lower living standards and worse working conditions than their parents.  read more »

For Americans, California once looked like the future. It was a state defined by risk-taking and utopian dreaming. Yet for most Californians today, the upward mobility so central to the state’s ethos is rapidly disappearing.  read more »

I'm going to make a little deviation from the bulk of the "Welcome to..." stories you see below, which mostly focus on South Side Chicago neighborhoods (the exceptions are Rosemont, in Chicago's northwest suburbs, and Park Forest, in the south suburbs).  read more »

In recent decades, progressive politics has been underwritten by the ascendant economic titans of capital, technology, and communication. Big Tech and financial firms have long financed Democratic causes, led by those such as George Soros and the now-disgraced crypto-master Sam Bankman-Fried, who was released last month on a $250 million bail deal.  read more »

If you have an extra 10 million dollars lying around, little Ralphie Parker’s house from A Christmas Story (1983), is for sale. The iconic mustard colored house, located on the outskirts of Cleveland, is currently owned by Brian Jones, a superfan of the film.  read more »