Economics

At first glance, it doesn’t feel like the future will be made in El Segundo. A small city of 17,000, just south of Los Angeles International Airport, it’s the sort of place you glance at from your taxi as it whisks you on from arrivals to somewhere more exciting.  read more »

Los Angeles is reeling once again from urban disturbances, as it did in 1965, 1992 and 2020. After each outbreak the city is widely seen as a hopeless disaster  read more »

Here’s something I think about a lot. I believe in that Shakespearean phrase “what’s past is prologue”, meaning that past events serve as a good indicator of what the future may hold.  read more »

The most recent Los Angeles riots reflect, among other things, the response of immigrant activists to President Trump’s crackdown, and the latest resurgence of organized left-wing activism, which had been relatively quiet in the early months of the new administration. A less widely remarked factor, however, is the emerging and complex nature of class in contemporary America.  read more »

A systematic mapping of where the world’s global leading companies in deep tech are located shows a massive lead for the USA – however the leading edge of particularly Santa Clara Valley shows signs of gradual normalization  read more »

The deepening split between Elon Musk and the Trump administration speaks to broader divisions within an increasingly shell-shocked GOP. Musk, who left the White House only last week, has since denounced Donald Trump’s hodgepodge budget bill – the so-called Big Beautiful Bill – as a ‘disgusting abomination’, as it will add almost $4 trillion to the federal deficit.  read more »

The New York Times’s jeremiad last week about AI’s impact on entry-level jobs — particularly in tech — merely underscores trends that have been clear for well over a year. Silicon Valley firms have been slashing jobs despite record profits  read more »

It’s no secret that America’s working classes - more broadly, those without college degrees and professional jobs - have been living increasingly socially dysfunctional lives.  read more »

Currently India features in the news due to conflict with neighboring Pakistan. In a time when international trade is shifting, with new trade and tariff deals, India is also a key trading partner for North America as well as Europe.  read more »

In recent weeks it seems that the progression of the YIMBY movement is reaching some limits on its growth, causing it to make some unexpected twists in the logic of its supporters.  read more »