A decade after recognizing that the middle class might be a signpost on the way to redemption, the government is demonstrably failing to enact the will of the men and women it needs most, and thus it risks losing its greatest bulwark against the change it fears.

In today’s Daily Comment, Evan Osnos writes about the Chinese government’s failure to cultivate and satisfy the middle class: http://nyr.kr/YR7AIO

Photograph by Feng Li/Getty.

In today’s Daily Comment, George Packer looks at how the recent increase in payroll taxes sent Walmart’s earnings into a temporary free fall and asks if the Administration and Congress have overestimated the recovery, as they’ve done countless times before: http://nyr.kr/ZqQvMy

Photograph by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty.