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"The game seems rigged—and if it is, following the rules is for suckers."
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"It’s obviously a good thing that people are able to find work to keep themselves afloat when the legitimate economy has been terrible at creating new jobs and raising incomes. And the size of the shadow economy means that our economy as a whole is probably doing better than we think. But the damaging effects of this trend are clear. It’s hard for businesses to play by the rules if their competitors aren’t paying payroll taxes or workers’ comp."
— James Surowiecki on the U.S.’s growing underground cash economy: http://nyr.kr/ZMJj7z -
Shut Up, Savers!
Is the Fed guilty of waging a “war on savers?” In this week’s column, James Surowiecki argues that “the far more urgent problem is that it’s even harder for people who don’t have jobs, or whose wages are stagnant, to save anything at all.” http://nyr.kr/XG8e1l
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In today’s Daily Comment, Steve Coll looks at the E.U. proposal to cull from the bank accounts of Greek Cypriots: “In its foolishness, the proposal exposed in plain light a strain of ugly discrimination—is it too much to call it racism?—that continues to run through German, Finnish, and other northern-European attitudes toward the Union’s southern debtors.” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/102lydu
Photograph by Kostas Tsironis/Bloomberg/Getty.
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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.
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All Politics Aside, the Job Figures are Good News→
John Cassidy takes a look at the numbers: http://nyr.kr/YRdj1r
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Rather than generating peace and prosperity, the presence of mineral and oil wealth in countries that have been poor often leads to political conflict, corruption, and, in extreme cases, civil war. While Venezuela remains a very divided country, it didn’t fall to those depths. But with some estimates now showing Venezuela harboring bigger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, the question of how to manage its immensely valuable natural resources may well cause even more intense conflict in the years ahead.
John Cassidy considers the future for Venezuela’s natural resources and how it will effect the country’s economy: http://nyr.kr/15yIaWO
Photograph of Hugo Chávez, in Caracas, in 2006, by Andrew Cutraro/Redux.
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Audio: Eric Cantor, the Sequester, and the Death of the Grand Bargain→
The Obama-Boehner Grand Bargain proposal was not necessarily an ideal compromise (plenty of people on both the right and the left disliked it), but at least it would have given us a single, comprehensive solution to our fiscal issues rather than the serial brinksmanship and dysfunction that we have now.
Listen to the full recording of Ryan Lizza interviewing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor about his leading role in the death of the 2011 Grand Bargain deal: http://nyr.kr/Y2ONKB
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“Skilled immigrants aren’t, as a group, taking jobs away from native-born workers. They’re creating them.”
James Surowiecki explains why comprehensive immigration reform “will be a good thing for the economy, and it’s as close to a win-win policy as you’re going to find in politics”: http://nyr.kr/ZnmlWy
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The Business Pages
Visit The Business Pages, our new hub for insight and analysis on all things business: http://www.newyorker.com/business.
Read Ken Auletta on the future of television
Tim Wu on Apple and the debate over open and closed software companies
John Cassidy on the economics of the sequester debate
James Surowiecki on the problem with the banking industry
…and more. We also are unlocking Kelefa Sanneh’s feature from the print magazine on the Scotch industry.
