David Friedman

Over the last 20 years, the United States has regressed into what one economist calls a "plutonomy" -- a society in which the largest economic gains flow to an ever smaller portion of the population. According to recent economic statistics, from 1999 to 2004, the inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90% of all U.S. households grew by 2%, compared with a 57% jump for the richest 10%. Incomes rose by more than 87% for households annually making $1 million and… more

David Friedman was a New America Senior Fellow from March 2000 through March 2007.Friedman is an attorney, political scientist, economic development specialist, author, and columnist. In addition to his law degree, he holds a Ph.D. from MIT in international politics, where he won an award for the “Best… more

Expanding the number of quality blue collar jobs in Los Angeles will be Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa's most difficult economic challenge. Since 2001, our region's manufacturing employment has declined by nearly 20%, mirroring the loss of 2.6 million goods-producing positions in the nation as a whole. That's very bad news for cities like L.A. that are home to enormous numbers of working and middle class families.

As Villaraigosa prepares to take charge of a city about the size of Singapore or… more

Immediately after his landslide victory, more than a few editorials wondered if Los Angeles Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa would inevitably govern in accordance with the new, Chablis-liberal ideology that has infected so many of our nation's cities. Antonio Villaraigosa is garnering attention across the nation. But he'll find that Los Angeles' problems are unique.

I prefer to think that he will use his mandate to accomplish something that none of the overhyped "models" of urban revival have been able to achieve. Unlike… more

Frank Sinatra never wrote a song about Newark or Green Bay, nor has Madonna ever bought a house in either city. But these are among the unexpected places where businesses are adding jobs most rapidly and many people are moving in search of new lives, creating tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs.

The Top Cities in America for doing business are not at all where most people think, and there's good data to back that up. This year Inc. publishes an exclusive… more

Most telescope enthusiasts know the difference between a clear sky and good seeing. After rain or wind, for instance, the air looks crystalline and the stars as bright as can be. Yet, it's often at just those moments that the atmosphere is secretly bubbling with turbulence, smearing what should be magnificent images of Saturn or Jupiter into an eyepiece of flickering, ghastly mush.

It seems uncommonly hard to decide this year whether our vision of the economy is blessed with… more

Early on, the Bush administration seemed willing to break with years of indifference and think seriously about America's hugely unbalanced, unfair trade relationships. Instead, it played electoral politics. As a result, U.S. trade policy critics were handed all the ammunition they needed to compel President Bush last week to rescind the steel tariffs he imposed in 2002. The tariffs, scheduled to be in effect for three years, were designed to protect the ailing U.S. steel industry from cheap imports while… more

A sportswriter shocked by the recent shooting of a Giants fan in the parking lot outside Dodger Stadium inadvertently touched on one of California's most important, yet underreported demographic trends.

"It used to be the fans in San Francisco who were fools," wrote the L.A. Times' Bill Plaschke. "The battery throwers? The Tom Lasorda haters?... And while construction of a pricey new San Francisco ballpark eliminated some of those Candlestick cretins, the Dodger Stadium crowd has simply grown angrier and more… more

At no time in the last several years have California's jobs data, the key to measuring the state's economic health, been less reliable. Statistical inaccuracies inevitably crop up during volatile periods, such as a recession or a recovery, because the numbers are based on surveys that frequently lag behind realities on the shop floor. But these inaccuracies have been magnified by new, untested survey methodologies whose latent errors have not been fully identified, let alone corrected.

This is no esoteric matter.… more

We had just finished a ride down the South Bay beach bike path, huffing and puffing through the route's uniquely California mosaic. Behind us were the USC frat-like boys and girls of Playa del Rey, the inner-city flavor of Dockweiler State Beach, the always-puzzling encampment of Winnebagos at the very foot of the massive Hyperion sewage plant, and the body-wrapped opulence of Manhattan Beach.

My friend, a prominent Los Angeles lawyer and cast-iron liberal, was talking about the recall election.… more