Next Social Contract

From the president to Congress to nearly every neighborhood in America, the focus today is on job creation. But for millions of Americans, just having a job doesn't mean prosperity or anything like it. Nearly one in six Americans lived in poverty in 2010, according to data released today by the Census Bureau. That's 46.2 million people, the highest number ever recorded in the 52 years that poverty estimates have been calculated.

Is the American Dream of opportunity and increasing prosperity out of reach for the average American worker? What is happening to the American middle class? If the labor market ‘polarizes’ into low- and high-income jobs, what does this mean for continuing inequality in America? What does it mean for the American social contract, and the American Dream?

Democrats and Republicans alike are failing to convince the American people that they have the answer to their country's problems. Underneath, however, lies a deeper intellectual confusion. The two most plausible visions developed by the US centre-left and centre-right – the "knowledge economy" and the "ownership society" – lie in tatters, leaving a void in America's discussion of its economic future.

If a union falls by the wayside and nobody notices, does it make a difference?

Verizon's union workforce will return to work tomorrow, after a 16-day strike. You may have noticed that you didn't notice.

Last week I wrote about the New England-based program More Than Wheels, which helps people get low-interest loans on new or good used cars, and allows them to save money on repairs, gas and financing. Most of the commenters — especially those who live in rural areas — liked the idea of the program, but there were a few persistent questions and issues:

Are cars necessary?

Demography is not destiny, as is sometimes claimed. The human race could be wiped out by a plague or an asteroid, or transformed by some new technology. But no matter what, today's patterns of fertility, migration, and mortality fundamentally determine how much society will or can change for many generations to come.

As hundreds of same-sex couples swapped vows two weeks ago on the day that their weddings became legally recognized in New York, commentators took the opportunity to marvel once more at the dramatic change in U.S.

Congress uses the tax code to promote a broad range of policy objectives. Rather than directly spend government revenue on policy programs—or implement new regulation—Congress has enacted a series of tax provisions that effectively subsidize certain politically and socially desirable activities.

These “tax expenditures” take the form of deductions, exemptions, or credits to taxpayers who engage in the targeted activity. From a budgeting perspective, they are treated as foregone government revenue, rather than increased government expenditure.

The "feature" mobile phone is the globe's top selling consumer electronics product. For many of the world's poor, due to meager connectivity in rural areas and the costs of more advanced mobiles, these phones effectively support only voice and text (or SMS) functions. Feature mobiles have spread into some of the most remote areas of the globe, with 48 million people now with cell phones but no electricity, and by next year, 1.7 billion with cell phones but no bank account, according to one estimate.

A friend in Beijing recently told me a story about the time a China Telecom technician came over to install the Internet connection for her Apple laptop. The man, an experienced worker, puzzled over the slim, silver device. He picked it up gingerly, holding it away from his body as one might inspect a suspicious package. After a few minutes, he set to work, but then grew frustrated when he couldn't find the familiar pull-down menus to configure the connection.