Economic Growth

In today's global economy, any job can be performed anywhere. In order to compete in a global labour market, all students in advanced industrial countries need to be highly trained in science and mathematics. In order to compete in the global economy, the advanced industrial nations must downsize generous welfare states.

The above represents something like the conventional wisdom about the global economy, the future job market and the welfare state. There is only one problem: every assertion in the preceding paragraph is wrong.

When A. T. Burgum came to the Dakota Territory in 1880, the way to riches lay in the deep, rich soil of the Red River Valley. A generation later, his son J. A. Burgum founded an elevator company in a small town called Arthur (current population 400). The company remained in family hands, and after A. T.'s great grandson Doug Burgum graduated from Arthur's high school, he left town to attend North Dakota State University and then Stanford. In 1983, after working in Chicago, he returned to North Dakota, lured back by another kind of natural resource: its people.

Trying to make sense of the steady stream of economic news can be frustrating. Is the economy getting better or worse? The news seems to change weekly and, depending on what is measured, can seem bleak or sunny. Wages are stagnant but productivity is up. The unemployment rate declines but so does labor force participation.

We can't even begin to understand how America is faring economically unless we first establish how its families are doing -- how much they're earning and how many hours they must work to earn this income.

For the sake of party unity, many Democrats last year put aside their differences with John Kerry's foreign policy positions, in particular his tortured support for the war in Iraq. Situating the party as close to the Bush agenda as possible without actually embracing it, it was argued, was a reasonable price to pay for taking back the White House.

Jodie Allen Introduced the panel by highlighting the growing mainstream awareness of class-based issues, as evidenced by the recent New York Times and Wall Street Journal series on the topic.

In a 1938 address on the third anniversary of the Social Security Act, Franklin Roosevelt declared, "There is still today a frontier that remains unconquered an America unclaimed. This is the great, the nationwide frontier of insecurity, of human want and fear. This is the frontier the America we have set ourselves to reclaim." And reclaim it FDR and his fellow thinkers did.

In his recently released biography, Richard Parker tells the story of John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the world's most famous living economists. Parker captures Galbraith's long career in economics and politics as well as the evolution of his economic thought.

Sacramento rests on the edge of what could prove a difficult decade, which could either make or break its momentum toward becoming one of the regional winners in the new century.

For much of the late '90s and in the early 2000s, Sacramento seemed to be finding itself and spreading its wings. Boosted by an ever-expanding government sector, the region also was becoming an important "spillover" region for the Silicon Valley and for educated professionals fleeing the congested, overpriced Bay Area housing market.

The corporate income tax has always had enemies. Introduced in 1909 as an effort to close the country's worst budget gap since the Civil War, economists and capitalists almost immediately began to argue that it was inefficient and slowed down business. More recently, Presidents Reagan and Carter, as well as conservative economist Milton Friedman and liberal economist Lester Thurow, have all recommended that the country scrap it.