WASHINGTON — Few technological breakthroughs have had the social and economic impact of the automobile. It changed America’s geography, spawning suburbs, shopping malls and sprawl as far as the eye could see. It redefined how we work and play, from the daily commute to the weekend trek to the beach. It expanded the heavy industry […]

WASHINGTON — Can we get globalization right? It has emerged as an all-purpose scapegoat for our economic woes — lost jobs, depressed wages, large trade deficits, greater income inequality, anxieties about the future. The reality is otherwise: Although globalization is genuine, it’s been distorted and its ills exaggerated. I have written about this before, but […]

WASHINGTON — It turns out that the middle class isn’t stagnant after all. You know the conventional wisdom. The richest 1 percent of Americans have siphoned off all the income gains of recent decades. Everyone else is treading water. The claim has been repeated so often that it’s taken on the aura of truth. The […]

WASHINGTON — You can add health care to the causes of growing wage inequality in America. There’s a largely unknown paradox at work. Companies that try to provide roughly equal health insurance plans for their workers — as many do — end up making wage and salary inequality worse. A new economic study shows how […]

WASHINGTON — We Americans have a confused and contradictory relationship with vacation. In theory; we love it; in practice, we often dread it. So much expectation is heaped on a few weeks of free time that disappointment, if not inevitable, is common. Worse, our escape from the job and daily routine fills us with anxiety […]