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n the popular narrative of American history, Black Americans made essentially no measurable progress toward equality with white Americans until the lightning-bolt changes of the civil rights revolution. If that narrative were charted along the course of the 20th century, it would be a flat line for decades, followed by a sharp, dramatic upturn toward equality beginning in the 1960s: the shape of a hockey stick.

In many ways, this hockey stick image of racial inequality is accurate. Until the banning of de jure segregation and discrimination, very little progress was made in many domains: representation in politics and mainstream media, job quality and job security, access to professional schools and careers or toward residential integration.

In terms of material well-being, Black Americans were moving toward parity with white Americans well before the victories of the civil rights era

Amid a flurry of press conferences delivering upbeat news, President Trump’s doctors have administered an array of experimental therapies that are typically reserved for the most severe cases of Covid-19. Outside observers were left to puzzle through conflicting messages to determine the seriousness of his condition and how it might inform his treatment plan.

From the moment the coronavirus enters the body, the immune system mounts a defense, launching a battalion of cells and molecules against the invader.

The viral load may even peak before symptoms appear, if they appear at all.

In the euro zone annual inflation hit 3.4% in September, the highest rate in over a decade. Some economists worry that the world economy is entering a period of “stagflation”—weak growth and high inflation—reminiscent of the 1970s.Off the ChartsTaking you behind the scenes of our data journalismDirectly to your inbox every weekSign up

A recent paper by Dennis Bonam and Andra Smadu, two economists at the Dutch central bank, looks at the effect of pandemics on inflation and concludes that they typically lead to lower, not higher, price pressures.

Using data going back to the 14th century, covering six European countries and 19 pandemics, the authors find that such events have historically caused inflation to fall for more than a decade, on average, yielding an inflation rate about ​​0.6 percentage points lower than if the pandemic had not occurred.

now we are at one of those defining moments in Jewish history when we find ourselves at a moral disconnect with much of the international community. As we struggle to absorb the enormity of the October 7 massacre and to confront a global wave of antisemitism, the trauma of aloneness has returned.

One typical tweet in my feed reads: “First they came for LGBTQ, and I stood up, because love is love … Then they came for the Black community, and I stood up, because Black lives matter. Then they came for me, but I stood alone, because I am a Jew.”

Surely those who had played down Israel’s security fears would now understand the nature of the threat we face on our borders. After all, this was no “ordinary” terror attack but a pre-enactment of Hamas’s genocidal vision. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – free, that is, of Jews. 

Countries agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels

who should transition first? What should determine each nation’s ambition? These efforts will be expensive. Who should pick up the tab?

The “Global Stocktake” from Dubai, like statements from earlier conclaves, got around these questions with the standard diplomatese:

I have a feature piece in this month’s Prospect using 13 charts to tell the story of 13 years of government failure. Had they wanted to fill the whole magazine I could have used 100 charts. With a handful of exceptions (exam results, use of renewable energy, workplace pension enrolment) every trend graph is going in the wrong direction. The public sector is in a bad way. Hospitals are at breaking point, the police are charging fewer criminals, prisons are full, most schools have to run food banks, care homes can’t find staff. And so on.

But even this bleak picture puts a gloss on reality because of how institutions react in conditions of scarcity. If demand for a service is higher than providers can manage they will start rationing access more aggressively.

The NHS is a great example. The waiting list for elective treatments has risen over the course of the year from 7.2 million to 7.7 million, despite Rishi Sunak’s pledge to bring it down. But there hasn’t been any increase in the numbers joining the list compared to pre-pandemic.

the really remarkable thing about “Abenomics” — the sharp turn toward monetary and fiscal stimulus adopted by the government of Prime Minster Shinzo Abe — is that nobody else in the advanced world is trying anything similar. In fact, the Western world seems overtaken by economic defeatism.

In America, for example, there are still more than four times as many long-term unemployed workers as there were before the economic crisis, but Republicans only seem to want to talk about fake scandals. And, to be fair, it has also been a long time since President Obama said anything forceful publicly about job creation.

It would be easy for Japanese officials to make the same excuses for inaction that we hear all around the North Atlantic:

Why is there such inequality? The choices we make as individuals can put us considerably above or below our peer average in terms of income or happiness or status. But our peer average itself is set by forces beyond our control—factors such as to whom we were born. And our peer average explains our relative standing against national averages far more than our own choices.

In the U.S., about 50 percent of variation of wealth and about 35 percent to 43 percent of variation in income of children can be explained by the relative wealth and income (PDF) of their parents,

One reason for this tight relationship is that parents who were educated are far more likely to educate their own kids. 

Maps Class-Divided Cities: San Francisco Edition Richard Florida and Sara Johnson 11:05 AM ET 9 Comments inShare4 Share Print Share on emailEmail Author's Note: This is the 11th of a series of posts that explore the class divides across America's largest cities and metros. Using data from the American Community Survey, each post explores the geography of class within a large city and metro area. For a detailed description of methodology, see the first post in the series. The map above charts the geography of class for the city of San Francisco. The creative class lives in the areas that are shaded in purple, the red areas are primarily service class, and the blue are working class. Each colored space on the map is a Census tract, a small area within a city or county that can be even smaller than a neighborhood.

Most of the city proper is purple, reflecting a large creative class concentration in some of the most sought-after neighborhoods such as Pacific Heights and Russian Hill. SoMa or South of Market, which stretches below Market Street along the eastern part of the city south of the Bay Bridge, is an area of mixed-use and warehouse buildings that are now home to the city's tech scene, including lots of start-up companies as well as big names like Twitter, Zynga, and Airbnb.

it’s none too soon to begin asking the question: what have we learned about economic policy in this crash that should inform our thinking for the next downturn? 

Let’s start with the safety net since it’s a fixture of advanced economies and serves the critical function of catching (or not) the most economically vulnerable when the market fails

For many of today’s conservatives, the increased use of a safety-net program is proof that there’s something wrong with the user, not the underlying economy.

There is a crisis of identity. Donald Trump now leads a coalition including the Republican establishment — and people who despise the Republican establishment. The insurgent president-elect — lacking relevant experience, adequate personnel and actual policy proposals — cannot exercise power without the help of those he ridiculed.

Trump has chosen to incorporate this conflict into the structure of the West Wing.

This is less a team of rivals than an ideological cage fight.

This go-it-alone mentality works against the ways that, historically, workers have improved their lot. It encourages workers to see unions and government as flawed institutions that coddle the undeserving, rather than as useful, if imperfect, means of raising the relative prospects of all workers.

It also makes it more likely that white workers will direct their frustration toward racial and ethnic minorities, economic scapegoats who are dismissed as freeloaders unworthy of help—in a recent survey, 64 percent of Trump voters (not all of whom, of course, are part of the white working class) agreed that “average Americans” had gotten less they they deserved, but this figure dropped to 12 percent when that phrase was replaced with “blacks.” (Among Clinton voters, the figure stayed steady at 57 percent for both phrases.

This is one reason that enacting good policies is, while important, not enough to address economic inequality. What’s needed as well is a broader revision of a culture that makes those who struggle feel like losers.

Americans today are strangely averse to change. They are less likely to switch jobs, or move between states, or create new companies than they were 30 years ago.

In economist-speak, "the U.S. labor market has experienced marked declines in fluidity along a variety of dimensions."

They are a driving force behind regional inequality, and the phenomenon stems from a significant root cause: the cost of having a place to live in America’s most productive cities.

As the first chart shows, the change in the overall electorate has been steady—and profound. Since Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection in 1984, working-class whites—defined as those whites without a college degree—have plummeted from around three-fifths of all voters in presidential elections to just over one-third in 2012.

The results show that Democrats have grown significantly more reliant on minority voters, while Republicans are still preponderantly dependent on support from whites—including the white working-class voters who have rapidly declined as a share of the Democratic coalition.

In 2012, President Obama lost college-educated voters by 4 points; this year, according to Public Opinion Strategies’ analysis, Clinton will win them by 29 points.

Clinton should make substantial gains among voters from households earning in excess of $100,000. While Obama lost these affluent voters in 2012 by 10 points, the NBC/WSJ survey shows Clinton carrying them by 12 points.

There are two groups among whom Trump will gain and Clinton will lose: voters making less than $30,000 and voters with high school degrees. Both less affluent groups are expected to increase their level of support for the Republican nominee over their 2012 margins, by 13 and by 17 points.