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In mature economies, higher productivity typically is required for sustained increases in living standards, but the productivity numbers in the United States have been mediocre. Labor productivity has been growing at an average of only 1.3 percent annually since the start of 2005, compared with 2.8 percent annually in the preceding 10 years

Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist, says information technology is providing significant benefits that just don’t show up in the standard measurements of wages and productivity. Consider that consumers have access to services like Facebook, Google and Wikipedia free of charge, and those benefits aren’t fully accounted for in the official numbers. This notion — that life is getting better, often in ways we are barely measuring — is fairly common in tech circles.

Chad Syverson, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has looked more scientifically at the evidence and concluded that the productivity slowdown is all too real

A faculty working group at the University of Houston recently offered these recommendations to professors preparing for Texas’s new campus-carry law, set to take effect August 1.

The situation to which these recommendations are alluding—gun violence in response to controversial or otherwise difficult classroom discussions—is at this point only a hypothetical worst-case scenario. But critics of the legislation are still appalled: To abide by the law, and keep everyone safe in classrooms with armed students, faculty may ultimately have to resort to self-censorship.

In the eight states that have already enacted such a law, none of the predicted nightmares have taken place—students drawing their weapons on professors who fail them, for example, or students firing on one another in heated classroom arguments.

Katidis is a reflection of a troubling global trend: the rise of neo-fascist politics amid the economic tumult in Europe.

The austerity measures enacted in response to the Greek economic crisis have propelled the rise of right-wing politics; nationalist groups are gaining footholds throughout the country.

While political distress causes people to leave their homelands, economic distress causes them to turn their frustration on their newest neighbors.

A controversial plan by the Ethiopian government to expand the capital, Addis Ababa, is set to be scrapped after a key member of the ruling coalition withdrew its support.

Rights groups say that at least 150 protesters have died and another 5,000 have been arrested by security forces. Similar protests in May 2014 left dozens of protesters dead.

Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn had vowed on 16 December that his government would be "merciless" towards the protesters, who he described as "anti-peace forces".

Few can imagine how unlikely this is. From the Fifties to the Seventies, there was serious debate on how imminent the Communist Revolution was in India. The future was red. Now of course no one takes Communists or even Communism seriously. The Soviet Union collapsed without anyone firing a shot. Leninism proved to be a delusion which could not survive the 20th century.

Why did Communism fail so abysmally? Marx had a fascination with Capitalism and admired its immense productive potential. He and Engels advertised the advent of globalisation in their youthful Communist Manifesto. His ideal of Socialism was timed for well after the maturity of Capitalism.

Communism’s luck continued and Capitalism suffered the Great Depression. It looked like the Revolution was imminent. Lenin had conflated Imperialism and Capitalism. This enhanced the appeal of Communism for the colonies. Stalin consigned millions to concentration camps but the idea that the Soviet Union was the hope of the world remained strong. Victory in the Second World War and then taking over Eastern European countries enhanced the reputation of the Soviet Union. China had its own Revolution which confirmed Lenin’s wisdom that the Communist revolution would start in the backward countries, not developed ones as Marx may have thought. India was supposed to be the next ripe fruit to fall. The CPI had blotted its copybook by supporting the British rulers during the war, as for them the fight was for defence of the Soviet Union. They denounced independence as illusory and launched a premature Revolution in Telangana. Stal

whence Britain’s radicalization? One answer is that respectable nationwide averages mask the tough experiences of subgroups. Between 2010-2011 and 2014-2015, more than a third of Britons suffered a fall in household income of more than 5 percent. Those depending heavily on the state have suffered the effects of harsh cuts in government spending. Young workers, who have provided much of the support for Labour’s lurch leftward, have fared worse than old ones. The shocking price of homes has made it difficult for non-owners to live in regions with good job prospects.

But the larger explanation is cultural. On the left and the right, there is a sense that society is changing rapidly and unfairly. The right-wing version of this insecurity centers on migration. Between 1964 and 1989, the number of migrants arriving to live in Britain never exceeded 250,000 in a year. But in the two years leading up to the Brexit vote, new arrivals exceeded 600,000 annually. When Conservative populists rant xenophobically about “taking back control,” they are exploiting the backlash from that surge in foreign voices.

left-wing cultural insecurity centers on a form of inequality that goes beyond the data on incomes, encompassing ownership of assets and the sense of job stability. The haves can count on a salaried job, a stake in the housing market and perhaps some corporate shares or share options. The have-nots face short-term work contracts, high rents and no prospect of a stake in the profits generated by capitalism.

During this process, many conservatives have asked plaintively whether people should really be held responsible for the sins they committed when they were 17. The answer is that what you did then matters, but so does what you think about it now.

And Kavanaugh doesn’t seem to have done any thinking at all. So let’s imagine he were to say something like this: I’m not proud of everything I did when I was young; I doubt any of us are. But growing up means learning from our mistakes, in part so we can help our children grow into responsible adults. When I look back now I realize that my friends and I reveled in our own privilege — we were male, white, rich, and destined to have limitless opportunities laid before us. We drank too much. We treated the young women we knew like objects, or potential conquests, or the butt of jokes. We certainly didn’t empathize with them. If we had, we would have understood how our own behavior made them feel; how it could make them feel vulnerable, degraded, even victimized. We would have understood that those feelings can stay with a person for life, and be a source of pain and anguish, even if you were never the victim of a crime. We can look back now and say that we can’t expect that kind of empathy from a teenager. But it’s exactly what we should expect. Even if we weren’t capable of it then, today’s teenagers can be, if we use our own failings to teach them to be better than we were. That’s what I’ve tried to do as an adult.

ather than making the ridiculous claim that as a young man he was brimming with all the wisdom, forbearance and deep respect for women we expect of a mature adult in 2018 — which no one can possibly believe — at least it would demonstrate that over the course of his life he has indeed learned something and become a better person than he was. But apparently that’s too much to ask.

implicated in these and other maladies is the breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture.

That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.

They could be followed by people of all backgrounds and abilities, especially when backed up by almost universal endorsement.

Major books about Trump’s campaign and election explore variations of the theme that victory surprised Trump and his enablers and caught them flat-footed. Michael Lewis’s most recent best seller, “The Fifth Risk,” begins with a damning account of the Trump team’s failure to carry out a coherent transition and fill key jobs in government.

In “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff writes that “Trump refused to spend any time considering, however hypothetically, transition matters, saying it was ‘bad luck’ — but really meaning it was a waste of time.”

“He wasn’t going to win,” Wolff continues. “Or losing was winning. Trump would be the most famous man in the world — a martyr to crooked Hillary Clinton.”“Losing would work out for everybody,” he adds.

In the early hours of July 29, 10 days before Kenya’s presidential election, Chris Msando, a 44-year-old information technology manager at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, got behind the wheel of his Land Rover in Nairobi’s central business district.

Msando, though, would never get a chance to make sure the system functioned as intended.

Msando’s death came as the country braced for a political re-match between the incumbent president, Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s first president, and Raila Odinga, a former prime minister and longtime opposition leader of the country.

Pension funds have fantastical expectations of the market

With U.S. stocks at all-time highs, it’s more important than ever that investors be brutally realistic about future returns.

You can learn a lot from these folks — if you listen to them and then do the opposite.

Early in the afternoon of April 7th, 1498, Charles VIII of France escorted his queen, Anne of Brittany, to an antiquated gallery at his chateau of Amboise, to watch a game of tennis

After the travails of Valois France during the Hundred Years War and the kingdom's subsequent recovery under Charles VII and Louis XI, few magnates any longer felt inclined to contest the title of a mature heir apparent.

Louis himself had been brought up in relatively impecunious circumstances, thanks partly to the antipathy of the late Louis XI towards him and his house. There were nobles who had felt that the ruler's treatment of them and their kind as well as his alleged general misgovernment warranted conspiracy and even revolt against him. Although Louis d'Orleans had been far too young to engage in that reign's most concerted expression of magnate resentment, the War of the Public Weal, he had rationalised in comparable terms his own behaviour under Charles VIII.

Philip VI of Valois (reigned 1328–50), grandson of Philip III, was of mature age when he became regent of France in 1328. Upon the birth of a daughter to the widow of his cousin Charles IV, the familiar issue of the succession was posed anew. It was the regent’s experience, together with the circumstance that Edward III of England, grandson of Philip the Fair, was under the influence of his disreputable mother, Isabella of France, that probably disposed the council at Vincennes to recognize Philip as king (April 1328).

Philip’s reign began well.

This initial success was soon undone.

Charles XII, (born June 17, 1682, Stockholm—died Nov. 30, 1718, Fredrikshald, Nor.), king of Sweden (1697–1718), an absolute monarch who defended his country for 18 years during the Great Northern War and promoted significant domestic reforms. He launched a disastrous invasion of Russia (1707–09), resulting in the complete collapse of the Swedish armies and the loss of Sweden’s status as a great power. He was, however, also a ruler of the early Enlightenment era, promoting domestic reforms of significance.

Prince Charles was the second child and eldest (and only surviving) son of Charles XI of Sweden and Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark.

Charles XI had stipulated a regency, but the regents proved anxious to obtain the new king’s concurrence in all decisions, and the Riksdag called in November 1697 declared him of age.

How many trees could be planted on every available parcel of land on Earth, where they could go, and what impact could that have on our survival?

the planet could support nearly 2.5 billion additional acres of forest without shrinking our cities and farms, and that those additional trees, when they mature, could store a whole lot of the extra carbon — 200 gigatons of carbon, to be precise — generated by industrial activity over the last 150 years.

The study’s authors asserted that, under their model, forest restoration could absorb two-thirds of historic emissions. Zeke Hausfather, an analyst for the climate science website Carbon Brief, said the true figure would be closer to one-third. That’s because part of the emissions absorbed by the additional trees would have been absorbed by the soil or the seas anyway.

He published an unusually frank blog post aimed at Evernote’s users in January. The company’s foundation was not strong, he wrote, and its products had developed a “unique collection of bugs and undesirable behaviors.” It would take most of the year to get all that fixed, he wrote, adding that “undoubtedly we will still disappoint some of you.”

Evernote has a different, more mature goal. It expects to reach positive cash flow this year, with annual revenue of nearly $100 million. “We used to be a movement,” Mr. Small said. “When we were a movement, we weren’t a business.”

“The core business of Evernote is what most companies outside of Silicon Valley would look on with envy,” said Vincent Toolan, Evernote’s former chief financial officer. “The problem is it’s in Silicon Valley.”

climate change made the temperatures reached in France last week at least five times more likely to occur than in a world without global warming

The scientists with the World Weather Attribution Project decided to take action when they saw the heatwave coming and ended up performing a real-time analysis while at a climate conference in Toulouse, France

“We discussed our approach and gathered data and looked at climate models between talks,”

The Commission’s core recommendations are that 25% of Germany’s remaining coal-fired generation capacity (13GW out of 43GW) be removed from the grid in 2022, with a further 13GW going by 2030 and the remaining 17GW by 2038.

there is a much broader lesson that all investors can learn from Germany’s ongoing energy transition towards a zero-carbon future. The lesson is simple but powerful: whereas for policymakers, climate risk is all about system rates of change, for investors climate risk is all about marginal rates of change.

Climate change has already elicited a global policy response to promote renewable energies, thereby prompting a virtuous feedback loop that is driving down the cost of renewables and making them ever more competitive with fossil fuels. If the Paris Agreement’s temperature targets are to be met then policymakers will need to do all they can to accelerate the momentum of this feedback loop, and where necessary complement it with other measures (the announcement on 26/01/19 that Germany is set to phase out all its coal-fired power stations by 2038 is a good example of such complementary measures).

A global pandemic of this scale was inevitable. In recent years, hundreds of health experts have written books, white papers, and op-eds warning of the possibility. Bill Gates has been telling anyone who would listen, including the 18 million viewers of his TED Talk.

We realized that her child might be one of the first of a new cohort who are born into a society profoundly altered by COVID-19. We decided to call them Generation C.

“No matter what, a virus [like SARS-CoV-2] was going to test the resilience of even the most well-equipped health systems,”