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Mr Mankiw begins with a thought experiment: "Imagine a society with perfect economic equality...Then, one day, this egalitarian utopia is disturbed by an entrepreneur with an idea for a new product. Think of the entrepreneur as Steve Jobs as he develops the iPod, J.K. Rowling as she writes her Harry Potter books, or Steven Spielberg as he directs his blockbuster movies." Everyone wants to buy the entrepreneur's product, which results in a hugely unequal distribution of income. Should the government shift to a progressive tax system to reduce the inequality?Obviously Mr Mankiw discovers that the answer is "no", because that's the answer he has built his analogy to produce.

Mr Mankiw's analogy sneaks in his conclusion by implying that greater inequality is the price we pay for more invention and creativity. But his own choices of hero-entrepreneurs make it clear that there's no evidence to support this claim.

Of the three Mr Mankiw proposes, only Steve Jobs plausibly had an irreducible, unique effect on material culture and the structure of an industry. Mr Spielberg and Ms Rowling are acclaimed artists, but their startling wealth and prominence are entirely due to the increasing power of network effects in mass culture over the past several decades. Mr Spielberg happened to be directing his first movies just as Hollywood was beginning to stage coordinated marketing blitzes that created round-the-block lines for top-grossing films. Ms Rowling hit the bookshelves just as a similar superstar phenomenon was taking over publishing, with sales increasingly concentrated on individual mega-bestsellers rather than spread across a few dozen authors and titles. Mr Jobs is an unusual figure in that his ability to combine engineering, aesthetics, and a vision of how users might interact with the digital universe has created a kind of integrated multi-product entity that might not otherwise have existed; it's not clear that BlackBerry, Nokia or Samsung would have been up to the task. But even in Mr Jobs's case, much of the power that accrued to Apple was due to the gradual sorting of the consumer information-technology world into integrated ecosystems

It turns out that the profitability of these mega-companies — called “superstars” by Philippon and other economists — isn’t that different from the superstars of the past.

What has changed, Philippon says, are corporate taxes. As late as 1980, they were about 50 percent, he says. Now, they’re around 20 percent. The result is that, although pre-tax profitability is stable, after-tax profits have risen

“The notion that the biggest tech firms are somehow the pillars of the U.S. economy is false on its face,” he writes. The reason: Today’s superstar firms hire less and buy less from the rest of the economy compared with earlier decades. Therefore, their stimulus for the rest of the economy is less

"Ultimately, we're doing more testing, I think, than probably any of the governors even want," Trump said, suggesting that his administration was leading the way on coronavirus testing. Trump later said that "not everybody believes as strongly as some people on testing." And suggesting that calls for more testing are some sort of partisan plot, he claimed that "some people want (us) to do testing because they think it's impossible for us to fulfill that goal."

Trump is off the mark. There have been bipartisan calls from governors and medical professionals for the Trump administration to ramp up testing and give states the supplies they need to get it done. There is no evidence that calls for more tests are some sort of anti-Trump plot; nonpartisan public health experts have said it's critical for the government to significantly increase the level of testing as part of any plan to end social distancing and lift economic restrictions.

During Wednesday's press briefing, Trump repeated a false claim he's made numerous times about the travel restrictions imposed on China due to the coronavirus.

Microsoft’s ability to thrive despite doing almost everything wrong might be a heartening saga about corporate reinvention. Or it may be a distressing demonstration of how monopolies are extremely hard to kill. Or maybe it’s a little of both.

Understanding Microsoft’s staying power is relevant when considering an important current question: Are today’s Big Tech superstars successful and popular because they’re the best at what they do, or because they’ve become so powerful that they can coast on past successes?

boils down to a debate about whether the hallmark of our digital lives is a dynamism that drives progress, or whether we actually have dynasties

every boss now also has cheaper, easier, faster access to more above-average software, automation, robotics, cheap labor and cheap genius than ever before. That means the old average is over. Everyone who wants a job now must demonstrate how they can add value better than the new alternatives.

the speed with which every job and industry changes also goes into hypermode. “In the old days,” he said, “it was assumed that your educational foundation would last your whole lifetime. That is no longer true.”

the skill required for every decent job is rising as is the necessity of lifelong learning. More and more things you know and tools you use “are being made obsolete faster,

the Internet has created a tremendous amount of personal wealth. Just look at the rash of Internet billionaires and millionaires,

Then there’s the superstar effect. The Internet multiplies the earning power of the very best high-frequency traders, currency speculators, and entertainers, who reap billions while the merely good are left to slog it out.

In the past, the most efficient businesses created lots of middle class jobs.

creativity is not a solitary process. It happens within networks. It happens when talented people get together, when idea systems and mentalities merge.

The crucial fact about the new epoch is that creativity needs hubs. Information networks need junction points. The nation that can make itself the crossroads to the world will have tremendous economic and political power.

the U.S. is well situated to be the crossroads nation. It is well situated to be the center of global networks and to nurture the right kinds of networks. Building that America means doing everything possible to thicken connections: finance research to attract scientists; improve infrastructure to ease travel; fix immigration to funnel talent; reform taxes to attract superstars; make study abroad a rite of passage for college students; take advantage of the millions of veterans who have served overseas.

the idea that modern technology eliminates only menial jobs, that well-educated workers are clear winners, may dominate popular discussion, but it’s actually decades out of date.

The fact is that since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by “hollowing out”: both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs — the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class — have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider: many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.

Computers, they pointed out, excel at routine tasks, “cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules.” Therefore, any routine task — a category that includes many white-collar, nonmanual jobs — is in the firing line. Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors — will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.

stereotypical ideals have long been found not just in advertising, but in commerce at large: For most of American consumer history, makeup brands made few dark shades, and most clothing brands didn’t make any adjustments in their designs for different body sizes, gender presentations, or disabilities, among other things. Hemmed in by limited mall options, women had little choice but to make their best effort to work within whatever physical standards brands set, and brands were free to be as strict with their expectations as they wanted to be.

The internet, and particularly social media, has changed that. Suddenly, the hierarchy of who speaks and to whom in the brand-consumer relationship has shifted beneath the feet of corporate behemoths such as L Brands, and now frustrated women can launch negative mainstream press cycles on their own. For generations, clothing and personal-care marketing could dictate how American women should look without any pretense of kindness. Now, faced with the unfiltered reactions of their customers for the first time, most of those same brands have decided to make nice. Where they could once profit by making women feel worse, the money now is in promising them a way to feel better.

Victoria’s Secret took the old strategy to its logical extreme. It made superstars out of an army of wing-clad Angels, all perfectly thin, busty, and long-legged in the same impossible way. For years, Victoria’s Secret has been the brand equivalent of the stereotypical cool-girls’ table in a high-school cafeteria: hot, unfriendly, and definitely not interested in bolstering your self-worth. And as in a teen movie, the less popular brands took as many cues as possible from the queen bee.

One thing seems clear to me: nobody — not experts or policymakers or people in these communities — seems to know quite how to pick rural America up.

States, municipalities and the federal government have spent billions to draw jobs and prosperity to stagnant rural areas. But they haven’t yet figured out how to hitch this vast swath of the country to the tech-heavy economy that is flourishing in America’s cities.

There are 1,888 counties in America in which more than half the population is rural, according to the Census Bureau, and they stretch from coast to coast.

she was horrified by church leaders’ reflexive support of Trump. To Moore, it wasn’t just a matter of hypocrisy, of making a deal with the devil that would deliver a Supreme Court seat, among other spoils. Moore believes that an evangelical culture that demeans women, promotes sexism, and disregards accusations of sexual abuse enabled Trump’s rise.

Evangelicals, Moore said, have “clearer lines between men and women and how they serve.” But sometimes, “that attitude is no longer about a role in a church. It becomes an attitude of gender superiority. And that has to be dealt with.” Moore may be a complementarian, but she is adamant that Christian men should not treat women “any less than Jesus treated women in the Gospels: always with dignity, always with esteem, never as secondary citizens.”

events have emboldened Moore. Whereas her criticisms of church leaders were once veiled, she now speaks her mind freely. She blogged icily about meeting a prominent male theologian who looked her up and down and told her she was prettier than another famous female Bible teacher. She has castigated the evangelical movement for selling its soul to buy political wins. Moore is hopeful that a reckoning is finally under way. “There is a very strong saying that Peter used himself, that judgment begins in the house of God. And I do believe that’s what’s happening.”

“Some ideas about how to make the world better require careful, nuanced thinking about how best to balance competing interests,” he began. “Others don’t: Billionaires are bad. We should presumptively get rid of billionaires. All of them.”

A billion dollars is wildly more than anyone needs, even accounting for life’s most excessive lavishes. It’s far more than anyone might reasonably claim to deserve, however much he believes he has contributed to society.

At some level of extreme wealth, money inevitably corrupts. On the left and the right, it buys political power, it silences dissent, it serves primarily to perpetuate ever-greater wealth, often unrelated to any reciprocal social good. For Mr. Scocca, that level is self-evidently somewhere around one billion dollars; beyond that, you’re irredeemable.

Fox News’s business model is built on promoting crackpot ideas and airing hateful rhetoric that feed the anger and resentment of its base. That means tearing down genuine heroes who challenge the Great Leader Trump. They are utterly comfortable voicing obnoxious slurs, revealing a stunning lack of human decency. They are superstars in the right-wing ecosystem, not in spite of their crass, bigoted views, but because of them.

There is something dark and twisted at the core of the Trumpian political movement and philosophy (if you can call it that). You don’t get criticized, let alone fired, for perpetuating hurtful conspiracy theories (about Seth Rich’s death, President Obama’s birth certificate or McCain’s captivity) or for voicing hateful views.

In short, not all of Trump’s followers and enablers are bad people, but in the Trump universe, bad people sure do flourish.

both men had misspent their lives.

They were both horrid to their wives and children. Rodin grew pathetically creepy, needy and lonely. Rilke didn’t go back home as his father was dying, nor allow his wife and child to be with him as he died. Both men lived most of their lives without intimate care

Their lives raise the question: Do you have to be so obsessively focused to be great? The traditional masculine answer is yes. But probably the right answer is no

President Donald Trump on Friday continued the false and misleading claims that have become a part of White House briefings on coronavirus, wrapping up a week in which the number of confirmed cases across the country topped 100,000.

Trump claimed that 22 days ago, "everything was going beautifully" before the US got hit by what he calls "the invisible enemy."

While the market had previously set all-time records under Trump, on March 5, 22 days before Trump's comments, the Dow dropped 3.6% or 970 points, then its fifth-worst single-day point drop on record, adding to a 3,000-point drop since its peak on February 12.

“Let your winners run” is one of the oldest adages in investing. One of the newest ideas is that the winners may be running away with everything.

Modern capitalism is built on the idea that as companies get big, they become fat and happy, opening themselves up to lean and hungry competitors that can underprice and overtake them. That cycle of creative destruction may be changing in ways that help explain the seemingly unstoppable rise of the stock market.

U.S. companies are moving toward a winner-take-all system in which giants get stronger, not weaker, as they expand.

oe Biden’s big virus relief plan is about to become law. And the Senate has confirmed Merrick Garland as attorney general.“The president and his team must be thrilled that Senate Republicans are proving to be more fair and more principled on personnel matters than the Democratic minority’s behavior just four years ago,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just before the Garland vote.

“It’s way too easy,” says Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who’s been a long-running opponent of the filibuster as it stands today. His solution, which makes perfect sense, is that anybody who wants to stall the Senate by staging a filibuster should actually have to keep talking.

The Democrats have been waiting a long while to get through an agenda more exciting than not-going-bankrupt. One after another, Fallon predicted, legislation like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act will make it through the House and then turn the Senate into a kind of “Kabuki theater,” where, thanks to the filibuster, “they bring up one bill after another and have them fail.”Finally, Democrats will be so exhausted they’ll demand some action. “If they can summon their nerve to do it before August recess. …” he mused hopefully.

These three things are amazing beyond words:1) Mitt Romney has a lurker Twitter handle. 2) The handle name is "Pierre Delecto."3) "C'est Moi" is how Romney confirmed to a reporter that he was Delecto and Delecto was him.

"He explained that he uses a secret Twitter account — 'What do they call me, a lurker?' — to keep tabs on the political conversation. 'I won't give you the name of it,' he said, but 'I'm following 668 people.'"

By Feinberg's count, Pierre only ever tweeted 10 times (Romney -- or someone -- made the account private once its existence was revealed.) Which isn't a lot. (Good analysis!) But the nature of these tweets -- or, mostly, replies -- are interesting.

the past few weeks might well live on as a business-school case study on the complexity of managing a superstar talent who has succeeded with maverick ways but also, for some, can go too far

Just as it isn’t easy for a manager to course-correct a star performer who gets out of line, a board can struggle to rein in a celebrity CEO, especially if everyone is enjoying the company’s stock performance that papers over troubling signs. 

At present, Musk directly holds 13% of Tesla shares, or about 21% if including unexercised options, according to the company’s most recent regulatory filing. That’s down from 21% directly held at the end of 2016. 

I recently listened to a podcast hosted by unreconstructed old-school school reformers, “every student should have a superstar teacher,” lets-fire-all-the-bad-ones types. What was remarkable was that, though they were forced to acknowledge that the policy environment is much less friendly to their preferences than it once was, they acted as though nothing substantively had changed. They still thought that you could get better schools by shouting “ACCOUNTABILITY!” over and over, said nothing about the relentless drip of evidence that school reform measures don’t work, and generally partied like it was 2010

There’s no major topic in American media that’s covered with less openness to new perspectives than education, no subject that’s more of a citadel for establishment narratives and business-as-usual. And none more obviously cries out for real rebel thinking; it’s a subject that’s considered of massive public importance, governed by a sclerotic and self-righteous conventional wisdom, where the “reform” agenda has produced decades of failure despite all of its no-excuses rhetoric

We spend extravagantly in this country, to no avail, and yet people still insist that it’s a funding problem. We institute endless school-side accountability programs, nothing gets better, and yet people still insist it’s an accountability problem. The whole education experience of the last 50 years proves that our issues cannot be solved at the school side, and yet no arguments to that effect are made in establishment media.