Edward Luce has written a thought-provoking column in this weekend’s FT arguing that the rise of the robots is a sign of tough days ahead. The increasing automation of everything from manufacturing to education to health care will especially hit the middle classes of the developed world. A taste: With each month, the US economy becomes […]

We’ve paid a lot of attention at VM to public-sector pensions, where unfunded liabilities at the state and local level are forcing governments to choose between honoring promises to retired workers and providing basic services to citizens. But the private sector, despite having to live up to tighter accounting standards than the ones politicians set […]

This week two essays looked at America’s post-Blue Model future. The first argued that blue elites are wrong to think that wealth and power will be ever more concentrated in the hands of a beneficient elite that provides for the rest of the population. We can manage the transition from an industrial to an information […]

Slate’s Matt Ygelsias is trying to start a small business by renting out a condo, and he’s finding out just how hard the blue model is on entrepreneurs. After detailing his personal battle with the DC bureaucracy for a single basic business license, travelling from office to office, filling out form after form, and losing precious […]

It’s a story Alfred Hitchcock would love. Baboons, extraordinarily social animals whose collective noun is appropriately “troop” are harassing a Saudi village, targeting houses in coordinated assaults while cleverly avoiding poison bananas the villagers have left behind. Arab News brings us the bizarre story: A minor war has broken out south of Qunfudah in the village […]

Over at Foreign Policy, Dan Drezner pooh poohs the string of pearls idea—that China is actively building a network of naval bases and friendly countries around Asia, a noose that tightens around India’s neck. Dan doesn’t think China’s latest move into Pakistan actually amounts to much.He’s right that some journalists have overhyped the clear and […]

Much has been written about the shale energy revolution and how that’s changing global energy politics, but the local story of the boomtowns surrounding the drilling infrastructure hasn’t received the same attention. For the NYT Magazine, Chip Brown has written a fascinating piece on the drastic changes shale energy has had on North Dakota: In a […]

Japan has China looking nervously over its shoulder this week as the country debates whether to share secret submarine technology with Australia. The Asahi Shimbun has more: The sharing of military technology was made possible with the relaxation in 2011 of the three principles Japan had adhered to with regard to weapons exports. However, Japan has […]

Argentina, the only country in the world that threatens private economists with jail terms for disputing the government’s obviously bogus inflation numbers, is now the only country in the world to be censured by the IMF for unacceptably bad economic statistics. In a rare move by the 24 member board of the world’s most prestigious […]

Shocking news from the UK:The residential property in the ten most expensive London boroughs is now worth as much as all the housing in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined, says a study by the real estate group Savills.  The Financial Times reports that real estate values across most of Britain are down sharply after […]