The demographic problem facing the industrialized world isn’t just about empty cribs and the empty treasuries when there aren’t enough young workers to pay the retirement and health benefits their parents and grandparents expect. It’s also about quality of life. The consumer society is eating its young; people who live in the most affluent societies […]

This week’s essay looked at the partial, temporary agreement between Iran and the six major powers that may be taking shape: VM is not ready to express a decisive judgment on an as-yet unfinished agreement whose details have neither been hammered out or made public. We don’t want Iran to get a bomb, and we […]

Mullah Fazlullah, or Mullah Radio as he is popularly known for his sermons broadcast on the airwaves, was selected as the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban after a drone strike killed his predecessor Hakimullah Mehsud last week. Time reports: Fazlullah, who is about 39, has a fearsome reputation. Between 2007 and 2009, he became the […]

LOS ANGELES, CA – NOVEMBER 6: A TSA officer wipes her eyes as an honor guard escorts a U.S. National Honors Flag in a ceremony to memorialize TSA Officer Gerardo Hernandez, who was fatally shot at Los Angeles International Airport, on November 6, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. The flag was escorted from a Depository […]

Google rolled out a new service this week that will help connect experts—like doctors, teachers, chefs, yogis, or even bicycle technicians—to users looking for answers. The program is called Helpouts, and its purpose is to facilitate “real help from real people in real time.” The WSJ reports: Helpouts, which will be powered by Google’s video-chat product Hangouts and […]

Office space has historically reflected the health of the American economy, but new construction hasn’t recovered to pre-2008 levels. That has Joel Kotkin wondering: have we hit “peak office” in America? Kotkin writes for Forbes: [T]he trend in real estate remains to convert office spaces to other uses, particularly residential. Large-scale office construction is happening in just […]

AI editor Adam Garfinkle has weighed in at Tablet with a must-read article on the slow but steady unraveling of the “triangle linking American Jewry with the governments of Israel and the United States.” For the last seventy-odd years, Garfinkle argues, the US, Israel, and American Jews found themselves in a mutually beneficial relationship. But […]

From time to time on the blog we plan to highlight a new feature: short summaries of the books VM staff writers are reading and thinking about. This week Peter Blair (@PeterBlairAI), who covers health care and religion, talks about Affordable Excellence and Mother Country.  Affordable Excellence: The Singapore Health Care Story, published in April of this year […]

Two pieces this week offered a fascinating look into the future of American jobs. The Times profiled Jon Steinsson and Emi Nakamura, two up-and-coming economists who have taken “hiring help” to the extreme. In an effort to maximize the time they spend on tasks essential to their career, Steinsson and Nakamura, a couple, outsource many duties, chores, and activities […]

Even from prison Bo Xilai still wields influence. The former Communist Party leader was jailed for corruption and bribery two months ago, but his former supporters, boldly defying the Communist Party, have set up a new party and named Bo “chairman for life.”Members of the new party call it the Zhi Xian Party: “the constitution is […]