Since the recession began, New Yorkers (most notably Mayor Bloomberg) have touted their city as an example for the rest of the country to follow, citing a quick rebound from the financial crash of 2008 and respectable job growth while the rest of the country was still mired in the depths of the recession. Indeed, […]

TAI’s tech wizard and associate publisher Damir Marusic spent three years of his childhood in North Korea.  Perhaps inspired by that experience, he has a great essay on the SOPA and PIPA bills currently being considered in Congress. But even if some sort of overreaching bill is inevitable, the fight against it is not futile. […]

Washington’s war on the Colombian cocaine industry has been largely successful, but successful only in pushing drug cartels into neighboring Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Coca farms and cocaine-producing facilities have simply jumped national borders to safer havens. Anti-American governments in Bolivia and Venezuela, in particular, use the cocaine industry to thumb their noses at the […]

If you are a student with an iPad, you might not need a backpack anymore. According to the WSJ, that’s the way that Apple wants things to be, and Apple is pretty good at getting what it wants. This week, the company that changed the music industry unveiled a plan to get into the electronic […]

In the competition between Asian countries and Pacific powers like the US, sea-power is critical. The US, the dominant Pacific ocean power for decades, remains far ahead of its competition. But Japan, China, India, and even Australia are quickly building up, and new technology is making some of America’s most important assets (like aircraft carriers) […]

If the U.S. Census Bureau wants people to judge one another not based on the color of their skin but the content of their character, it isn’t doing a very good job. According to the NYT, the Bureau is busily spending your tax money to come up with new ways to make America’s Hispanic population […]

When Via Meadia first drew up the list of ten trends that would shape the next decade, we coined the term “panopolis” to describe the forces turning the peoples of the world, developed and now developing, too, into a race of urbanites. From the original description: These cities aren’t just bigger than the old ones.  They […]

America’s perenially rising healthcare costs, as Via Meadia has noted many times before, are possibly the single greatest threat to the long-term fiscal health of the country. As the American population ages, rising health costs and the cost burdens associated with programs like Medicare threaten to demolish the budgets of state and federal governments alike.There […]

Over the past few months, China’s business and political leaders have had to deal with all manner of protests. Take a look:– January 19: 1,000 people from Wanggang village protest against their corrupt Communist Party boss in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong. – January 17: 8,000 workers protest uneven wages at Foster Electric Company’s factory in Guangxi Province. – […]

China’s Premier Wen Jiabao returns to his homeland today having concluded an expensive shopping trip across the Middle East. Chinese business leaders, accompanying Mr. Wen, signed (WSJ subscription required) deals with Arab companies worth billions of dollars, but one of the more interesting details of the trip is the Persian Gulf storefront Mr. Wen and […]