China’s ‘migrant miracle’ nears an end as cheap labour dwindles

FINANCIAL TIMES: China’s labour force is shrinking and the “migrant miracle” that powered its industrial rise is mostly exhausted, removing the factors that propelled the country’s meteoric development, according to leading economists. The transformation will lead to slower growth, reduced investment and a loss of export competitiveness, they warn, increasing the urgency of implementing ambitious […]

Change of Address Offers A Pathway Out of Poverty

NEW YORK TIMES: …Based on the earnings records of millions of families that moved with children, it finds that poor children who grow up in some cities and towns have sharply better odds of escaping poverty than similar poor children elsewhere. The feelings heard across Baltimore’s recent protests — of being trapped in poverty — […]

COLUMN: Obama shares blame for Baltimore

WE.CONNECT.DOTS: That racism has not recessed as much as we believe will be part of Barack Obama’s legacy as the 44th President. He deserves the charge because he expended too much of his presidency convincing White America he was one of them while skirting the issues of Black America.

A trade watershed?

WASHINGTON POST COLUMN: The trouble with our trade debates is that people assume they’re only about economics. Since World War II, U.S. trade policy has also been a pillar of U.S. foreign policy. In the early postwar decades, America encouraged trade with Europe and Japan — allowing more of their exports into the United States […]

The painful price of aging in prison

WASHINGTON POST: …In recent years, federal sentencing guidelines have been revised, resulting in less severe prison terms for low-level drug offenders. But Harrison, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, remains one of tens of thousands of inmates who were convicted in the “war on drugs” of the 1980s and 1990s and who are still behind bars. […]

Blessed Are the Climate Advocates

SLATE COLUMN: …This Vatican moment was a game-changer. Science and religion were forcefully and unwaveringly aligning. Tuesday’s high-level session brought together multiple presidents, CEOs, academics, scientists, and all the major religions, and ended withthis final, forceful statement. The event was a prelude to the Pope’s summer encyclical on climate change, and it laid a solid […]

The Road to David Brooks’ Character

FORWARD: …Brooks acknowledges that we live in contradiction between these two natures, since to build a résumé you cultivate your strengths, while to build a moral core you must confront your weaknesses. But he doesn’t call for balance. Instead, he makes a persuasive argument that we live in a time that rewards the striving, utilitarian […]

Six officers charged in death of Freddie Gray

WASHINGTON POST: Six police officers were charged Friday in the death of Freddie Gray as Baltimore’s top prosecutor acted with surprising swiftness in a case that ignited protests and rioting here. She described how Gray allegedly was arrested illegally, treated callously by the officers, and suffered a severe spine injury in the back of a […]

Can a professor fail his entire class?

SLATE: Irwin Horwitz had had enough. His students, he thought, weren’t performing well academically and they were being disruptive, rude, and dishonest. So he sent the students in his strategic management class an email: “Since teaching this course, I have caught and seen cheating, been told to ‘chill out,’ ‘get out of my space,’ ‘go […]

Former Christie ally pleads guilty in bridge scandal

FINANCIAL TIMES: A former ally of Chris Christie pleaded guilty on Friday to charges related to a politically motivated road closure and two more were indicted, in the first of a series of cases that could severely complicate the New Jersey governor’s expected presidential campaign. David Wildstein, formerly the top New Jersey appointee at the […]