Opinion

  However this election turns out, the 2016 campaign for the White House will undoubtedly be remembered for its vulgarity, mean-spiritedness and mendacity. It has been a national embarrassment. But a parallel failing is less noticed: the unwillingness of both candidates — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — to come to grips with national problems that are staring them in …

  This week, there have been not one, but two open letters by some of the most eminent economists in the U.S., urging the American public not to vote for Donald Trump. One letter, published in the Wall Street Journal, was signed by 370 economists, including eight Nobel prize winners. It slams Trump for questioning the accuracy of economic data, …

  Graphic images of diseased lungs, rotting teeth and people smoking through tracheotomy holes aren’t the best way to sell cigarettes. Which is exactly why they feature so prominently on cigarette packs in dozens of countries — and should in the U.S. as well. More than seven years ago, Congress mandated such labels, covering at least half of the fronts …

  The High Court ruling that a parliamentary nod is required to trigger Article 50 — the formal procedure for the UK to leave the EU — may have come as a shock for the British government, but Prime Minister Theresa May has said that her government was confident of winning the appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court …

  As the U.S. election campaign nears its climax, Donald Trump is amping up his claim that the failure of opinion polls to predict the U.K.’s June vote to leave the European Union presages a similar surprise in his favor on Tuesday. While there are some lessons to be learned from the Brexit referendum, other conclusions aren’t backed by the …

  A funny thing happened on the path to disruption. This decade, most of Silicon Valley’s big societal claims have turned out to be wrong. These claims arguably began around the time this cycle’s real expansion began, in late 2011. Two scholars’ 2011 text, “Race Against the Machine,” looked at some of the problems plaguing the U.S. economy —stagnant wage …

  Pankaj Mishra Africa is “rising,” or so authoritative sources declared a few years ago. An Economist cover story in 2013 amplified the claim; the Wall Street Journal carried a series of articles on economic growth in Africa under this title. African “lions,” according to a report published as recently as September by the McKinsey Global Institute, are “on the …

  Deutsche Bank is in trouble — and that’s bad news for all of us. Deutsche Bank is Germany’s biggest bank with 100,000 employees around the world and operations in more than 70 countries. Its assets total about $1.7 trillion. One worrying sign of the bank’s distress is its stock price, which is trading now at about $14 a share, …

  Every Western city’s food scene seems slowly to be turning into a carbon copy of every other: The same global fast-food chains selling hamburgers and fried chicken with only modest concessions to local tastes. Chains would seem to be the wave of the future. Certainly in the U.S.: A recent report by NPD Group tells us that in the …

  India beats China on one national measure at least: Its air has rapidly become more unbreathable. Urgent action is needed to cleanse Indian skies. This week, air pollution in New Delhi has been truly off the charts: Tiny particulates, which are especially deadly, topped 999 micrograms per cubic meter — 40 times what is considered safe and beyond what …