Opinion

Of all the ideas that presidential candidates are offering to address the country’s economic woes, here’s one of the worst: Taxing, or even outlawing, automation. Many people worry about the prospect of automation causing mass unemployment. This might be justified in the science-fiction future, if machines learn to do anything a human can do. But there’s no sign that the ...

In the airline business, there’s nothing more damaging to a company’s internal harmony than making a profit. The pilot strikes that have grounded almost all British Airways flights for the next two days are a case in point. Unlike most industrial sectors, the usual state of affairs for airlines is spending vast sums of money for little return. In one ...

It has always been hard to measure poverty, because poverty is as much a state of mind as a condition of material well-being. Still, we seem to have made a bad situation worse. Consider the Census Bureau’s latest estimates. In 2018, the official poverty rate was 11.8%, down from 12.3% in 2017 and the lowest rate since 2001. This translates ...

The masked men who recently tossed firebombs at Jimmy Lai’s home targeted one of this city’s foremost democracy advocates. Lai, a 71-year-old media billionaire, calls this summer’s ongoing protest “a martyrdom movement” and “a last-straw movement.” It has an intensity and dynamic that bewilders the protesters’ opponents in Beijing and in Hong Kong’s Beijing-obedient city administration. Today’s mostly young protesters ...

The declining economic outlook and increasing political pressure are pushing central banks into more aggressive unconventional monetary policies. Simultaneously, fears are growing that such steps, especially negative interest rates, actually threaten the stability of the financial system. They risk setting off dangerous feedback loops in credit markets and the real economy, where the second and third-order effects are difficult to ...

Donald Trump’s persistent attacks on the Federal Reserve raise an important question: What should and shouldn’t presidents say about the central bank? The key is to understand the difference between the concepts of independence and accountability. It’s crucial that the Fed enjoy independence from elected officials in deciding how to pursue the goals that Congress set out for it — ...

Mario Draghi’s public scolding of Europe’s lenders this week matters more than what he did for them. Banks in the region have long complained of the squeeze negative interest rates are putting on their profits — upending their traditional business model of borrowing money for the short term to lend to clients in the long run. But there’s little they ...

President Donald Trump would love nothing more than to announce an end to the trade war with China and relief for the country’s farmers, who have been hit especially hard. But history is likely to get in the way for reasons well beyond his control. In the past century, American agriculture sustained two big boom-and-bust cycles. The current downturn features ...

Homebuilding has been a better bet than the wider construction business in the UK — the former benefits from government subsidies, while the latter is plagued by intense competition for long-run, hard-to-value contracts. Being in both markets has become a headache for Galliford Try Plc. It is now artfully dealing its way out of the problem. Last week, the company ...

Apple is finally getting real. With its most important product category not growing anymore, Apple Inc. confronted its changing circumstances by doing two unusual things: hustling hard and displaying a willingness to change its business model. The hustle is all about Apple’s willingness to do something against its nature: go wide in the number of devices and internet-tethered products it ...