Opinion

  Conor Sen There’s no real national debate when it comes to housing policy. Journalists and pundits on one side shout: “We need more development and density so cities will be affordable and livable.” For good measure they add: “People who don’t support more development and density are heartless and just defending their own property values.” The other side … ...

  Major media outlets in France have recently decided not to publish the names and faces of terrorists so as not to glorify them and encourage copycats. On the surface, this might seem like reasonable self-imposed discretion in the interests of national security. But it’s actually self-censorship — and it’s dangerous. It reflects a subtly mistaken conception of why extremists ...

  Imagine what could happen if Donald Trump hadn’t turned the presidential campaign into an argument over who founded IS or whether there should be ideological entrance tests for foreign visitors and immigrants. Then he and Hillary Clinton could have a rational debate over taxes, a serious topic on which they have clear differences. Trump wants to cut taxes massively, ...

  The European Union says it wants clarity on whether U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is serious in her pledge that “Brexit means Brexit.” That clarity would be good for Britain as well as the rest of Europe, and there’s a simple way to get it: Extend the two-year deadline triggered by formal notification of the decision to leave the ...

  Brazil has overcome the Olympics challenge in style, but now comes the bigger challenge: to sustain the benefits ensuing from the Games. Before the mega sporting event started, many were sceptical about the country’s ability to put up a good show. The worst recession facing the nation, shooting inflation, swelling unemployment and the political upheaval caused by impeachment of ...

  The Indian government’s decision to elevate a well-respected deputy governor at the Reserve Bank of India to become the country’s next central banker is, frankly, a bit of a relief. The naming of Urjit Patel comes after months of quite unnecessary drama — first over whether current RBI chief Raghuram Rajan and the government were getting along, then whether ...

  When China’s top securities regulator said recently that it plans to delist Dandong Xintai Electric Co. for falsifying initial public offering documents, it didn’t grab many headlines. But it suggested some far-reaching changes may be afoot. Xintai is the first company to be expelled from Shenzhen’s ChiNext board for such an offense, and one of only a handful that ...

  Although First Ladies have been given important responsibilities in their husbands’ presidencies, none has taken such an active part in policymaking as Hillary Rodham Clinton did. Here are excerpts from interviews my colleagues and I conducted with Clinton administration officials and others who discussed her personality and her role. Did you get the impression that she may have been ...

  An aging America reduces the economy’s growth — big time. That’s the startling conclusion of a new academic study, and if it withstands scholarly scrutiny, it could transform our national political and economic debate. We’ve known for decades, of course, that the retirement of the huge baby-boom generation — coupled with low birthrates — would make the United States ...

Lots of presidential-campaign observers have been questioning the numbers in Hillary Clinton’s plan to make public colleges and universities “free” for students whose families earn below a set threshold. And I will admit that I am a longtime skeptic of proposals to further subsidize higher education. But one thing critics such as myself tend to overlook is the positive value ...