Venture capital investor and longtime technology observer Mary Meeker has published her annual Internet Trends presentation — 294 slides this year, including a section on transportation. There’s a useful finding on slide 128: What Americans spend on purchasing vehicles has dropped since the 1970s, while spending on “other transportation,” including public transport and ride hailing, has nearly doubled. Bloomberg New ...

American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years now. Given a multi-year decline in illegal immigration, and a similarly sustained pickup in the US job market, the complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm workers. Efforts to create a more straightforward agricultural-workers visa that would enable foreign workers to stay longer ...

The economic policy proposals of Italy’s populist coalition have spooked the markets, which have driven up government debt yields. And yet the two coalition partners, League and the Five Star Movement, may be on to something with a proposal for a two-tier flat tax. Today, Italy has five income tax brackets with rates ranging from 23 percent to 43 percent. ...