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 ...