By Robert J. Samuelson

Okay, I should have headlined it “My favorite economics books of 2016.” There surely are many good books that I missed. Still, the four below share certain appealing characteristics. They tell us stuff we don’t know, which alters our view of the world. They are all deeply researched and reported. They’re clearly written. For your […]

‘For the first time since the end of the Second World War, the future relationship of America to the world is not fully settled.” – Henry Kissinger, in an interview with the Atlantic in its December issue. Donald Trump is an avowed economic nationalist. He promises to put American interests “first” in fashioning trade policy […]

The work ethic is such a central part of the American character that it’s hard to imagine it fading. But that’s what seems to be happening in one important part of the labor force. Among men 25 to 54 – so-called prime-age male workers – about 1 in 8?are dropouts. They don’t have a job […]

Donald Trump, it seems, embraces the old dictum: Make no small plans. Already, he has published an agenda for his first 100 days in office, recalling Franklin D. Roosevelt’s launching of the New Deal. Not surprisingly, near the top of Trump’s to-do list is a pledge to double economic growth from its recent desultory rate […]

The betting is that the Federal Reserve won’t raise interest rates at this week’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, its key policymaking body. There are already complaints that the Fed, which cut short-term rates to near zero in late 2008, is waiting too long to reverse low rates. Last December, the Fed increased […]

Forget the “gig economy” – at least for now. On Labor Day 2016, we are in the midst of a historic transformation of the US job market. Popular attention focuses on Uber and similar Internet-based networks that unite buyers and sellers. TaskRabbit, for example, creates a platform for people who need something done (grocery shopping, […]

  In the public imagination, no industry better symbolises the downfall of US manufacturing than steel. Shuttered plants dot the Midwest. Since 1973, steel employment has dropped 76 percent, from 610,700 to 147,300 in 2015. Moreover, the culprit seems clear – trade – and its influence seems pervasive: Manufacturing as a whole lost about 5 […]

The hostility toward Wall Street remains so great that both political parties say, in their platforms, that they’d like to break up America’s biggest banks. But before engaging in this drastic economic surgery, it’s worth examining whether Dodd-Frank is working. Recall that the law, named after its congressional sponsors, former senator Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) […]

Maybe the middle class isn’t quite so stressed anymore. We in the media are rightly criticized for a pessimistic bias. We cover the unfortunate, the grim and the tragic. News is what people don’t know and, as often as not, is sad or shocking. Our prism on the world distorts reality, because reality is often […]

The robots are coming — but not in numbers that would imperil most Americans’ jobs. Few subjects have inspired as much hype as robots. Consider some sample headlines: “Robots and Computers Could Take Half Our Jobs Within the Next 20 years,” “Robots Could Put Humans Out of Work by 2045,” “Why the Highest-Paid Doctors Are […]