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The COVID virus as the desert sun.

How Covid Shaped Climate Policy

Five years from the emergence of the disease, the world — and the climate — is still grappling with its effects.
Harris carved in stone next to Mount Rushmore.

Kamala Harris Must Grapple with America’s Founding Fathers

To achieve a new political settlement, she has to resolve a tension dating from the Revolution.
Stone hands holding up a bronze globe.

The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire and the Birth of Global Economic Governance

A new history explores the emergence of international economic institutions that continue to wield immense influence over the domestic politics of many states.
Stock traders watching Jerome Powell in conference on screens in the New York Stock Exchange.
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Seeing Americans as Consumers Threatens the Fairness of Our Economy

The Federal Reserve keeps increasing interest rates to try to bring prices down — but that may erase gains by non-White workers.
Store window selling shirts and ties mentioning the "Nixon Squeeze"

The Burglaries Were Never the Story

The historical insights of one era have been lost to the journalistic instincts of another.
Drawing of a crowd of delegates at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. (Franklin McMahon / Getty Images)

A Big Tent

The contradictory past and uncertain future of the Democratic Party.
Woodcut illustration from 1934 economics textbook depicting people walking from tenement houses past an advertising billboard and straight to a loan office.

Bad Economics

How microeconomic reasoning took over the very institutions of American governance.
Reprint from the September 1966 issue of AFL-CIO American Federationist, Box 38, Folder 4, William Page Keeton Papers, Special Collections, Tarlton Law Library, The University of Texas at Austin.

Controlled Prices

Before the rise of macroeconomics that accompanied World War II, price determination was a central problem of economic thought.
Black and white photo of John Maynard Keynes and wife Lydia Lopokova

Left, Right and Keynes

Today's centrists are a hot mess.
President Truman with Sadie Alexander and the Committee on Civil Rights.
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The Ideas of the First Black Economics PhD Offer Solutions to Our Problems Today

Full employment could solve job discrimination and inadequate wages.
Entrance to CitiBank branch.

Nationalization Is as American as Apple Pie

Nationalization may seem like an alien idea in the hyper-capitalist United States. But the country has a long history of nationalizing all sorts of industries.
Photo over Obama's shoulder facing Larry Summers and Timothy Geitner on the other side of a conference table.

Obama's Original Sin

A new insider account reveals how the Obama administration’s botched bailout deal reinforced neoliberal Clintonism.

Other People’s Blood

On Paul Volcker.

Ten Years After the Crash, We’ve Learned Nothing

The great financial catastrophe of our times is still badly misunderstood, despite its grotesque consequences.

Ten Years After the Crash, We Are Still Living in the World It Brutally Remade

A seismic reading of the financial earthquake and its aftershocks, including those that still jolt us today.

The New Old Democrats

It’s not the 1990s anymore. People want the government to help solve big problems. Here’s how the Democrats must respond.

The Cold War and the Welfare State

If you look hard enough, you can almost find ideological consistency in the Republicans’ breathtaking tax bill.

How Fast Food Chains Supersized Inequality

Fast food did not just find its way to low-income neighborhoods. It was brought there by the federal government.

The Architect of the Radical Right

How the Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan shaped today’s antigovernment politics.

Our Mis-Leading Indicators

How statistical data came to rule public policy.
William McKinley making a campaign speech in 1896.

Why Trump Admires President McKinley, the Original ‘Tariff Man’

President Donald Trump says McKinley made the United States prosperous through tariffs. Historians say that’s an incomplete understanding of the 25th president.
Jimmy Carter in the 1970s visiting a town in Brazil that commemorates Confederate expats.

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

As an individual, Jimmy Carter stood as a rebuke to our venal and heartless political class. As a politician, his private virtues proved to be public vices.
President Jimmy Carter seated at desk in Oval Office, hands steepled.

Jimmy Carter Held the Door Open for Neoliberalism

His unwillingness to take a radical stance forced him to respond to events by imposing austerity and doing little to strengthen labor.
George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon at the Reagan Library opening.
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Jimmy Carter Was a Successful (Conservative) President

Common conceptions of Carter are all wrong because they don’t acknowledge a crucial reality: he was a conservative.
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Nuggets of Condescension

By universalizing their own economic history, Western observers have used the past to portray African economic culture as backward and inadequate.

"It's the Economy, Stupid" is Never Just About the Economy

Can the Clinton campaign slogan chart a path forward for Democrats? Its history tells another story.
Kamala Harris

The Democrats’ “Opportunity” Pitch Is a Dead End

The meritocratic pitch was emblematic of Democrats’ long march away from working-class voters.
Donald Trump at a podium

The New Trumpian Bargain

Trump's second term echoes 19th-century policies: tariffs and immigration limits protect workers, while deregulation risks widening inequality.
Neon signage for Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort.
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The 2024 Election and America's Love Affair With Lotteries

Americans love games of chance, but history shows they're a poor substitute for a robust investment in public goods.
Trump holding a table of tariff rates.
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Tariffs Don’t Have to Make Economic Sense to Appeal to Trump Voters

Economists and Democrats dismiss Trump’s tariffs talk at their peril.

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