The Buffalo Chronicle
James Pethokoukis
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PETHOKOUKIS: Climate report highlights need for innovation in climate crisis
By James Pethokoukis Norman Borlaug and William Vogt are the two leads in Charles C. Mann’s 2018 book, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Groundbreaking Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future…
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PETHOKOUKIS: What America can learn from China’s tech sector crackdown
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS Amazon founder Jeff Bezos turned 38 in January 2002, and many of what turned out to be the company’s biggest accomplishments — Amazon Web Services, Amazon Prime, Kindle —…
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America’s missing $11 trillion
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS Increasing worker productivity is critical to raising living standards over the long run. But what does that mean, exactly? Consider this: If the American economy had been able to…
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PETHOKOUKIS: Attacking corporations for their political views is bad for American business and the economy
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS It may seem merely silly, a GOP senator tweeting #GowokeGobroke over Major League Baseball’s decision to pull the All-Star Game from Georgia over the state’s new voting law. Despite the controversy,…
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Zombies firms could complicate the strong post-pandemic economy
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS What sort of shape is the American economy in after a year of the pandemic? Maybe better than you might guess. Even better than many economists might have guessed.…
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PETHOKOUKIS: That Senate parliamentarian did Democrats a favor
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS More trouble ahead for President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief/stimulus bill? Last week, the Senate parliamentarian told lawmakers that the plan’s proposed increase in the federal minimum wage to…
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One idea America should steal from China: A national economic growth goal
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS Chinese President Xi Jinping recently set a goal of doubling the size of China’s economy by 2035. To hit that target, the Financial Times calculates, the Chinese economy must…
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PETHOKOUKIS: The US economy needs more help from Washington — preferably ASAP
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS America’s “K-shaped” recovery is a convenient phenomenon for analysts who focus a lot on income inequality, not to mention those convinced America already suffers from severe “late stage capitalism.”…
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Smaller-scale nuclear could be a big part of the national energy mix
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS What would the world look like today if it were nuclear-powered? That is the intriguing “what if” scenario explored by The Economist last summer. From the piece: In 1985…
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PETHOKOUKIS: Is America going to settle for slow economic growth?
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS Just before Independence Day, the Congressional Budget Office released its updated 10-year economic forecast. Basically, it shows a 5 percent bump in real GDP next year before settling into 2…
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PETHOKOUKIS: America’s cities are suffering from both health and opportunity crises
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS In the 2007 book “The World Without Us,” journalist Alan Weisman speculates about life after people. If everyone suddenly vanished, what would happen to all the stuff we’ve built?…
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How America gave up on free markets: Q&A with Thomas Philippon
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS How concentrated is corporate power in America today? How big of a problem is this? According to Thomas Philippon, the answers are “more concentrated than in Europe, and more…
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Time to reset the Doomsday Clock of ‘late capitalism’
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS The famous Doomsday Clock — it’s a key visual motif in the Watchmen graphic novel and television miniseries — was created by Manhattan Project scientists as a metaphor to suggest how close mankind…
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How more housing will boost economic growth: A long-read Q&A with Daniel Shoag
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS Why have housing costs skyrocketed in the past few decades? To what extent do these costs keep people from moving to prospering cities in search of opportunity? And how…
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Elizabeth Warren wants America to take epic risks on healthcare
BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS The New York Times editorial board is truly, madly, deeply confident that if the United States taxes rich people and corporations in a way no other advanced economy does,…
