James Pethokoukis

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 maintain the rapid productivity growth experienced in the

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, America’s Pastime seems to be doing just fine.

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. As the econ team at Goldman Sachs notes:

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 $15 an hour violated Senate budget rules. Then

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 generate average annual GDP growth of just over

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.” To them, it’s just another example of how

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 the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai

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 percent growth mode for the rest of the

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? Take New York City, for instance. With no

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 concentrated than any other time in recent American

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 might be to global catastrophe, originally atomic war.

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 can we combat this issue through both local

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, all will be well. Keep calm and carry