Economics

The Trouble with Money

John Maynard Keynes thought that in forgetting that money is a means and not an end, we abandon the reality of the present for the fiction of the future.

December 22, 2022 issue

Ian Frazier

Grim Reapers

Mega-agriculture is destroying the Corn Belt and the Central Valley, which the country’s food system depends on. Can midsize farms survive to save it?

February 9, 2023 issue

Fara Dabhoiwala

Becoming Amartya Sen

In his memoir Home in the World the pathbreaking economist and moral philosopher looks back on his much-traveled, multicultural childhood, education, and early academic career.

December 8, 2022 issue

Corey Robin

Empathy & the Economy

The left is still preoccupied with the decades-old debate over which is more important: recognition of our identities or material redistribution. Adam Smith ended that argument before it began.

December 8, 2022 issue

Bill Spindle

On the Grid in Leisang

With every village in India electrified, the country’s challenge will be to meet growing energy demand with renewable sources. But can it afford to give up fossil fuels?

June 22, 2022

Jonathan Mingle

Reasons for Concern

The IPCC’s latest report, with warnings for supply chains and food security, may be the most suspense-filled document in human history.

March 9, 2022

Astra Taylor, interviewed by Lucy McKeon

Remembering David Graeber

“He always said anarchism isn’t an identity, it’s a way of being, something you do—and he was true to that formulation.”

September 5, 2020

Willa Glickman, with photography by Phil Penman

A Shuttered Garage, a Devastated Trade

The taxi industry has been brutally crunched on two sides—from skyrocketing operating costs, on the one hand, and a sharp decline in business, on the other.

June 29, 2020

America’s Housing Crisis

A deteriorating bank-owned house, Moreno Valley, California, August 2008

Francesca Mari

The Housing Vultures

The investors who exploited the 2008 financial crisis are dictating the bailout of this one.

June 11, 2020 issue

Gabriel M. Schivone

America’s Eviction Epidemic

Across the country, millions of people are facing eviction as protections in place for the pandemic have lapsed.

September 16, 2020

Roberta Brandes Gratz

How NYC Is Zoning Out the Human Scale

This is a New York story only for now. Upzonings and transfers of newly created air rights are occurring in cities around the country. When it comes to real estate, New York City may lead the way, but others follow in time.

December 30, 2019

A view from 7 DeKalb Avenue, an apartment tower in Downtown Brooklyn. Eighty percent of its 250 apartments are subsidized units, for which there were 87,754 applications when it opened.

Michael Greenberg

Tenants Under Siege: Inside New York City’s Housing Crisis

New York City is in the throes of a humanitarian emergency. The tide of homelessness is only the most visible symptom.

August 17, 2017 issue

The Latest

Hermione Lee

The Soft-Power Brokers

A new history focusing on the English Rothschilds tells how the women were centrally involved in business, politics, social welfare, and culture—all while caught between the advantages of wealth and the burdens of anti-Semitism and sexism.

February 23, 2023 issue

Cass R. Sunstein

Accounting for the Human Cost

Applying a cost-benefit analysis to people’s problems may seem “bloodless,” but it can be a corrective to interest group lobbying, ideology, and bias.

November 24, 2022 issue

Sue Halpern

The Specter of Our Virtual Future

The metaverse opens up a new and seemingly infinite opportunity to extract data and sell ads.

October 20, 2022 issue

Zephyr Teachout

The Boss Will See You Now

We are experiencing a major turning point in the surveillance of workers, driven by wearable tech, artificial intelligence, and Covid.

August 18, 2022 issue

David A. Bell

Paris Transformed

Although Esther da Costa Meyer deplores the human costs of urban renewal in Paris during the Second Empire, she cannot disguise her appreciation for what was accomplished.

August 18, 2022 issue