Last week, employees at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., voted by almost three to one to join the United Automobile Workers. By the numbers, this wasn’t a big deal: It involved only a few thousand workers in an economy that employs almost 160 million people. But it was an important symbolic victory for a […]
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When it came to housing, Susan Apel and Keith Irwin thought they had planned adroitly for later life. They bought a four-bedroom house on two acres in Lebanon, N.H., 24 years ago, and “we made sure to pay off the mortgage before we retired,” said Ms. Apel, 71. That way, the home equity they had […]
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Rahul Gandhi stood in a red Jeep, amid a churning crowd in Varanasi, trying to unseat the Indian government with a microphone in his hand. “The mic isn’t good,” he said. “Please quiet down and listen.” It was the morning of Feb. 17 — Day 35 of a journey that began in the hills of […]
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Among the signature images of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal of the murders of his ex-wife and her friend was the contrasting tableaus of Black people grouping in front of television screens applauding while white people watching it were shaking their heads — appalled, perplexed and even disgusted by a verdict that flew in the face of […]
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Property taxes, the lifeblood of local governments and school districts, are among the most powerful and stealthy engines of racism and wealth inequality our nation has ever produced. And while the Biden administration has offered many solutions for making the tax code fairer, it has yet to effectively tackle a problem that has resulted not […]
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You could be forgiven — when browsing the Smithsonian’s political history collections, where I work as a curator — for assuming that the chief battle in American political history was fought in 1892, between two great leaders named Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland playing cards and Harrison top hats fill glass cases and steel […]
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He has an easy smile, blue eyes and a life-threatening bone infection in one arm. Grateful for treatment, he jokes with the medical intern each morning. A friend, a fellow doctor, is supervising the man’s care. We both work as internists at a public hospital in the medical safety net, a loose term for institutions […]
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City College of New York often serves as a nostalgic symbol of American higher education’s past. The college did not charge tuition for decades, and its students, many of them poor, went on to become Nobel laureates, chief executives, civil rights leaders and more. By contrast, higher education today can seem both less accessible and […]
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New York City is known for its pricey real estate, but some homeowners get an unexpected bargain: Property taxes on some of the fanciest, most coveted properties are often very low — at least relatively. The flip side? Renters and homeowners in lower-income neighborhoods end up carrying a lot of the burden. Take, for example, […]
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For more than half a century, the handbook for how developing countries can grow rich hasn’t changed much: Move subsistence farmers into manufacturing jobs, and then sell what they produce to the rest of the world. The recipe — customized in varying ways by Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and China — has produced […]
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As Narendra Modi was storming to victory in the election of 2014, he said that “acchhe din aane waale hain” — good times are coming. Now as Mr. Modi stands set to secure another term as prime minister in elections starting on April 19, the value of India’s stock market has grown threefold since he […]
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Narendra Modi has big money behind him as he appears set to win a third term as India’s prime minister. His party has collected more political cash than the others combined, and the country’s richest business leaders support him. The campaign is fueled partly by a winning story Mr. Modi tells about India’s economy, some […]
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