KOLKATA, India — In the spring I found myself in the position of being my father’s potential liver donor. Although he had steadfastly refused a transplant, he had slipped into a sickness so severe that my mother and I feared we might lose him. I am his only child and our blood groups are compatible. […]
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In 1988, when Jean-Louis Gassée took a close look at Apple’s “highly automated” Macintosh factory in Fremont, Calif., what he saw was not pretty. Mr. Gassée, a French specialist in office automation, had just been promoted to president of Apple’s product division by John Sculley, then Apple’s chief executive, and was responsible for the company’s […]
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Before he turned 40, Roland G. Fryer Jr. had earned tenure at Harvard, received a MacArthur “genius” grant and won the most prestigious award for young American economists. He stoked a national debate by concluding that police officers show no bias in the shootings of black men. But his rapid ascent has […]
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ImageLearning how to install drywall in a construction techniques class at Madison College in Madison, Wis., this year.CreditMichelle Stocker/The Capital Times, via Associated Press Traditionally male industries have made a comeback. The three fastest-growing sectors since December 2016 have been the three that are most male-dominated: mining, construction, and transportation and utilities. Yet in the […]
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DONGGUAN, China — China’s consumers and businesses are losing confidence. Car sales have plunged. The housing market is stumbling. Some factories are letting workers off for the big Lunar New Year holiday two months early. China’s economy has slowed sharply in recent months, presenting perhaps the biggest challenge to its top leader, Xi Jinping, in […]
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SAN FRANCISCO — This generation’s biggest technology companies — including Apple, Amazon and Google — have long been tied to their hometowns. Now these giants are increasingly outgrowing their West Coast roots. Driven by a limited pool of skilled workers and the ballooning cost of living in their home bases of Silicon Valley and Seattle, […]
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The growing use of work robots and the deployment of artificial intelligence have been most disruptive in just those areas of the country that provided President Trump with crucial margins of support in 2016. In a paper that was published earlier this year, “Robots and Jobs: Evidence from U.S. Labor Markets,” Daron Acemoglu and Pascual […]
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What difference can one ordinary person make? Here are six people Fixes wrote about in the last year who show what the answer can be: a lot. Katie Fahey RESTORES POWER TO THE PEOPLE “There were great moments in American history when people rose up to correct it when something wasn’t right. I said, ‘Technically, […]
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They make beds in inns across the country. They pick oranges in Florida, strawberries in California and vegetables in Ohio. And they have built new subdivisions in Phoenix, Atlanta and Charlotte. For years, policymakers have talked about shutting off the influx of undocumented workers. But the economy has grown to rely on them. Ending illegal […]
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PARIS — The need to accelerate growth has long been visible in almost every corner of the French economy, from dreary unemployment offices packed with jobseekers to businesses whose financially stretched customers struggle to make do. President Emmanuel Macron pledged on Monday to change those dynamics by improving the country’s long-term prospects. But his halting […]
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NEEDLES, Calif. — Jeff Williams, the incoming mayor of this small desert city near the Arizona border, arrested a lot of people for selling marijuana in his days as a county sheriff. He voted against legalizing the stuff in a 2016 statewide referendum. But Mr. Williams also knows the city he has called home since […]
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Sharing an Amazon Prime account with loved ones is surprisingly intimate. You’re privy to one another’s impulse buys, fondness for corny ’90s comedies and preferred brands of vaginal suppositories. Like many families, mine shares a login for the ubiquitous delivery behemoth. Every time my dad or my sister orders an item, I see a cheerful […]
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MILWAUKEE — At Western Building Products’ banana-shaped factory on the lip of the Menomonee River outside Milwaukee, the company’s president, Mark Willey, is wrangling with a stubborn problem: not enough workers. “If someone is here a year, they never leave,” Mr. Willey said. “Our problem today is just finding people who want to work.” It […]
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KASHIWA, Japan — When it comes to immigration to Japan, Koichiro Goto is blunt. He’s against it. “To accept a lot of immigrants would break down the borders of our singular nation,” said Mr. Goto, director of a nursing home company in Kashiwa, a suburb of Tokyo. Yet Mr. Goto, who also serves on the […]
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When General Motors announced that it was idling five plants in the United States and Canada last week, there was shock in two American cities. One was Warren, Ohio, where G.M. builds the Chevrolet Cruze at its Lordstown assembly plant. Folks in the industrial heartland are no strangers to this kind of betrayal. But after […]
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ImageTraders outside the New York Stock Exchange this week. Worries about the economy’s future are finally starting to affect stock prices, even though the economy remains strong.CreditMary Altaffer/Associated Press After another week of exceptional volatility on Wall Street that has pummeled stock portfolios, there are two closely related questions worth asking. First, why is this […]
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The Labor Department will release the latest hiring and unemployment figures for November at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. The monthly report provides one of the better snapshots of the state of the American economy. Here’s what to watch for: • After a hefty gain of 250,000 jobs in October, economists expect payroll gains of 190,000 […]
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Talk of succession is in the air. After 18 years, Angela Merkel is stepping down as chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s main ruling party since 2005. The party’s conference meets this week in Hamburg to decide her replacement. But whoever follows Ms. Merkel — for many, Europe’s de facto leader — will inherit […]
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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is planning to convert an engine plant in Detroit to make a new seven-passenger Jeep, people briefed on the plans said Thursday. The move would give the city an economic lift at a time when General Motors and Ford are cutting jobs. Fiat Chrysler’s idle Mack Avenue plant, which previously made V6 […]
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One day this fall, Ashutosh Garg, the chief executive of a recruiting service called Eightfold.ai, turned up a résumé that piqued his interest. It belonged to a prospective data scientist, someone who unearths patterns in data to help businesses make decisions, like how to target ads. But curiously, the résumé featured the term “data science” […]
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