How America should spend on child care
Sep 18th 2021UNLIKE MOST rich European countries, America lacks a coherent public child-care regime. But it has come surprisingly close to having one. During the second world war Congress set up federal child-care centres to encourage women to work in factories; these were later dismantled. In 1971 Congress passed a comprehensive child-care plan. But President…
Labour’s share in national income is both over- and under-explained
Sep 18th 2021THE IDEA that the spoils of the modern economy are unfairly distributed has become part of public discourse in the rich world. One common villain is the growing class of wealth-owners living off the returns from capital rather than hard-earned wages, an explanation popularised by Thomas Piketty in his book, “Capital in the…
Australia’s states are asserting themselves
Sep 18th 2021ACROSS MUCH of Asia, the pandemic has given national leaders an excuse to unleash authoritarian instincts—think Thailand, the Philippines or India. Australia, though, provides a stark contrast. There, authority has conspicuously ebbed away from the federal government and to the vast country’s six states.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy…
India’s pupils have been hard hit by extended school closures
AS COVID-19 MEASURES relax across the world, nothing brings quite so much relief as the reopening of schools. For India’s 320m schoolchildren, its 8.5m teachers and for parents, too, the relief is particularly acute. Not only have Indian schools suffered some of the world’s longest closures—an average of 69 weeks. For reasons peculiar to India,…
Why the number of children working is rising
EDWARD BAKA, the headmaster of a school in Kono district next to Sierra Leone’s biggest gold mine, recalls how once he had to sell the school’s books to pay for a roof. Of the 700 children aged 4-13 under his care, 80% are in work, too, he reckons. Most toil in mines or on farms.…
The IMF is growing more picky about who it funds
Sep 18th 2021MANY AFRICANS still harbour a grudge against the IMF that dates back to the 1990s, when it became known for the bitter medicine it administered. Before any bail-outs, the fund would insist that countries agree to painful structural-adjustment programmes that included cutting government spending and liberalising economies. Since then the IMF has worked…
SpaceX sends the first-ever civilian crew into Earth orbit
Sep 16th 2021REALITY TELEVISION loves small, enclosed worlds; space travel requires them. That these two facts would, some day, come together has long seemed inevitable. The launch of four civilian astronauts from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the early hours (in Greenwich Mean Time) of September 16th sealed the deal. It is normal,…
The world’s biggest carbon-removal plant switches on
SHORTLY AFTER 6pm on September 9th, the Orca carbon capture plant, just outside Reykjavik in Iceland, switched on its fans and began sucking carbon dioxide from the air. The sound was subtle—a bit like a gurgling stream. But the plant’s creators hope it will mark a big shift in humanity’s interaction with the climate.Orca is,…
Operation Tame Finance
Sep 18th 2021GARY GENSLER’S students at MIT Sloan were an appreciative bunch. Their nominations secured him the business school’s “Outstanding Teacher” award for the 2018-19 academic year. Now that he is the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), America’s main markets watchdog, his constituents are rather more unruly. Finance has been upended by…