Remote-first work is taking over the rich world
Oct 30th 2021IN FEBRUARY 2020 Americans on average spent 5% of their working hours at home. By May, as lockdowns spread, the share had soared to 60%—a trend that was mirrored in other countries. Many people, perhaps believing that working from home really meant shirking from home, assumed that office life would soon return to…
China’s long wait for a tax everyone loves to hate
IF SUN YAT-SEN had got his way, China would have been a bold pioneer in the taxation of real estate. During his exile in Europe from 1896 to 1898, the republican revolutionary fell under the spell of Henry George, an influential American journalist who believed a single tax on land should replace all others. Sun…
An accurate tally of the world’s solar-power stations
Oct 27th 2021REBUILDING AN ENTIRE planet’s energy system is a big job. Just ask the delegates at the COP-26 climate conference scheduled to kick off in Britain on October 31st. The most basic problem is knowing what, exactly, you are trying to rebuild. Think-tanks, charities and organisations like the International Energy Agency—a forecasting group—try to…
Private space stations will soon be in orbit
Oct 27th 2021ON OCTOBER 21ST a consortium led by Lockheed Martin, one of America’s biggest aerospace companies, announced plans to build a permanently crewed commercial space station called Starlab, and launch it into orbit around Earth by 2027. Not to be outdone, on the 25th, Blue Origin, a firm that is Jeff Bezos’s ticket into…