[Ivo Daalder] Britain needs a Brexit do-over referendum to get out of this mess

Britain’s holiday from history was supposed to end this week. After three years of bitter debate, Prime Minister Theresa May hoped Parliament would back the agreement for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union that she painstakingly negotiated over the past 18 months. On Tuesday, however, Parliament voted 2-to-1 against her deal, a humiliating defeat that leaves the future of Britain’s relationship with Europe as unsettled as ever.　The only real option is a do-over -- a second referendum,

Jan. 21, 2019

[Trudy Rubin] Are Trump’s gifts to Putin the work of a gullible admirer rather than a mark of collusion?

The news that the FBI opened an investigation in 2017 as to whether President Donald Trump was actually working for the Russians shouldn’t have come as a shocker.　No public evidence has yet emerged from the FBI probe or from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that the president took orders from the Kremlin. And Trump has been furious in his denials.　Yet over and over this president makes common cause with the Kremlin with his statements, his policies, the many contacts between his te

Jan. 21, 2019

[Karl W. Smith] Revenge of the millennials

Almost every major new economic initiative proposed by Democrats -- the Green New Deal, Medicare for all, debt-free college -- has a common feature: Unlike most current social programs, it would benefit younger Americans at the expense of older Americans.Since the New Deal, America’s social insurance programs have primarily transferred resources from the relatively young to the old. Social Security was designed as a program to support those unable to work, but over time its spending came to be d

Jan. 21, 2019

[Dylan Selterman] Climate change and the ‘tragedy of the commons’

In 2015, a student tweeted about an extra credit activity in my psychology course, igniting a discussion about the “tragedy of the commons” -- the idea that when masses of people engage in excessive consumption, it can have catastrophic environmental consequences, such as climate change. In light of the recently proposed Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, let’s revisit this idea and consider how carbon pricing can serve as an effective solution to this problem.For the class activity, eac

Jan. 20, 2019

[Michael Schuman] China built a big, beautiful wall, too. It failed.

From the moment he launched his campaign for president, Donald Trump compared the barrier he wanted to build along the US southern border to China’s Great Wall. With the US government now shuttered by the standoff over funding Trump’s wall, both he and his Democratic opponents might want to take a closer look at the Chinese fortification -- and why exactly it failed.The Great Wall visited by tourists today is the handiwork of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and was primarily constructed in the mid-

Jan. 20, 2019

[Alex Webb] If Google and LG like smart TVs, so should the privacy police

The world’s tech police have the opportunity to succeed in televisions where they initially failed with the rest of the connected world, and ensure that users retain a firm grasp on their data.Smart televisions are nothing new. Nor is the shift in the platform wars, where tech firms duke it out for primacy of their operating systems, from smartphones to the television set. But the fact that Amazon.com Inc. is developing its own smart TV indicates that there’s enough value in the user data to off

Jan. 20, 2019

[David Lubin] How US monetary policy has tamed China

Chinese leaders do like their slogans, and where foreign policy is concerned, two have reflected Beijing’s thinking in recent times. The first is the cautious principle of tao guang yang hui, usually rendered in English as “hide your light and bide your time,” which guided Chinese policy for decades after Deng Xiaoping established it in the 1980s. In late 2013, though, President Xi Jinping coined a new slogan to define a more assertive, muscular approach: fen fa you wei, or “strive for achieveme

Jan. 17, 2019

[Therese Raphael] Theresa May’s humbling offers a glimmer of hope

It was both a historic vote and a decisive defeat for the government. But while it was called a “meaningful vote,” parliament’s verdict on Theresa May’s Brexit deal Tuesday was actually anything but.Tuesday’s ballot was all about tactics; not one MP thought it would decide anything. As the prime minister noted herself afterward, it makes clear what parliament doesn’t want, but not what alternative can garner a majority among lawmakers. As such, it has left all factions even more entrenched.Remai

Jan. 16, 2019

[Noah Smith] China’s growth machine no longer looks unstoppable

China’s economy is slowing. The downturn may be the result of recent events -- the trade war with the US, or retrenchment in China’s real estate and infrastructure sectors. But it may also be the latest manifestation of a trend that began a decade ago. And it may signal that China’s entire system of authoritarian state capitalism is less effective than many had believed.Recent data suggest that consumption is falling, indicating rocky times ahead:But China’s woes go far beyond the current busine

Jan. 16, 2019

[Robert B. Reich] On democracy and dictatorship

The wonderful thing about Donald Trump’s presidency -- I never thought I’d begin a column this way -- is that he brings us back to basics.The basic difference between a democracy and a dictatorship comes down to means and ends.Democracy is about means, not ends. If we all agreed on the ends, such as whether to build a wall along the Mexican border, there’d be no need for democracy.But of course we don’t agree, which is why the means by which we resolve our differences are so important. Those mea

Jan. 16, 2019

[Cass Sunstein] Trump’s emergency powers won’t get him a wall

Does President Donald Trump have the legal authority to declare a national emergency, and order the military to build a wall between Mexico and the United States?We are dealing with a novel question here, which means that any judgment has to have a degree of tentativeness. But the best answer appears to be no.Outside of the most extraordinary circumstances, the US Constitution does not give the president “emergency power.” If he wants to declare a national emergency -- to build a wall, to respon

Jan. 15, 2019

[Peter Singer] Too much gratitude?

Last November, Michael Bloomberg made what may well be the largest private donation to higher education in modern times: $1.8 billion to enable his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, to provide scholarships for eligible students unable to afford the school’s tuition. Bloomberg is grateful to Johns Hopkins, he explains, because the opportunity to study there, on a scholarship, “opened up doors that otherwise would have been closed, and allowed me to live the American dream.” In the year after

Jan. 15, 2019