Junk is surprisingly pervasive in “Star Wars,” playing an understated role in nearly every film in the series. In “The Phantom Menace,” we meet young Anakin Skywalker, the future Darth Vader, working at a small electronics scrapyard and repair shop. In “A New Hope,” Luke Skywalker’s uncle buys R2-D2 and C-3PO from a group of Jawas, a species that drive massive, sand-crawling junk trucks. The recently released “Rise of Skywalker” is largely a

Viewpoints Dec. 25, 2019

If you’re in the business of professional sports right now, the fundamentals are cause for concern. Attendance is falling, even in the midst of a strong economy. Perhaps some of that decline can be attributed to the improvement in high-definition broadcasting and the prevalence of large flat-screen televisions, which make watching at home a much better experience than in the past.But that wouldn’t explain why TV ratings this season for the National Basketball Association have fallen

Viewpoints Dec. 24, 2019

Some leaders in the US are intent on reviving the old dream of high-speed rail. Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing $607 billion for a new high-speed train network as part of his Green New Deal. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez included it in her own plan earlier this year. On Twitter, Sanders’s political allies sing the praises of high-speed rail systems such as China’s.High-speed rail puts an optimistic, futuristic face on an economic agenda that might otherwise seem mainly abo

Viewpoints Dec. 23, 2019

Plenty of companies have raised billions of dollars by selling themselves as tech unicorns rather than firms in traditional businesses -- for example, taxi services or office rentals. Regulators have been a harder sell for such stories than investors. But now, a unicorn, Airbnb, has managed to establish in Europe that it’s a tech company, not a real estate agent.The European Court of Justice has already had occasion to rule on the tech champion/disguised traditional business dilemma. In 20

Viewpoints Dec. 23, 2019

President Donald Trump’s all-but-certain acquittal in his impending Senate impeachment trial will likely embolden him in all sorts of ways, some more frightening than others. One deal he will be sorely tempted to make, after three years of erratic and mostly unproductive diplomacy, is to accommodate his “friend” Kim Jong-un and ease sanctions on North Korea. It will be up to the US Congress to stop him.“If I weren’t president, you’d be at war with North Korea,

Viewpoints Dec. 22, 2019

There are times, including in armed conflict, when adversaries see it in their own interests to opt for a truce and sell it to the outside world as a steppingstone to a comprehensive peace. But both sides know it will be only a prelude to renewed tensions down the road.This could well be the best way to think of the “phase one deal” between China and the United States. Yet, it’s not how the equity markets see the situation. Instead, they are pricing the deal as simultaneously i

Viewpoints Dec. 18, 2019

Against all expectations, political logic and basic commonsense, Israel’s major parties have refused to form a unity government, and are dragging an irate public back for a third national election in less than a year.The contest, scheduled for March 3, will likely reprise the two previous stalemates. Early polls show that the underlying electoral arithmetic hasn’t changed. Israel suffers from the same sort of polarization that currently afflicts many other democracies. It is a recipe

Viewpoints Dec. 16, 2019

After a year of gridlock in Westminster that has frustrated the UK’s attempts to leave the European Union on amicable terms, British voters have handed Prime Minister Boris Johnson a thumping majority to do just that. They might also be handing Brussels a tough new competitor on Europe’s doorstep.This is sobering for the EU, which is on course to lose an important economic and defense partner worth 14 percent of the bloc’s gross domestic product. It could have been much worse,

Viewpoints Dec. 16, 2019

In 1964, speaking at the University of Michigan, President Lyndon Johnson called for the US to become a “great society.” That term came to be synonymous with the Johnson administration’s raft of antipoverty programs, sometimes known as the War on Poverty. The Great Society initiative led to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the modern version of food stamps, Head Start, various jobs programs, expansion of many kinds of Social Security benefits, urban renewal spending and a

Viewpoints Dec. 15, 2019

The emergence of 34-year-old Sanna Marin as Finland’s new prime minister is no fluke: In recent years, Europe has seen its leaders get younger as the new generation appears better at navigating increasingly complex political landscapes.The average age of global leaders actually has increased since the 1950s, according to the Rulers, Elections and Irregular Government dataset, created by Curtis Bell from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. In Europe, though, it has been going down sin

Viewpoints Dec. 12, 2019

There has been a clamor for the US government to spend more on research and development. Economic theories such as those of Paul Romer, who won the Nobel Prize in 2018, suggest that spending more on R&D would promote long-term economic growth. A growing number of economists also believe that basic research is a job that only government can do; because basic research is so hard to profit from directly, there’s a clear pipeline from government-funded discoveries to private sector innovat

Viewpoints Dec. 12, 2019

It’s impressive how well the US economy has held up during the past year. As early as 2018, leading indicators were suggesting a heightened risk of recession in 2019 or 2020. Then early this year the yield curve inverted, a traditional signal that recession is imminent. The inversion has since reversed, but this typically happens before growth actually goes negative. The trigger for a downturn wouldn’t be hard to identify -- a slowing China, combined with President Donald Trump&rsquo

Viewpoints Dec. 4, 2019

The government crisis in Malta, one of the smallest European Union members, shows that oligarchs who purchase political influence -- and who may do just about anything, including commit murder, to avoid being caught -- aren’t just a postcommunist phenomenon. The crisis comes two years after the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered in a car-bombing. Earlier this month, a suspected middleman in the killing was arrested on unrelated charges and offered up information o

Viewpoints Dec. 1, 2019

Biologists recently revealed a new form of the gene-editing tool known as Crispr that allows researchers to make precise changes to almost any element of DNA, permanently altering cellular biochemistry. It could help treat tens of thousands of diseases linked to variations in a single gene and lead to the creation of better antibiotics.　 The latest development, called prime editing, is more accurate than older Crispr methods, which sometimes alter genomic DNA in the wrong places. The new method

Viewpoints Nov. 27, 2019

London first banned Uber under its buccaneer of a founding chief executive officer, Travis Kalanick -- and now for a second time under Kalanick’s successor, Dara Khosrowshahi, who was meant to be the adult in the room. Though the ban won’t be a popular decision among Londoners and many will call it disproportionate, it shows Uber Technologies has more fundamental problems than the temperament of its top managers.In September 2017, Transport for London, the UK capital’s transpor

Viewpoints Nov. 27, 2019