Our Nation Has Lost Its Trust in Experts. Here’s How to Restore It.

– Project Syndicate

Experts in general, not just pollsters and economists, have been the target of much criticism of late. With news becoming more narrowly targeted to individual interests and preferences, and with people increasingly choosing whom to trust and follow, the traditional channels for sharing expertise are being disrupted. Who needs experts when you have Facebook, Google, Mumsnet, and Twitter? Actually, we all do.

 

This Is What We Risk in A Move to A Cashless Society

– Aeon 

The cashless society – which more accurately should be called the bank-payments society – is often presented as an inevitability, an outcome of ‘natural progress’. This claim is either naïve or disingenuous. Any future cashless bank-payments society will be the outcome of a deliberate war on cash waged by an alliance of three elite groups with deep interests in seeing it emerge.

Since 2008, Nearly Every State Moved Right In Both Presidential And State Politics

– The Washington Post 

The Washington Post tracks the rise of Republican control of local, state, and national politics over the past twenty years. The question for Democrats is a simple one. Is this a permanent shift to the right, or is it low-water mark?

Economists Have Been Demoted in Washington. That’s a Bad Idea.

– The New York Times 

Academic economists have received a demotion. The Trump administration has been filling out its cabinet and, unlike in the Obama administration, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers will not be part of it.