Persuasion over turnout (Nate Cohn)

If you’ve been reading post-election coverage, you’ve probably seen one of the big takeaways from the returns so far: In counties across the country, Kamala Harris won many fewer votes than President Biden did four years ago. With nearly all votes counted, she has about 74 million; Biden received 81 million four years ago. Donald …

Read More

Got Debt? Try Some Fiscal Federalism: Musk and Ramaswamy can end Washington’s habit of paying for everything from bike paths to bus stops (John F. Cogan)

Excessive spending has been a way of life for lawmakers in Washington for more than half a century. Since 1969 federal outlays have exceeded revenue every year, except briefly during the high-tech bubble of the late 1990s. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency will attempt to put an end to this fiscal profligacy. Both men …

Read More

Ukraine Policy: the Big Win: We win a lot if we pull Russia toward us and leave China out in the cold where it belongs. (Russell Berman and Kiron Skinner)

President Trump rightly points out that America did not engage in new wars during his first term in office. The world was indeed a more stable place before the Biden administration engineered a disastrous exit from Afghanistan. That catastrophe signaled weakness and incentivized the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the Hamas attack on …

Read More

How Biden Can Salvage Middle East Peace—and His Legacy: A Lame-Duck Agenda to Save Palestinian Lives and Bolster Israel’s Long-Term Security (Jonah Blank)

When U.S. President Joe Biden leaves office in January, the already faint prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may follow him out the door. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the very concept. Biden’s successor, President-elect Donald Trump, spent his first term actively promoting Netanyahu’s most expansionist dreams. Biden has so far …

Read More

Israel’s Trump Delusion: Why Netanyahu’s Ambition to Remake the Middle East Is Unlikely to Succeed (Shalom Lipner)

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election could not have come at a better time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More than 13 months since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack, Israel finds itself on a roll. Since the beginning of the year, Israel has assassinated much of the senior leadership of both …

Read More

How Global Public Investment Should Work (Mariana Mazzucato and Jonathan Glennie)

Addressing problems like climate change and biodiversity loss calls for new thinking about how to mobilize the huge volume of financing that will be needed. International cooperation must be re-framed as a collective endeavor in which all countries benefit, contribute, and make investment decisions together. LONDON – Following the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Colombia …

Read More

Nicholas grass More… (Nicholas Agar)

This week in Say More, PS talks with Nicholas Agar, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, and the author, most recently, of How to Think about Progress: A Skeptic’s Guide to Technology. Project Syndicate: You recently wrote that the “horizon bias” – the belief that what could happen will happen soon – “is most consequential in …

Read More

Trump’s Inflationary Triple Threat (Maurice Obstfeld)

With unified Republican control of the White House and Congress, US President-elect Donald Trump is poised to pursue radical economic policies. By undermining the independence of the Federal Reserve, enacting massive tax cuts, and loosening cryptocurrency regulations, he risks triggering an inflationary surge. Read More