Aram Zucker-Scharff

“The first stages of decline may already have started. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08 and ongoing economic malaise may be a harbinger of the fallout from resource constraints. The pursuit of material wealth contributed to unsustainable levels of debt, with suddenly higher prices for food and oil contributing to defaults – and the GFC.”

– Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we’re nearing collapse.

Studying economics appears to make people worse human beings.:

This originally appeared on LinkedIn. You can follow Adam Grant here. In 1776, Adam Smith famously wrote: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Economists have run with this insight for hundreds of years, and some…

Here’s What Happens When White People Move Into Your Neighborhood: We used to have white flight. Now, in city centers, we have something that one policy researcher calls white infill. So what happens when a bunch of white people start moving in? The ch…

“

That has led to a mind-set in which executives sometimes think of line workers as merely resources to be tapped at the lowest price. Companies have been able to keep wages low: It’s hard to demand a raise when your colleagues are being laid off or there is a long line of job seekers. Some corporations may have come to view this as a natural state of affairs.

By now, wage income is as low a percentage of gross domestic product as it has been since 1947, while corporate profits are at postwar highs. These are two sides of the same coin. Money that once accrued to workers now goes to shareholders.

”

– NYT reports on the trucking industry facing labor problems.