The accusation that the fault for many a national problem lies in the country’s young people eschewing STEM in favor of “soft” and “useless” degrees in the arts, humanities and social sciences whose award is something akin to a scam given that upon graduation the fate of those debt-loaded students…

It has long been the conventional wisdom that the United States has suffered from a shortage of personnel trained in “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), with a damaging effect on its competitiveness as a manufacturer — and indeed, concern with the issue has seen a recent uptick in this period…

First let’s get out of the way what I am not going to be talking about. I am not here to express a lack of respect for the subjects (awkwardly) lumped together under the STEM heading (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), which certainly have their intellectual demands, and are indispensable…

To those old enough to remember the period the early ’90s can seem like a time of relatively vigorous public debate in the U.S. over the country’s economic and social life, certainly compared with what came afterward. Indeed, Emmanuel Todd speaks of debate over the economy in the U.S. …

The anxieties about American competitiveness during the late 1980s and early 1990s were for the most part about American competitiveness vis-a-vis Germany and Japan. In looking back at that period one should not make the dialogue out to be any more sophisticated or daring than it was. Considering it I…

My study of the neoliberal turn in British economic and social policy since Thatcher’s time took the story only up to the brink of the Great Recession — which broke out fifteen years ago. The period before had plenty of pain — but I suspect that what happened afterward made…

A couple of weeks ago Der Spiegel broke a story about the German government’s new “Operational Guidelines for the Armed Forces” document. Pretty much ignored in the English-speaking press, and especially the American press (in spite of its obvious significance) it specifically calls for a break from the post-Cold War…

Today Prime Minister Rishi Sunak paid a visit to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire and officially announced the “ Global Combat Air Programme.” That announcement did not offer any great surprises regarding the countries involved, the capabilities of the aircraft, or the schedule for the aircraft’s development and deployment. It is…

I have previously written about how the tougher and tougher market for theatrically released films since the advent of TV has meant that films’ backers need their movies to be perceived as events that the audience will want to see in the theater now rather than wait three months and…