1
Technology
Video: Siri and Google Now, Meet Cortana
Molly Wood tests out mobile virtual assistants, including Microsoft’s Cortana, to see if Siri has met her match.
2
Opinion
Sweden Turns Japanese
The sadomonetarists, with their gut dislike of low interest rates, have claimed another victim.
"“Capital
in the Twenty-First Century,” the
new book by the French economist Thomas Piketty, is a bona fide
phenomenon. Other books on economics have been best sellers, but Mr.
Piketty’s contribution is serious, discourse-changing scholarship in a
way most best sellers aren’t. And conservatives are terrified. Thus
James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute warns
in National Review that Mr. Piketty’s work must be refuted, because
otherwise it “will spread among the clerisy and reshape the political
economic landscape on which all future policy battles will be waged.”
Well, good luck with that.
The really striking thing about the debate so far is that the right
seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr.
Piketty’s thesis. Instead, the response has been all about name-calling —
in particular, claims that Mr. Piketty is a Marxist, and so is anyone
who considers inequality of income and wealth an important issue.
I’ll
come back to the name-calling in a moment. First, let’s talk about why
“Capital” is having such an impact.
Mr. Piketty is hardly the first economist to
point out that we are experiencing a sharp rise in inequality, or even
to emphasize the contrast between slow income growth for most of the
population and soaring incomes at the top. It’s true that Mr. Piketty
and his colleagues have added a great deal of historical depth to our
knowledge, demonstrating that we really are living in a new Gilded Age.
But we’ve known that for a while.
No, what’s really new about “Capital” is the way
it demolishes that most cherished of conservative myths, the insistence
that we’re living in a meritocracy in which great wealth is earned and
deserved.
For
the past couple of decades, the conservative response to attempts to
make soaring incomes at the top into a political issue has involved two
lines of defense: first, denial that the rich are actually doing as well
and the rest as badly as they are, but when denial fails, claims that
those soaring incomes at the top are a justified reward for services
rendered. Don’t call them the 1 percent, or the wealthy; call them “job
creators.”
But
how do you make that defense if the rich derive much of their income
not from the work they do but from the assets they own? And what if
great wealth comes increasingly not from enterprise but from
inheritance?
What
Mr. Piketty shows is that these are not idle questions. Western
societies before World War I were indeed dominated by an oligarchy of
inherited wealth — and his book makes a compelling case that we’re well
on our way back toward that state.
So
what’s a conservative, fearing that this diagnosis might be used to
justify higher taxes on the wealthy, to do? He could try to refute Mr.
Piketty in a substantive way, but, so far, I’ve seen no sign of that
happening. Instead, as I said, it has been all about name-calling.
I guess this shouldn’t be
surprising. I’ve been involved
in debates over inequality for more than two decades, and have yet
to see conservative “experts” manage to dispute the numbers without
tripping over their own intellectual shoelaces. Why, it’s almost as if
the facts are fundamentally not on their side. At the same time,
red-baiting anyone who questions any aspect of free-market dogma has
been standard right-wing operating procedure ever since the likes of
William F. Buckley tried to block the teaching of Keynesian economics,
not by showing that it was wrong, but by denouncing it as “collectivist.”
Still,
it has been amazing to watch conservatives, one after another, denounce
Mr. Piketty as a Marxist. Even Mr. Pethokoukis, who is more
sophisticated than the rest, calls “Capital” a work of “soft Marxism,”
which only makes sense if the mere mention of unequal wealth makes you a
Marxist. (And maybe that’s how they see it: recently former Senator
Rick Santorum denounced
the term “middle class” as “Marxism talk,” because, you see, we
don’t have classes in America.)
And The
Wall Street Journal’s review, predictably, goes the whole distance,
somehow segueing from Mr. Piketty’s call for progressive taxation as a
way to limit the concentration of wealth — a remedy as American as apple
pie, once advocated not just by leading economists but by mainstream
politicians, up to and including
Teddy Roosevelt — to the evils of Stalinism. Is that really the
best The Journal can do? The answer, apparently, is yes.
Now, the fact that
apologists for America’s oligarchs are evidently at a loss for coherent
arguments doesn’t mean that they are on the run politically. Money still
talks — indeed, thanks in part to the Roberts court, it talks louder
than ever. Still, ideas matter too, shaping both how we talk about
society and, eventually, what we do. And the Piketty panic shows that
the right has run out of ideas."
3
World
Deadliest Day: Sherpas Bear Everest’s Risks
An avalanche that left at least 12 dead has focused attention on the Sherpas, skilled high-altitude climbers who put themselves at great risk for the foreign teams that pay them.
4
World
Pro-Russian Insurgents Balk at Terms of Pact in Ukraine
A U.S.-backed deal to settle the crisis in eastern Ukraine fell flat but appeared to arrest, at least temporarily, the momentum of separatist unrest in the region.For Russia, Negatives Seem to Outweigh Positives of an Invasion
The reasons for Vladimir V. Putin to refrain from
further military adventurism make a long, tangled list.
April 27, 2014, Sunday
MORE ON UKRAINE AND: International
Relations, North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, Ukraine,
Embargoes
and Sanctions, European
Union, Russia,
Putin,
Vladimir V, Defense
and Military Forces
European Firms Seek to Minimize Russia Sanctions
As businesses, particularly in the energy sector,
campaign to maintain ties with Moscow, the world’s seven wealthiest
nations said on Friday they would impose additional sanctions on Russia
resulting from its military action in Ukraine.
April 26, 2014, Saturday
MORE ON UKRAINE AND: European
Union, Crimea
(Ukraine), Natural
Gas, Russia,
International
Trade and World Market, Embargoes
and Sanctions, Energy
and Power
International Prosecutor Weighs Case in Ukraine Killings
The International Criminal Court prosecutor said she
was weighing a formal inquiry into the killings of protesters under
Ukraine’s deposed president.
April 26, 2014, Saturday
Ukraine’s Activists Are Taking No Chances
They see themselves in a race against time to get
democratic reforms in place before it is too late.
April 26, 2014, Saturday
6
7
N.Y. / Region
With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time
Farms in upstate New York and elsewhere are using automatic milkers that scan and map the underbellies of cows, extract the milk, and monitor its quality, without the use of human hands.
12
N.Y. / Region
The Toddler Who Survived, and the Cop Who Became Her Mom
As a baby, Christina Rivera survived a massacre in Brooklyn whose 10 victims included her mother. Police Officer Joanne Jaffe cared for her that night, the first link in a bond that led Ms. Jaffe to adopt Christina.
13
World
Messages From Students on South Korean Ferry
Texts sent by Danwon High School students as their ferry began sinking on Wednesday morning express love, fear and despair.
14
Opinion
A half-century after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared “war on poverty,” McDowell County, W.Va., is a sobering reminder of how much remains broken, in drearily familiar ways and utterly unexpected ones.Running Out of Time
There are years, not decades, left to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and American leadership is urgently needed.
15
U.S.
Swim to Sea? These Salmon Are Catching a Lift
California’s drought has left rivers too shallow for salmon, so the government is trucking and barging them to the sea in the hope they will return.
16
U.S.
Justice Stevens Suggests Solution for ‘Giant Step in the Wrong Direction’
In his new book, Justice John Paul Stevens proposes six amendments, one of which would address the Citizens United ruling on campaign finance.
17
Sports
In a Hole, Golf Considers Digging a Wider One
The golf world has lost five million players in the last decade, spurring a growing revolution to create alternative forms of the game.
18
U.S.
Video: Hot Spots: The Early Buzz
Only a quarter of the way into the 2014 election cycle, a variety of political ads are making waves not just for their effectiveness, but also for their zaniness.
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