Worldcrunch
Over the past two years, the United States has lost more than two years of life expectancy, wiping out 26 years of progress. French daily Les Echos investigates the myriad of causes, which are mostly resulting in the premature deaths of young people.
The West and its brand of modernity may be waning in favor of an ascendant China, but is it offering anything besides replacing market forces with brute force.
Hygge dreams and happy extended families are increasingly fading away.
Mass consumption is encouraged in the West, but people, particularly women, and the planet pay the price for exploitative capitalism. So, we need to be clear that taking care of each other and tackling the climate crisis are inextricably linked.
PARIS — The city of lights is littered with advertisements for “Black Friday” deals. Of course, virtually none of the city’s residents will celebrate Thanksgiving — and few probably even know that the traditional Friday shopping day is linked to the uniquely American (always-on-Thursday) holiday. To receive Eyes on U.S. each week in your inbox, […]
A French politician recently made the case for the “right to laziness”. In the era of the “great resignation” or “quiet quitting”, the idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds. After all, history shows us that work is a very recent human passion.
Those touting degrowth for the sake of the planet should remember that the majority of the earth’s population has yet to taste a fraction of the material prosperity now blamed for destroying the natural world.
The U.S. will stop funding vaccines but says it wants equitable access. That’s not possible in a predatory system.
I am part of a generation whose quality of life will be worse than those who came before us. This should encourage society to realize that the idea of infinite growth is a myth, and that time is of the essence when it comes to saving the environment.
Oligarchs of the ‘Second Gilded Age’ in the like of Elon Musk are already able to influence the public’s minds through media ownership. But getting a hand on Twitter means having access to its users’ data and exploiting it for financial purposes.
The war in Ukraine has set off the dynamics of a new Cold War: a standoff between democracy and authoritarianism, whatever the ideological stripe. Faraway parts of the world will be affected by what happens on the ground in Ukraine.
At the head of Match Group, the online dating empire composed of Tinder, Meetic and Hinge, this CEO of Indian origin decides millions of people’s love lives on every continent. It’s a unique talent for turning digital relationship building into gold.
Our roving Swedish reporter’s darkish holiday dispatch from Sofia, Bulgaria.
Can nature save capitalism? Biomimicry is thought-provoking because it provides many sources of inspiration to calibrate production models to nature, and thus continue to grow while respecting our environment.
Argentina must discern and deftly negotiate for its national interests in the rising, global trading order dominated by China.
A motley crew barging into the U.S. Capitol can hardly be considered to be an attack on democracy in a country where capitalism has already systematically squeezed the rights of common folk.
While the U.S.-China rivalry is not yet a repetition of the Cold War, it will have repercussions for Latin American states at a time of acute regional weakness.
In two recent interviews, iconic left-wing activist Noam Chomsky says the COVID-19 crisis reveals the inherent weakness of the profit-driven to confront a global pandemic.
Men do not do their fair share of housework and childcare. And companies still discriminate against female employees. And it’s not looking any better for the digital economy.
CAIRO — On Oct. 1, 2017, the submarine S-42 set sail from the ThyssenKrupp shipyard in Kiel, northern Germany. The fourth of four submarines ordered by the Egyptian government since the start of the Arab spring — at a cost of 1.4 billion euros — quietly passed through the Kiel Canal to the port city […]
WASHINGTON — I loved Amazon when it first appeared. It was the 1990s, and I was living in Italy and then China, two countries that are strongly monolingual with a scarce number of foreign-language bookstores. Rome for instance, with three and a half million inhabitants at the time, had a couple of English bookstores and […]
Some see the invention of bogus-sounding professions as a sign that work has become less and less necessary. It may also just mean that capitalism is being transformed.
Droves of customers stampeding through large department stores on Black Friday was once a uniquely American phenomena. But the traditional day-after Thanksgiving shopping sale event has recently gained traction in other countries that have no connection to the American holiday. The insatiable consumerism that fuels American capitalism, it seems, is a more viable export than […]
-Analysis- PARIS — Wednesday will mark “Earth Overshoot Day,” the moment when humanity uses more of the Earth’s ecological resources than the planet can regenerate in a year. This awkwardly named annual event, first conceived by the UK think tank New Economics Foundation in 2006, is a way to track the accumulating effects of climate […]
Donald Trump is not the free market’s executioner, but a coroner appointed to quietly confirm its demise. Sadly, in its place, is a gaping void of alternatives.
Like other Latin American countries, Bolivia has squandered commodity revenue and failed to make the hard reforms necessary to bolster the economy for the long haul.
Humans are being degraded to the status of objects of an algorithm-based evaluation to be sold on the market. This exploitative form of “hypercapitalism” must quickly be reversed.
-Analysis- BEIJING — After 30 years of domestic reform and opening up to the world, China is a changed country. Society has progressed, but also diversified, resulting in a true plurality of opinions about various issues. With a wink to earlier liberalizations in China, included Mao Zedong’s aborted call to let “100 schools of thought […]
PARIS — French workers are allowed up to four leave days to celebrate their entrance into a civil union pact. But if a partner or, heaven forbid, child should die, they get just two. Losing a parent or sibling warrants just one single day off work. And there’s no legal leave for the death of […]
A combination of political differences, bungling of protocol and lack of sensitivity seem to have further gnarled relations between Argentine President Mauricio Macri and fellow countryman Pope Francis.
The rapid growth of the sharing economy is both inevitable and generally good. But only a fool can believe it will truly disrupt the natural capitalist forces of our market economy.
Look no further than fried chicken for signs that American influence is returning to Iran in the wake of the deal to end sanctions in exchange for limits on the Iranian nuclear program. That was the message from influential Republican Guards General Mohammad Hossein Sepehr, who cited the opening of a Kentucky Fried Chicken in […]
And watch out for Pablo Iglesias, leader of Spain’s leftist Podemos party.
As Venice’s biennial art extravaganza reveals, sexual provocation is old hat, and anti-capitalism is the new means of selling expensive art to millionaires.
Havana — Photo: Angel Chevrestt/ZUMA HAVANA — When Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro announced the two countries would “normalize” relations between the two countries, most observers were quick to point out that this unexpected move would eventually benefit the Cuban economy by boosting the tourism industry, among other sectors. And according to Folha de […]
And it will happen sooner than you think…
The U.S. President has shown a mix of political pragmatism and historic vision in pushing forward in the face of a backward-looking Congress.
Barack Obama made American inequality the central challenge of his State of the Union address. Europe and the rest of the West should be listening too.
What will remain of the socialist ideals of Mexico’s 1910 revolution, as the country’s rulers dance to the singular drum of global capitalism and North America’s elite?