Why has the American economy had such sluggish job creation and economic growth? That's a pretty fundamental question, and one for which most conventional economists have had unsatisfying answers.
"Market Angst as U.K. Edges to Exit," proclaims the headline on The Wall Street Journal's lead story. The exit referred to is Britain's departure from the European Union, a move that will be mandated if a majority votes "leave" rather than "remain" in the national referendum next Thursday.
Are the exit polls, on which just about every elections analyst has relied, wrong? That's a question raised by New York Times Upshot writer Nate Cohn -- a question whose answers have serious implications for how you look at the 2016 general election.
Bernie Sanders is not going gently into that good night, at least not yet.
No contemporary political issue has been more controversial, or has been subject to more dubious analyses, than immigration.
Let's look back on the primary campaign -- completed for Republicans, still ongoing for Democrats -- and see if we can identify what Sherlock Holmes referred to as dogs that didn't bark.
Nearly a century ago, in 1920, the Census Bureau caused a ruckus when it announced that, for the first time, a majority of Americans lived in cities -- even though its definition of a city included every hamlet with a population of 2,500 and above.
It was conventional wisdom among the political cognoscenti during most of the primary season that Donald Trump could not win the general election. The evidence seemed strong.
Over 12 months of polling from May 2015 to April 2016, Hillary Clinton ran ahead of Trump in 63 national polls, while Trump led her in only six and tied her in three. Polls in the dozen or so 2012 target states showed similar results.
Women, lamented Hillary Clinton in an April 2014 tweet, make just 77 cents on the dollar to men. As a presidential candidate she has repeated that lament again and again, updating the numbers, in line with government statistics, to 78 cents in July 2015 and 79 cents this year.
University of Missouri at St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld has had "second thoughts." Like many academic criminologists, he had pooh-poohed charges that skyrocketing murder rates in many cities in 2015 and 2016 result from a "Ferguson effect" -- a skittering back from proactive policing for fear of accusations of racism like those that followed the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.
What's your benchmark? What is the historical era with which you compare life in contemporary America?
John Quincy Adams, our greatest secretary of state (sorry, Hillary Clinton fans), thought that Cuba would inevitably become part of the United States. It hasn't, at least not yet, but two Cuban-Americans were serious presidential contenders this year.
So Republicans now have a presumptive nominee -- one headed to a clear delegate majority without visible opposition -- sooner than the Democrats. It's another way in which this year's presidential race has defied expectations and ignored precedent.
The unexpected successes, forecast by almost no one 12 months ago, of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in winning 40 percent and 42 percent in Republican and Democratic primaries and caucuses is widely taken as evidence of raging discontent among American voters.
Donald Trump has declared himself, after following up his New York win April 19 with victories in five other Northeastern states Tuesday, the "presumptive nominee" of the Republican Party. Is it a done deal?
Ethnicity still matters. That's one lesson I draw from the results so far of this year's Republican and Democratic primaries and caucuses.
Home-state candidates notched up impressive victories in New York's presidential primaries Tuesday. Donald Trump topped 50 percent for the first time -- and handsomely, with 60 percent of Republican votes. And Hillary Clinton won 58 percent of Democratic votes in her adopted home state.
Noo Yawk. That's the state with this week's presidential primary, in which candidates who have spent time in New York recently are currently running ahead, according to polls.
"Gestapo tactics." That's how Donald Trump's recently installed campaign manager, Paul Manafort, characterized the Ted Cruz campaign's successful effort to win all 34 of Colorado's pledged national convention delegates at the long-scheduled Republican congressional district and state conventions.
If you live any distance beyond the Capital Beltway you probably didn't notice, but an important part of government in Washington shut down on Wednesday, March 16. That's when the Metro subway system's recently installed general manager, Paul Wiedefeld, ordered a one-day shutdown of the entire 117-mile system for emergency inspection of track-based power cables.
