An Urban's Rural View

Big international and domestic uncertainties face Japan, which despite being overshadowed by China, Mexico and Canada remains a big market for U.S. agricultural exports.

More employees are being required to spend at least part of their time in the office, but a lot of people still work remotely full time. That's good for rural America.

Book banning is booming these days. A neighborhood book group in Vancouver, Washington, is reading some suppressed titles and weighing the pros and cons.

In response to political polarization, bridging groups have sprung up. They aren't trying to get everyone to agree with each other. They're focused on ending the tendency to dehumanize ideological opponents.

At the climate summit in Dubai, an attempt was made to write farmers out of existence.

The proposed acquisition of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel is provoking controversy, stoking memories of the angst Americans felt about Japanese investments 35 years ago.

As pollsters wrestle with declining responsiveness, data quality suffers.

Federal Reserve policymakers are now projecting three interest rate cuts next year and the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury note has declined dramatically in recent weeks.

Italy's farmers lobbied hard for a law banning meat grown in laboratory bioreactors from stem cells. In November, Italy enacted the law.

The seven-decade conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is a good example of what happens when people refuse to accept that their maximalist goals are unachievable.

Liberals and conservatives aren't as far apart on teaching American history as partisan politicians and pundits would have us believe.

There are economic consequences to China's return to less pragmatic, more Marxist-Leninist policies.

There's an emerging consensus that the Fed won't be raising interest rates much more. On the other hand, interest rates look likely to remain near current highs for a while.

In the view of this blog's author, who's leaving Washington, D.C., in favor of Washington state, there's more to the capital than political dysfunction.

The labor market is tight, in part because of the pandemic, but mostly because long-term demographic trends are squeezing the labor pool.

What the striking auto workers are demanding makes perfect sense from their point of view, but they risk pricing themselves out of their jobs.

Here are some reasons not to get too worked up about ag trade's swing into negative territory.

Inflation has come down, but it's not clear the Federal Reserve's interest-rate increases are responsible.

Between the torrid climate and the after-effects of the pandemic, restaurants are being forced to adjust.

The economic news from China is bad and some analysts think China's problems are practically unfixable.