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The cult of youth, identity politics, and the quest for enduring stability: A Romanian case study

  By Georgiana Constantin-Parke, TES Contributor   Shortly after the 2014 Romanian presidential election, on a sunny autumn day, I was walking down the streets of Bucharest. Klaus Werner Iohannis had just won the election. In front of me, a middle- aged woman was holding the Romanian flag and smiling as if in a trance. […]

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Ich muss, selbst ohne meinen fuss: Germans go to work sick in “presentism” plague

  “Sick to work? Presentism is widespread in Germany” Courtesy of IAB   In Germany, many employees go to work despite illness. This has to do with working conditions and fear of job loss. It therefore makes sense to work more towards appropriate health behavior.   Illness-related absence from work is a not insignificant problem for the […]

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Automation undermines men’s marriage prospects

  “How the rise of industrial robots affects family behavior” Courtesy of IZA   Million of workers across the world feel the growing pressure and fear of machines replacing their jobs. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, robots, and the Internet have already transformed the nature of jobs and will continue to rapidly change our labor […]

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Don’t let protests obscure Chile’s triumph

  “Chile’s Success Story Is Difficult to Deny” By Ian Vásquez, courtesy of the Cato Institute   Weeks after a 3.75% rise in metro fares in Santiago, Chile sparked violent protests by a small group of students that then generated more widespread disruption, mostly peaceful mass protests continue. Some observers have seized on the political […]

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Young people in UK face stagnant incomes, lower wealth

                  “How are younger generations faring compared to that of their parents and grandparents?” By Jonathan Cribb, courtesy of IFS     Interest in how the economic circumstances of younger generations compare to those who are older shows no signs of slowing. Politicians on all sides of […]

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Abolishing private schools is a bad idea (and impossible)

                      Labour’s plan to, in effect, abolish Britain’s private schools is pretty much the definition of pandering — a sensational and nakedly political sop to class resentment that is nonetheless counterproductive, unworkable and oh yes, probably illegal. Sure, nobody likes the British upper class (not […]

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Much of “Green New Deal” has nothing to do with the environment

                      There a couple plans for the “Green New Deal” circulating in the U.S., UK, and elsewhere, all supposedly intended to tackle the causes of climate change with sweeping measures to de-carbonize society. Except as Tim Worstall of the UK’s Adam Smith Institute points out, […]

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Mirror, Mirror: Germany’s Fragmenting Politics Foreshadows American Shift

  By Alexander Görlach, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs & TES Contributor     Voters in western democracies situate themselves differently today than just a few years ago. There is talk of an “axial shift.” The axis that for decades divided party systems into “right” and “left,” “conservative” and “liberal,” “Christian” […]

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UK needs to be cool on drugs (let the Church lead the way)

    The British political scene got a little uptight over drugs this week, with reports that top Tory leadership contender and environment secretary Michael Gove used cocaine on a handful of occasions while working as a journalist in the 1990s. The not terribly surprising story first surfaced in Michael Gove: A Man in a […]

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Conflict Is The Mother Of Innovation

  By Pietro Paganini TES Contributor   Once again, reason and science are being obscured by the ideologies and magical thinking that fuel populism and authoritarianism, but weaken innovation and the coexistence of free citizens.   The scientific method favours the maturing of ideas into knowledge, bringing more innovation and prosperity and reinforcing the individual […]