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Talking about how the American labor market channeled various groups of post-1965 immigrants risks repeating tired ethnic stereotypes that still plague the country’s psyche. But not talking about it risks naturalizing the same patterns, reinforcing false ideas about ethnic suitability for certain j…

With Reagan in office, the hard-core ideological capitalists running the White House used American might to leverage a global policy revolution along Hooverite lines. By shifting the balance of class power everywhere toward local elites, they triggered a virtuous cycle of financial growth, analogou…

Instead of treating human capital as a national resource the way David Starr Jordan and company first planned it, America’s new leaders applied Garrett Hardin’s tragic-commons logic: If they were giving it away, people would go to school and, say, invent radical new theatrical art practices instead…

Though it contrasted with accepted scientific practice, “[t]he focus on intellectual property was thus developed as a prominent business strategy for securing the infusion of venture capital at early stages of research and development,” writes Doogab Yi in his book The Recombinant University: Genet…

It was hard to believe that California could continue its postwar hot streak, especially after the end of the space race and the defeat in Vietnam. The resulting wave of layoffs confirmed the widespread suspicion that it all couldn’t last. In the next chapter I’ll cover the personal computer indust…