PARIS – In 1983, the American economist and Nobel laureate Wassily Leontief made what was then a startling prediction. Machines, he said, are likely to replace human labor much in the same way that the tractor replaced the horse. Today, with some 200 million people worldwide out of work – 30 million more than in […]
American companies kicked off the summer with modest growth in hiring, sending nonfarm payrolls up 223,000 in June, according to Labor Department numbers released Thursday. In addition to the payroll growth, the unemployment rate ticked lower to 5.3 percent from 5.5 percent, due largely to a sharp decline in labor force participation, which fell from […]
BURNSIDE 26 – IMAGE: Cameron Browne Why the Apartment Buildings You Hate Are Good For the City. They pop up seemingly overnight, multiplying faster than food carts on every street corner in the city. Just a whisper of them transforms normally mild-mannered Portlanders into fire-breathing Trotskyites. Politicians and economists can’t stomp them out. They make […]
Press Release: One of the longest days of the year, June 22nd, will now be known as National Radler Day, the most refreshing day of the year. Arguably the most thirst quenching and easy drinking beer style around, radlers are the ultimate playful and sessionable drink to kick off the summer.We’re asking breweries around the […]
Running a business was exciting at first. I felt the freedom of controlling my own destiny while working with my closest friends, daydreaming about the next big breakthrough and planning for the day that financial freedom would finally arrive. Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared for the constant state of struggle and hardship that lay ahead. And as […]
LONDON – In 2011, the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman characterized conservative discourse on budget deficits in terms of “bond vigilantes” and the “confidence fairy.” Unless governments cut their deficits, the bond vigilantes will put the screws to them by forcing up interest rates. But if they do cut, the confidence fairy will reward them […]
After receiving our Established Entrepreneur of 2014 award, Gravity Payments founder Dan Price has just announced yet another game-changing proposition. Over the next three years, the 30-year-old plans to raise the minimum salary for every employee at his credit card processing company to $70,000, he told The New York Times. The concept dawned on Price, he said, […]
Apple’s data center in Prineville, Oregon (Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian) Apple is planning a large-scale expansion of its Prineville, Oregon data center, according to The Oregonian. The report claims Apple is likely to expand upon its current 338,000-square-foot data center with a matching facility and massive solar array this year, after Oregon governor Kate Brown signed […]
Image: Leah Nash Landy and Sophia in front of their North Portland home. Portland: family-friendly bedroom community to the world? Consider the maximally mobile 21st-century human, the person who could pretty much live anywhere. Landry Molimbi, for example. Born in France, the 31-year-old handles Western Hemisphere business development for a Cologne-based energy technology company. He […]
DELHI – In a recent exchange between former US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on the plausibility of secular stagnation, one point of agreement was the need for a global perspective. But from that perspective, the hypothesis of secular stagnation in the period leading up to the 2008 […]