By Sofia Guimaraes (PO ’24) Three months ago, Elon Musk tweeted, “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” This tweet sparked debate on the Biden administration’s proposed billionaire bill and cast attention on the growing income inequality in the USA, highlighting the need for a...
Camryn Fujita (SCR ’21) The Netflix documentary Seaspiracy that came out this past March was not the first attempt to question whether environmental food labels really reflect the “sustainable” practices they claim to guarantee. Although Seaspiracy has faced heavy criticism for selective reporting and their portrayal of aquaculture, climate change, and the state of the ocean, one useful...
Shuyan Yan (PO ’23) In Zhongguancun, a well-known tech hub in Beijing, China, there is a joke circulating that if a billboard falls on 10 pedestrians at midnight, 8 of them might be software engineers, and the other two must be program managers. In the Chinese technology industry, many sarcastically joke about working overtime, and seeing employees leaving office buildings at midnight is...
Kathryn Parker (SC ‘23) With the recent election shifting the balance of power in the Senate to the Democrats, a divided Congress struggled to address the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic repercussions. Throughout his campaign, Biden pledged to provide the American public with a relief package should he become president. Since he took office, Congress has been fairly supportive of this mission...
Andy Liu (HMC ‘23) The lights first went out three weeks ago, but Texas has suffered from mass utility failure ever since the winter storms of February 10th, 2021. The outages have had a tremendous impact on Texans, leaving five million without power and twelve million without water at their peak. In the political wake of the disaster, local politicians initially blamed the halting of renewable...
By Christopher Tan (PZ ‘21) Consider a brief thought experiment. An influential investor owns a number of cheap shares. They begin spreading lies about why they think these shares will rise and use their influence to sell the shares at an inflated price to others. Before they are caught and the stock’s prices fall, the investor would have profited a considerable amount of money. This is illegal...
By Kenyamarie Mahone (PO ’23) Rap has always been protest music. Sprouted in the soil of the civil rights movement and War on Drugs, rap functions as a platform for African Americans to express frustration with institutional and interpersonal oppression. The caricature-like portrayal of black men in the music industry relies heavily on stereotypes of criminality and hyper-sexuality that...
By Jon Burkart (PO ’24) Before a crowd in Pittsburgh, Joe Biden promised voters: “I am not banning fracking. Let me say that again: I am not banning fracking.” It’s no wonder then, that running-mate Senator Kamala Harris was quick to reiterate Biden’s stance during the October 8th Vice-Presidential debate. The industry that employs nearly 32,000 people in Pennsylvania alone has...
Nathan Tran (PO ‘23) In 2017, Gallup found that 45% of Americans — including 68% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats — believe that the government excessively regulates business and industry. In contrast, only 29% think that there is just the right amount of regulation, while a relatively paltry 23% desire more. This is probably not much of a surprise. The capitalist consensus has long been...
By Christopher Tan (PZ ’21) “When China awakes, the world will tremble,” Napoleon once famously said. This statement has never rung truer as China faces an economic slowdown after 30 years of unprecedented growth, with global markets anxious about the trickle-down effects of the country’s sluggish economy. With official numbers from the last quarter of 2018 reporting a growth rate of 6.4...
