Two economics-related stories I suggest checking out:
1) This New York Times story by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, which was the toast of Twitter yesterday, is worth a read.
It’s called “How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work.”
You’re probably familiar with many of the concepts here — higher labor costs and fewer engineers in the U.S., China’s nimble and powerful manufacturing capacity and supply chain integration, etc. — but this piece weaves things together quite nicely.
2) This piece, by Chrystia Freeland, was in the print edition of today’s IHT.
It’s a look at the ideas behind economist Jim O’Neill’s new book
As Freeland writes:
In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution and the opening of the American frontier created the Gilded Age and the robber barons who ruled it. Today, as the world economy is being reshaped by the technology revolution and globalization, the resulting economic transformation is creating a new gilded age and a new plutocracy.
The two forces are intricately related. Indeed we are living through slightly different gilded ages that are unfolding simultaneously. The West is experiencing a second gilded age, while the emerging markets, as Mr. O’Neill and others have documented, are experiencing their first gilded age.
(Emphasis mine.)