But a little shift back to an appreciation of the power of collective goals, to an ethic of care and maintenance, a love of art not necessarily for art’s sake but for more than just a stimulus of new ideas, a respect for thoughtful research and knowledge, and above all the space to question the goodness of the new might just be the big idea we need

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At the heart of our divisions is almost half a century of rising inequality and declining social mobility. Americans tolerate more economic inequality than citizens of other modern democracies: if anyone can become anything, today’s unequal results are fair and might well change tomorrow. That was never completely true, but now it’s plainly false.

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If right now you think I’m a horrible, marauding, free-market monster, you’re only half-right—I’m also a humanist who thinks there are better things for our children to do with their time. The quicker we eliminate the low-paying, repetitive, and menial jobs, the quicker our species can get to work on bigger issues like sustainability, being multipl

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We can choose a purely technocratic approach—one that sees each of us as a set of financial and material needs to be satisfied—and simply transfer enough cash to all people so that they don’t starve or go homeless. In fact, this notion of universal basic income seems to be becoming more and more popular these days. But in making that choice I belie

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