Stephen Mihm

As if a deep recession and a never-ending pandemic wasn’t enough, the US now faces another crisis: a coin shortage. Thanks to the lockdowns, fewer coins are in circulation, leaving businesses unable to make change when customers hand over paper money. Coin shortages, though, are nothing new. In…

As the coronavirus outbreak grows in scale and scope, a nasty side effect spreads: discrimination. Inside China, people from Wuhan have been treated like lepers. Outside, we’re seeing numerous reports of verbal and physical abuse aimed at ethnic Chinese, and an aversion to Chinese restaurants and…

When President Donald Trump said last week that the US was "full," he was reprising one of the dominant themes of his presidency: Immigration is harmful. The facts suggest otherwise. Not only do many studies show that immigrants are a net positive for the economy, their contribution amplifies with…

It’s no secret why conservatives are lending financial and political support to the Asian-Americans suing Harvard for discrimination in admissions. They want to kill affirmative action and replace it with a “race-blind” system. Spare us. If you want to destroy discrimination in college…

The idea of making corruption an issue hasn’t always been a winning strategy. In the 19th-century United States, most corruption was usually entangled with the petty graft, bribes and kickbacks associated with local machine politics in the nation’s fast-growing cities. This kind of corruption,…