Red Flags
Timeless stories from our 174-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
401(k) Doomsday?
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Does the rise of index funds spell catastrophe? Read Andrew Lipstein’s cover story, then explore the Harper’s archive for more on the market’s history.
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A Great Recession financial analysis: “The bubble cycle has replaced the business cycle.”
Read “The Next Bubble” by Eric Janszen
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“The security which the new pension contracts promise the old and aging employee will prove to be mere ‘pie in the sky.’”
Read “The Mirage of Pensions” by Peter Ferdinand Drucker
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What happens when seniors can’t afford to stop working.
Read “The End of Retirement” by Jessica Bruder
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“A reporter asked me if I expected another stock-market crash. I replied, as I have a hundred times since I wrote a book on the 1929 experience, that of course there would be. The only difficulty was telling when.”
Read “1929 and 1969” by John Kenneth Galbraith
No Justice: Alito Blames Pro-Insurrection Flags on Wife
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On the origins of the “Thin Blue Line” flag.
Read “A Flag for Trump’s America” by Jeff Sharlet
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On the politics of abortion, after the leak of Alito’s draft opinion that foreshadowed the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Read “The Fight to Choose” by Andrew Cockburn
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On the Bush-era Supreme Court, a year after Alito’s appointment to it.
Read “The Courts” by Dahlia Lithwick
The Redcoat King
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Dispatches from then-Prince Charles: the “black-spider memos.”
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Waxing monarchical: the nineteenth century art that sculpted royals at (their final) rest.
Poor Unfortunate Souls: Did OpenAI Steal Scarlett Johansson’s Voice?
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Meghan O’Gieblyn on the question of AI personhood and the “corpus mysticum” of chatbots.