George Packer's Blog, page 178

Apple, Google, Amazon, and the Advantages of Bigness

At some point in a big, successful company’s life, it comes up against the problem of the law of large numbers. In the simplest terms, a fast-growing company can’t keep growing at the same fast rate forever. It eventually has to slow down. For years, people have been looking for signs that Apple is finally hitting its growth limits. And this year Apple revenue fell for the first time since 2003. The same concerns face other giants in the tech economy: Google (now part of the parent company Alphabet), Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Where Was Climate Change at the Party Conventions?
Why Did Google Erase Dennis Cooper’s Beloved Literary Blog?
Tony Fadell, Nest, and the Failure of a Middle Ground

The Defector Who Returned to Iran

The bizarre saga of Shahram Amiri, a broad-shouldered young nuclear scientist who was executed last week in Iran, is the stuff of literary thrillers and movie blockbusters. News of his death was first reported by Amiri’s family after his body, with strangulating-rope marks on his neck, was returned by the state for ritual washing and burial. Depending on whom you listen to, Amiri was either a defecting spy for the United States or a double agent for Iran. The enmity between the two countries briefly played out over this one man.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Why Donald Trump Can’t Stop Talking About the Pallets of Cash
America at the Atomic Crossroads
The H-Bombs in Turkey

The Meaning of Melania’s Photo Shoot

The story of Melania Trump’s old nude photos, and their odd blossoming into a fable of the trials of immigration, will probably remain as a footnote to this bizarre Presidential campaign, though footnotes to this campaign are rather like footnotes to “Finnegans Wake”: the text itself is so confounding that there isn’t a sentence that might not call for one. Still, it is worth ruminating over for a moment, before it passes away, for two reasons. It shows an unexpected maturity in American life, and then something predictably depressing about the hypocrisy within it, too.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Donald Trump Sells Out To Trickle-Down Economics
Wall Street’s Reluctant Embrace of Clinton
Trump Economic Plan Calls for Every American to Inherit Millions from Father

Escape to New York

I first learned of Central American Legal Assistance in the fall of 2009, from a letter mailed to my Brooklyn address that I read months after it was posted, having just returned from a long summer in Mexico. The letter was written by Betsy Plum, a CALA caseworker, and described the situation of a Guatemalan woman living in the metropolitan area who was in deportation proceedings while also seeking political asylum. In Guatemala, the woman had discovered that her romantic partner had been involved with men previously linked to the 1998 murder of the Guatemalan bishop and human-rights activist Monsignor Juan José Gerardi Conedera; in a 2001 trial, some of those men were sentenced to prison for that crime. The woman had unwittingly, though at close hand, overheard a conversation implicating at least two of them, including her partner, in a prison murder. (One of the men, Captain Byron Lima Oliva, was murdered in prison, on July 18th of this year.)

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Dangerous Route of Ethiopian Migrants
The American Promise in a Free Refill
Obama’s Failed Promise to Immigrant Families

Donald Trump Sells Out to Trickle-Down Economics

From the beginning of Donald Trump’s campaign, there has been a nagging inconsistency in his approach to economic issues. On trade and immigration, he has broken with Republican dogma, arguing that the influx from abroad of cheap goods and low-wage workers has undermined the job prospects and living standards of ordinary Americans. On tax policy, however, Trump has stuck to the standard G.O.P. script, promising a slew of tax cuts skewed toward businesses and the rich. To be sure, until Monday, Trump hadn’t talked much about his tax plan, but the broad outlines of it were there on his Web site, serving as a reminder of the limits of his populism.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Donald Trump’s Tax-Return Dodge
Trump, Troilus, and Cressida
Why Gun Owners Should Reject Trump’s Call to “Second Amendment People”

Donald Trump Sells Out To Trickle-Down Economics

From the beginning of Donald Trump’s campaign, there has been a nagging inconsistency in his approach to economic issues. On trade and immigration, he has broken with Republican dogma, arguing that the influx from abroad of cheap goods and low-wage workers has undermined the job prospects and living standards of ordinary Americans. On tax policy, however, Trump has stuck to the standard G.O.P. script, promising a slew of tax cuts skewed toward businesses and the rich. To be sure, until Monday, Trump hadn’t talked much about his tax plan, but the broad outlines of it were there on his Web site, serving as a reminder of the limits of his populism.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Meaning of Melania’s Photo Shoot
Wall Street’s Reluctant Embrace of Clinton
Trump Economic Plan Calls for Every American to Inherit Millions from Father

Brazil’s Olympics Meet Its Favelas

An Olympics opening ceremony is a chance for a country to tell a story about itself. On Friday, Brazil’s ceremony relayed a brisk, harmonious version of its history, celebrating the intermixing that has produced its beautifully diverse population. In the space of a single minute, Portuguese colonists came face to face with indigenous tribes, and African slaves arrived to work in sugar mills. Later the show turned to the nation’s favelas, the informally built neighborhoods where some fifteen million Brazilians live, and dancers performed bendy passinho moves to a soundtrack of bumping baile funk.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Olympic Opening Ceremony in Rio: Let the Games Begin
An American Rider Trying to Beat the Boys in Rio
The Paradox of Brazil and Its Olympiad

Wall Street’s Reluctant Embrace of Clinton

This week, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are poised to give big economic speeches, both in Detroit, and their views in that realm could not look more different. Trump’s is a grim message of declining fortunes and middle-class despair, one sure to be further elaborated today before the Detroit Economic Club. Clinton, meanwhile, has been travelling around the handful of states that will likely determine the outcome of the election, smiling and sunnily talking about her “100-Day Jobs Plan,” usually with a rainbow of people of different creeds and ethnicities scattered around her, a pointed show of diversity.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
The Meaning of Melania’s Photo Shoot
Donald Trump Sells Out To Trickle-Down Economics
Trump Economic Plan Calls for Every American to Inherit Millions from Father

Can Donald Trump Rebound?

Donald Trump’s campaign is in reset mode. On Friday, Trump reversed himself and endorsed the reëlection efforts of fellow Republicans Paul Ryan, Kelly Ayotte, and John McCain. He admitted that he hadn’t seen a video of a U.S. plane unloading four hundred million dollars in Iran. And he also wished good luck to the U.S. Olympics team in Brazil. This “New Trump” even lasted into the weekend. Appearing at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday night, he referred extensively to his written notes and restricted his barbs to the media and Hillary Clinton, whom he described as “a dangerous liar.” He didn’t bait any fellow Republicans, query the security guarantees that underpin NATO, or disparage the families of fallen U.S. servicemen.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump Sees a Monster
Why We Pine for Manufacturing
The Trouble with Corey Lewandowski on CNN

Trump Sees a Monster

As Donald Trump was telling an audience in Green Bay Friday night that Hillary Clinton lacked “the judgment, temperament, and moral character to lead this country,” he heard someone shouting from the crowd. Trump paused, listened, then raised his index finger vertically before bringing it down like a shutter. “He just said, ‘Plus she’s a criminal.’ “ There were gleeful chants of “Lock her up,” as Trump continued, “She’s a dangerous liar who has disregarded the lives of Americans.” Clinton was weak and had put the entire country at risk. “And she is unhinged. She’s truly unhinged. And she’s unbalanced. Totally unbalanced.” A moment or so later, he added, “In one way, she’s a monster, O.K.?”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Can Donald Trump Rebound?
Why We Pine for Manufacturing
The Trouble with Corey Lewandowski on CNN