Unbundling the Democratic Agenda

Photographer: Tammy Ljungblad/Kansas City Star/MCT vi Getty Images

Fast food workers on strike for a $15 an hour wage.

Is it a coincidence that all four states that voted to raise the minimum wage are Republican strongholds?

Photographer: Getty Images

Everything is replaceable. Even Amazon.

It doesn't look so certain now that the publisher gets cut out of the book-selling equation. Consider whether, not immediately but five or 10 years from now, the one who gets cut out is ... Amazon.

The Misogi-Matsuri festival in Gifu, Japan. If you're praying for prosperity in Japan's markets, the BOJ helps.

It's the party that just keeps going: the first batch of guests leave, the next ones arrive. Just don't assume central banks can prop up markets forever.

Photographer: Dominique Faget/AFP via Getty Images

A pro-Russian separatist soldier on the battered runway of Donetsk's airport.

As the ruble slips to a record low, Western policy makers have to be asking themselves just how much economic damage Russia will be willing to take to cease its proxy wars. Yesterday we got the answer: A lot more....

Photographer: Getty Images

Apple's ecosystem is a pleasant place, just not so easy to leave.

Apple Pay starts as a way to pay with your phone. PayPal started as a way to beam money with your PalmPilot. The endgame in both cases is a lot bigger.

Photographer: Amy Eckert/Getty Images

Yes, you can probably rent this. Just hope it doesn't rain.

EBay needs professional sellers. Uber needs profession drivers. Airbnb needs people who make rental available 365 days a year. That's really an insurmountable stumbling block to compromise.

Photographer: GK Hart/Vikki Har

Once you get known as a frog, it's hard to change your image.

IBM promised to reinvent itself. It did, and now earns more than $16 billion a year. The market doesn't really care. It still sounds stodgy and old.

Print photographed by Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis

The battle of Valmy, artist unknown

On vacation in France last month my 1-year-old son hurt his arm, and worried that he might have dislocated his shoulder, my wife and I took him to a doctor. A few days ago we got the bill: 72.38 euros,...

Photographer: Getty Images

Post-recession, more of these folks are back in corporate cubicles.

After other recessions, the number of self-employed bounced back, increasing dramatically in the early 1990s and the early 2000s. Not this time.

Photographer: Xinhua/Redux

A resident walks past posters in Buenos Aires.

Americans think that whatever the issue, folks in other countries will do what's in their economic self-interest. The problem comes those folks believe higher values are at stake and their leaders have made standing up to economic pressure a point...

Photographer: D. Sheldon

On Wall Street, like in the jungle, a disproportionate share of the spoils go to the leader of the troop.

Why is Wall Street raising pay for junior bankers? Because as well paid as even the junior bankers seem to be, they're falling way behind their bosses and the hedge fund aristocracy.