Governance

Singapore's founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was no ordinary Singaporean. His house is no ordinary house. These facts give Singaporeans a stake in its preservation, no matter how the tussle among his children ends.

As a citizen and former journalist who met him several times, the symbolic meaning of the house for me takes precedence over Mr Lee's own will. From a strictly legal perspective, the will says the last word on what should be done to 38, Oxley Road. But from a national perspective, the demolition of the house would represent a blow to a visual artefact that represents the nation's journey from Third World to First.

In a "policy memo" to President-elect Donald Trump, Graham Allison and Dimitri K. Simes write: "The two Chinese characters that make up the word “crisis” can be interpreted as meaning both “danger” and “opportunity.” Russia today offers your administration not only a serious challenge but a significant opportunity.

Russia is no longer the Evil Empire the United States confronted over decades of Cold War. Nonetheless, Russia remains a player whose choices affect vital U.S. interests profoundly across the agenda of global issues. First and foremost, Russia remains the only nation that can erase the United States from the map in thirty minutes.

It is sometimes said that some Americans live in “the United States of Amnesia.” Less widely recognized is how many American policymakers live there, too. To address this deficit, the Belfer Center has launched an Applied History Project designed to revitalize applied history both in universities and in policymaking.

I have just come across an International Monetary Fund working paper on income polarization in the United States that makes an important contribution to the secular stagnation debate. The authors — Ali Alichi, Kory Kantenga and Juan Solé — use standard econometric techniques to estimate the impact of declines in middle class incomes on total consumer spending. They find that polarization has reduced consumer spending by more than 3 percent or about $400 billion annually. If these findings stand up to scrutiny, they deserve to have a policy impact.

Although Jen Palmieri, Hillary Clinton’s communications director, acknowledged that the campaign should have let the press know sooner that Secretary Clinton was fine, following her leaving the 9/11 memorial for health reasons on Sunday, working women have known for decades that even when you’re sick, you work. Mothers joke that they aren’t allowed to get sick, and advertisers rake in profits for cold and flu relievers that allow moms to go on doing their jobs. And women in the workplace, often judged for how strong or weak they are, regularly come to work even when they should be home in bed—even when society should allow for rest and recovery.

I learned this lesson early in life. During my early professional years, somehow my body knew it had to wait to get sick until it was time for annual leave. So I ended up spending my vacation time nursing bad sinus infections or flu, before flu shots. Later in my professional career, I simply learned to soldier on, no matter what.