The Optimist
List of The Optimist articles
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Illustration by David Plunkert Marx Is Back
The global working class is starting to unite -- and that's a good thing.
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Photo: Reuters/Lucas Jackson Linked Out
The case for sending America's unemployed abroad.
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Photo: Susan Winters Cook/Getty Images Barriers to Entry
How opening borders gives economies a lift.
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Daniel Aguilar/Getty Images Give Sam Walton the Nobel Prize
Why Walmart may have done more for the poor than any business in American history.
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Ian Waldie/Getty Images The Case for Big Brother
A little government monitoring can be a good thing.
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Illustration by Guy Billout for FP The Convergence of Civilizations
The oft-predicted "clash of civilizations" has not materialized. If anything, values are converging across cultures.
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Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Work More, Make More?
The case against long hours.
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TENGKU BAHAR/AFP/Getty Images In Praise of Slums
Why millions of people choose to live in urban squalor.
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The Times/Gallo Images/Getty Images; AFP/Getty Images; VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images; A. Majeed/AFP/Getty Images Wealth of Nations
It's time to stop calling countries like Brazil and China "developing." They're just rich.
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KAMBOU SIA/AFP/Getty Images Dumb and Dumber
Are development experts becoming racists?
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EyesWideOpen/Getty Images Get an MBA, Save the World
If you want to work in international development, go work for a big, bad multinational company.
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EPA/PAOLO AGUILAR The Narco State
There's good news on the drug war: The world knows how to end it -- so why can't the United States figure it out?
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Andreas Rentz/Getty Images Not Too Hot to Handle
Why climate doomsayers are selling humanity short.
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Chris Jackson/Getty Images Sharing the Burden
Why Africa doesn't need your white guilt anymore.
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Win McNamee/Getty Images A Better Bank
Why President Obama's curious nomination for the new chief of the World Bank could turn out to be a smart pick -- and an interesting indication of how aid lending is changing for good.
