‘The end of reading is here’
Rose Horowitch at The Atlantic
“Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to,” says Rose Horowitch. Even “demographics that traditionally read the most — retirees, women and college graduates — have seen a collapse,” and the “books that people do read are simpler than they used to be.” People “are losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension.” America “isn’t illiterate. It’s postliterate.” The “people who make a living from words are not the only ones who lose out in a postliterate age.”
‘A tax too far: Don’t punish immigrants sending money to family’
Marcos Cruz at The Hill
Immigrants “want to know how to safely transfer money to relatives” overseas, as these remittances “create a massive flow of capital out of wealthy nations and into lower- and middle-income countries,” says Marcos Cruz. This year, a “new 1% excise tax was added on money sent abroad,” and “although a 1% tax appears small when expressed as a decimal, its implications are strategic.” By “taxing remittances and lowering incomes,” Washington “will have worsened the root cause of the immigration problem.”
‘The US had the biggest opportunity in the history of American soccer. They wasted it.’
Alexander Abnos at The Guardian
What do people think “about what the U.S. produced on Monday night during their 4-1 defeat against Belgium?” says Alexander Abnos. What “inspiration was there to be found in the team’s disjointed moves forward, of the missed defensive assignments, of the lack of poise the team played with?” Millions “were tuning in on Monday night for their first U.S. men’s national team experience,” and “their first impression was a side that was not up to the task.”
‘Stop mourning the old NATO. Build the new one.’
Galip Dalay at Time
This “must be the moment Europe stops mourning the alliance it once knew and begins building the one it actually needs,” says Galip Dalay. Europe should “strengthen the collective weight of European NATO members, not the European Union members or EU as an institution alone, within the alliance.” Europe “needs a continent-wide security architecture” and an “honest reckoning with an uncomfortable truth: any post-American security framework cannot simply replicate the existing NATO-centric order.”
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
