From a New York Times opinion piece about the demise of the Lord & Taylor department store: "These closures signify how the relentless march of capitalism, now accelerated by the pandemic, has robbed us of spaces to be together and to pass time slowly."

And then, later in the article: "online shopping has also enabled more ethical and inclusive fashion, if you know where to look for it. The internet enables people from all backgrounds, especially Black shoppers, gender nonconforming and trans shoppers and those with different body types, to find clothes that make them feel great without worrying about the judgment or the profiling they might encounter at retail stores. This is no small benefit: It's a huge step forward."

From the Wall Street Journal's corrections and amplifications column: "Actress Liu Yifei is a cherished household name in China. A Sept. 3 Personal Journal article said she is a cherished name in Communist China. The Wall Street Journal's style is to refer to mainland China as China except in some historical political contexts."

The latest Democratic line of attack against President Trump is that he was too slow to push mask-wearing as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Patrick Dillon, a former Obama administration official who is the husband of Biden's campaign manager Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, tweeted that Trump "was talking to Woodward about aerosol transmission in FEBRUARY. So someone smarter than him told him something like that, and then sat on a recommendation for Americans to wear masks until APRIL. Plenty of bad to go around here."

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. a Harvard professor, has a column about President Trump that includes this paragraph:

Trump's anti-interventionism is relatively popular, but his narrow, transactional definition of US interests, and his skepticism about alliances and multilateral institutions, is not reflective of majority opinion. Since 1974, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs has asked the public whether America should take an active part or stay out of world affairs. Roughly a third of the American public has been consistently isolationist, reaching a high point of 41% in 2014. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, 64% favored active involvement by the time of the 2016 election, and that number rose to a high of 70% by 2018.

Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III's loss to Senator Ed Markey in the Massachusetts Democratic primary for Senate, and Jake Auchincloss's victory in the primary to succeed Kennedy, has prompted a boom of renewed interest in the book JFK, Conservative. I wrote about the primaries and the Kennedys for the Washington Examiner magazine: Dethroning the Kennedys. The article begins with a quote from the Talmud. I also appeared on the Fox News television program "Your World With Neil Cavuto" to discuss the differences between Joe Biden's tax policy and President Kennedy's. You can watch that segment here via Fox News or here via Yahoo! News. Finally, The Week magazine had a nice mention: "Not without reason did Ira Stoll publish a revisionist biography of the president some years ago entitled JFK, Conservative."

This part of the analysis seemed pretty shrewd to me:

it was decided even before he was elected that admitting the president was the president was "normalizing" him. Normally no news is good news, and the anchorman is encouraged to smile on a day without war, earthquakes, terror attacks, or stock market crashes. Under Trump it became taboo to have a slow news day. A lack of an emergency was a failure of reporting, since Trump's very presence in office was crisis. ...The problem was this all played into Trump's hands. Instead of crafting a coherent, accessible plan to address the despair and cynicism that moved voters to even consider someone like Trump in the first place, Democrats instead turned politics into a paranoiac's dream, imbuing Trump's every move with earth-shattering importance as America became a single, never-ending, televised referendum on His Orangeness.

The prospect that a narrow Trump victory in the presidential election is rejected by Democrats is the topic of my column this week. Please read the full column at the New Boston Post ("What If Trump Wins the Election and the Left Rejects the Result?"), the New York Sun ("What If Trump Wins and the Left Rejects the Result?"), and the Las Vegas Review-Journal ("What If Trump Wins the Election and the Left Rejects the Result?")

From a New York Times news article headlined "Biden Faults Trump Over Schools' Inability To Reopen" (a story in which the word "teachers union" does not appear):

In response to a question, Mr. Biden also offered more details about how a mask mandate, something he has previously advocated, would work in practice — and what the limitations might be.

"I'm a constitutionalist," Mr. Biden said. "You can't do things the Constitution doesn't allow you the power to do."

Well, that is interesting and encouraging. Whether it matches his record as a senator and vice president is a different story. But if Biden keeps talking like that he might win.

Thanks for all those who became paying subscribers or members of FutureOfCapitalism or our sister site SmarterTimes.com during our recent drive. Before returning entirely to our regularly scheduled programming, let me mention that are also ways to help that are non-monetary. Spreading the word by telling your friends about the site, particularly friends that you think might enjoy it, helps us grow. So does sharing FutureOfCapitalism content on social media, if you use social media. Commenting by using the comments function helps, too, not only if you have something interesting to say (though that's great), but also because comments help signal to algorithms and to other readers that there's a community of engaged readers here.

Gap, Inc., which operates Old Navy, Athleta, and Banana Republic as well as Gap-branded clothing stores, factory outlets stores, and websites, sold $130 million worth of face masks during the three months ended August 1, CNBC reports.

Some of the sales were to government customers such as the state of California and the city of New York. Overall, though, this seems a good example of how the flexibility, incentives, and creativity of capitalism are helping America fight the coronavirus.

If the federal government had tried to set up a user-friendly website and warehouses to deliver customers face coverings in the size, style, and fabric color and pattern of the customer's choice, it almost certainly would have been a disaster. Companies like Gap, and even bankrupt Brooks Brothers and J. Crew, are already set up to do similar things, and could move into the mask business quickly using skills, supply chain, and infrastructure that was already at least partially in place.

The Republican convention this past week has seemed to me generally quite effective. Noteworthy, at least as I heard it, were at least two points where Trump has departed from recent Republican presidents. Both points were underscored in the closing night in speeches by both Ivanka Trump and the president himself. Donald Trump said he would "keep America out of endless and costly foreign wars," and he boasted, "last month I took on Big Pharma." These are phrases—"endless and costly foreign wars," "Big Pharma"—that might easily come from Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, or Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent socialist who sought the Democratic presidential nomination.

Thanks to all of you who became paying subscribers or renewed existing subscriptions over the past week or two. Today's is the final pitch in this cycle, all you procrastinators out there. We could use just a few more paying readers to help meet our goal, support independent journalism, and fund the site's operations and growth going forward. It'll take just a few moments of your time and less than a dollar a week. The link is here.

The accusation that President Trump has politicized the State Department and the Food and Drug Administration is the topic of my column this week. Please check out the full column at the New Boston Post ("Please Politicize the State Department and FDA; It Beats the Alternative"), the New York Sun ("Please Politicize Dept. of State, Other Agencies; It Is the Constitutional Thing To Do") and at Newsmax ("Politicizing State Department, FDA Actually Beats the Alternative").

Thank you to those who have already renewed subscriptions or bought new ones in response to our recent posts on How To Help, Ten Reasons To Become a Paying Subscriber, and Eleven More Reasons To Become a Paying Subscriber. We are getting there—the response so far has been quite encouraging—but could use a few more to get across the finish line and meet our goals. If you've been meaning to take care of it and haven't yet gotten around to it, the link is here.

"Massachusetts had the highest unemployment rate in July, 16.1 percent," the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on August 21, 2020.

What the BLS did not mention is that Massachusetts also had the nation's highest maximum weekly unemployment benefit—as much as $1,423 a week through July 31, 2020.

That was the maximum benefit, not the average benefit. The average weekly benefit in Massachusetts in June was $425.55, according to the federal Department of Labor. The July stats don't seem to be available yet online. That was third after North Dakota ($426.29) and Hawaii ($456.19).