by Aseem Gupta | Jun 1, 2024 | Economics, Markets & Money
Australia appears to offer almost everything a prosperous society should. It has high incomes, stable institutions, desirable cities, strong public services, spectacular coastlines and an enormous landmass. For generations, homeownership formed part of the national...
by Aseem Gupta | Apr 6, 2024 | Economics, Markets & Money
Canada used to sell a simple promise. Work hard. Find a decent job. Buy a home. Raise a family. Live in a safe neighborhood. Save a little. Retire with dignity. It was not a fantasy. For much of the postwar era, this was the basic middle-class bargain in Canada. The...
by Aseem Gupta | Mar 27, 2024 | Economics, Markets & Money
Switzerland looks like a country designed to lose. It is small. It is landlocked. Much of it is mountainous. It has no ocean ports, no vast oil fields, no great mineral empire, and no single language holding the country together. It sits in the middle of Europe,...
by Aseem Gupta | Mar 21, 2024 | Business, Innovation & Industry
For decades, ESPN was one of the best businesses in television. It did not merely show sports. It sat at the center of the cable bundle. If you were a serious sports fan, you needed ESPN. If you were not a serious sports fan, you often paid for it anyway because ESPN...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 20, 2024 | Geopolitics, States & Global Power
On June 23, 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union. The promise was simple, emotional, and politically explosive: take back control. Control of borders.Control of laws.Control of money.Control of trade. For many Leave voters, Brexit was never just an economic...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 5, 2024 | Business, Innovation & Industry
For a long time, Disney did not feel like a company. It felt like a childhood memory machine. A Disney film was not just another movie on the release calendar. It was an event. A Disney character was not just a piece of intellectual property. It was a companion. A...
by Aseem Gupta | Jun 24, 2023 | Narrative, Media & Storytelling
Marvel fatigue did not happen because audiences suddenly stopped liking superheroes. That explanation is too easy. If people were simply tired of capes, masks, powers, and comic-book worlds, then Spider-Man: No Way Home, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and Deadpool...
by Aseem Gupta | May 23, 2022 | Business, Innovation & Industry
Streaming was supposed to save us from cable. No long contracts. No bloated channel bundles. No waiting for shows to air at a fixed time. No paying for dozens of channels you never watched. Just open an app, choose what you want, and watch it instantly. For a while,...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 3, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
When Kim Jong Il died in December 2011, television footage from North Korea showed crowds collapsing in grief. Men and women sobbed in streets and public squares. Some clutched one another for support. Others beat the frozen ground with their hands as the funeral...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 2, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
China is often described as a civilisation with five thousand years of continuous history. The phrase captures something real: an exceptionally long tradition of writing, political thought, historical memory and cultural inheritance. Yet it can also create a...
