In the September Trends Monthly we wondered how many of the 12 million arrests made and the uncountable citations issued by police forces every year were “designed to swell municipal coffers and police department budgets.” In the aftermath of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, data have been released that shows the problem is even greater than...

This year, 22 percent of medical-school graduates will have done their training in a college of osteopathic medicine and have the right to put the initials DO, for doctor of osteopathic medicine, after their names. By 2020, about 100,000 DOs will be in practice, making up more than 10 percent of physicians in the United States. In most respects, the...

People who use Johnson’s Baby Shampoo and other products in their baby line may have noticed the phrase “Improved Formula” on the bottle. Those two words represent a victory for consumers who have made their wishes known in a way that manufacturers understand, a challenge to their bottom line. The National Toxicology Program (NTP) was created in 1978 to, among...

The holiday shopping season will be strong for community-based mom-and-pop operations that know their customers, customize products and services to community tastes and offer personalized interaction with consumers. As we have been tracking for several years, shopping malls are on a sharp decline. The big-box stores that anchor those malls, unless they’re upscale retailers in high-income suburban areas, are closing,...

Since 1972, as part of its General Social Survey, the National Opinion Research Center has been asking a sampling of American adults three questions relating to trust in their fellow man: • Generally speaking, would you say most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people? • Would you say that most of...

This late-summer headline in Forbes, “Market Basket: The Return of Boomer Activism,” spoke volumes about the Boomer Renaissance trend we have been tracking. The boomer-dominated workforce of Market Basket, a New England-based chain of grocery stores, roared in collective defiance as the company’s board of directors removed the chain’s employee-friendly president as a means to improve financial performance by presumably...

Those seeking a light at the end of the tunnel of recovery will be glad to learn that the US has made up the 8.7 million jobs lost during the Great Recession and that the number of people employed now tops the prerecession peak of 138.4 million. Buying that good news? A look at the United States Conference of Mayors...

Internet technology, innovation and vision have enabled a new model for financial services that, in just eight years, has generated well over $5 billion in loans to American consumers and small businesses. The most enthusiastic backers are predicting a trillion dollars a year in “marketplace loans” being made by 2025. Wild as that might sound, this year’s developments suggest that...

After a strong start at the beginning of the year, gold, flirting at $1,200 a troy ounce, is at a nine-month low. The rampant inflation many investors feared would result from several years of record-low interest rates and central bank multi-trillion-dollar money-pumping schemes has not materialized. In fact, deflationary concerns have spurred European and Japanese central banks to drive down...

As bombs fall in Syria, history is not only repeating itself, it’s bearing down on us with lightning speed. Talk of war once again rules the political dialogue. And the general public is buying it – again. The Sept. 20 headline in the Financial Times says it all: “Americans galvanized for Return to War in Iraq.” Just a few weeks...