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Robert de Neufville
Contributor, Big Think
I lecture and write about politics and philosophy. I hold degrees in politics from Harvard and Berkeley, and have studied complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Other interests include theoretical physics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and the game of Go. You can find me on Twitter at @rdeneufville.
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Where did America’s workers go? The future of the American economy may hinge on the answer. The US economy added 165,000 new jobs in April and the unemployment rate fell […]
Imagine that the president of the United States could legally order the preemptive killing of any American citizen he deemed a potential threat to the country. A Justice Department white […]
We aren’t doing enough. The human race is in more danger than it might seem.
Congress created the debt ceiling crisis almost entirely on its own. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress what’s known as the “the power of the purse”: Congress alone can […]
As machines become more productive, the people who own them may be keeping a larger share of the profits.
“Consider two companies that are each given a billion dollars and ten months to close a sale,” Mohan Kompella says. “One does, the other doesn’t. What should the losing side […]
Looking at the electoral college map, it’s easy to imagine that the U.S. is a sharply divided country. The northeastern and western coastal states are all blue, while a broad […]
President Obama got 51.4% of the popular vote and won essentially every swing state. Democrats probably picked up two votes in the Senate, even though more Democrats had to defend […]
Sometimes what political science tells us is that we should pay less attention to politics. It’s easy to get caught up in the horse race aspect of the presidential election, […]
Americans aren’t worth as much as they used to be. Last week, the Federal Reserve survey of consumer finances found that the net worth of U.S. households declined 15% on […]
On September 30, 2011, The New York Times reported that the C.I.A. had killed a fundamentalist iman named Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike over Yemen. Heralding the strike, President […]
Americans don’t drive as much as they used to. The Department of Transportation estimates that Americans drove 2.9 trillion miles in the year from April 2011 to March 2012. That’s […]
Congress is apparently now speaking at a 10th grade level. The Sunlight Foundation recentlyanalyzed the Congressional Record and found that the average member of Congress speaks at 10.6 grade reading level on the […]
Last week the House voted 218-208 to block the National Science Foundation from funding political science research. No other type of research would be blocked by the NSF budget amendment. […]
On Wednesday, President Obama became the first sitting president to support marriage equality for gays and lesbians. The president’s support does nothing to alter the moral case for marriage equality. […]
In an interview in Ohio on Monday, Mitt Romney said he would “take a lot of credit” for the fact that the U.S. auto industry has rebounded. That’s a remarkable […]
Torture doesn’t work. There has never been much reason to believe that it does. Now Reuters reports that a three-year investigation by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence committee confirms what […]
Being an expert means never having to say you’re sorry. If it turns out you’re wrong about something—about, say, whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or whether there was […]
When Rick Santorum dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination, it removed the last real obstacle standing between Mitt Romney and the nomination. The race has really been […]
Earlier this week I argued that the Affordable Care Act should be ruled constitutional. There are genuine reasons to be concerned about the scope of Congress’ commerce power, which has […]