For decades, the aging military hardware on display at a sprawling Soviet-era park has created a favorite playground for children, who can’t help climbing on the rows of World War II artillery pieces, or marveling at the rockets and submarine.

Officially called the Memorial of the Heroic Defense of Odessa, it was created both to teach about the horrors of war – with the aim of avoiding such violence in the future – and to celebrate Odessans’ determination to defend their city.

For the families who today have chosen to stay with their children in Ukraine, despite the uncertain furies of the Russian advance, those messages are especially poignant.

On Wednesday, a Russian flotilla with amphibious landing capabilities was reported to be heading toward this strategic Black Sea port, widely seen as the final target of the Russian southern advance.

“It’s a hard decision; you have to be Ukrainian to feel this,” says Ivan, a father who gave only his first name, as his two daughters, ages 3 and 4, play on an 85 mm gun forged in 1939.

“We will be here, because it is our motherland. We will fight. We don’t have a choice,” says Ivan, his eyes tired and forehead creased with anxiety. He has joined the Territorial Defense force, his third military deployment since 2004.

Taking his wife and children out of Ukraine would require “two big bags of money,” and there is “no sense living in a tent,” says Ivan, reeling off reasons not to be a refugee. But at the top of the list is defending the nation, as a family.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Pedestrians navigate anti-tank barriers placed to protect historic landmarks in expectation of a Russian assault on the strategic Black Sea port city of Odessa, Ukraine, March 14, 2022.

Odessa was just one of 12 places named a “Hero City” by the Soviet Union for its role in the Second World War. One carved granite slab here is dedicated to border guards, whose “bravery is a model for all generations.”

“If it’s our destiny to die here, that will be,” says Ivan, standing next to his girls’ double buggy. “Sometimes you have to make a decision.”

He waves his arm toward the relics of war, then says with a wry smile, “This should all be melted down to make bullets to use against Russia.”

Families across Ukraine have been forced to make similarly uncomfortable – often excruciating – decisions about whether to stay or to leave. Their calculations take into consideration several critical factors, from devotion to family and love of country, to the ability to control fear amid a welter of dramatic news about the conflict.

In three weeks of war, the United Nations estimates that 3 million Ukrainians have left the country – half of them children. But many more Ukrainian children remain, a result of choices by their parents, or caught by circumstances beyond their control. Men between the ages of 18 and 60 are prohibited from leaving.

Dr. Tetiana Gavryliuk knows how tough the choice can be, because, in another part of Odessa, she and her 12-year-old son, Georgii, made the decision to stay. She cites “our homeland” and “the city that I love,” as well as the presence of all her family, including parents who won’t go.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Tetiana Gavryliuk, a doctor in a maternity ward, and her son Georgii, 12, stand for a portrait in the balcony of their apartment in Odessa, amid growing expectations of a Russian assault on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city, March 13, 2022. Dr. Gavryliuk is among the many Ukrainian parents with children who have decided to stay, despite the war. “I am optimistic in my life, but this is complicated,” she says.

A doctor in a maternity ward – her husband, also a doctor, died from COVID-19 last year – Dr. Gavryliuk tries to rein in her panic, when hearing air raid sirens or watching news of heavy bombardment elsewhere.

Brightly colored plastic buckets filled with water sit in the hallway. Windows are crisscrossed with tape.

“I’m trying to keep sane,” says Dr. Gavryliuk, who reckons that one-third of her building’s residents have left. The pair now mostly stay with her parents in a thick-walled, 19th-century apartment building.

As a doctor, she feels obligated to remain. At her maternity hospital, all procedures can now be conducted underground. But Dr. Gavryliuk says a threshold for her and her son may be if Odessa is bombarded like some other Ukrainian cities.

“All are staying so far,” says the bespectacled doctor, whom the Monitor first encountered among scores of volunteers filling sandbags at the Odessa Yacht Club beach.

“It’s a very difficult choice,” says Georgii, in halting English. “It’s not clear what will happen.”

His mother puts her hand on his knee, to comfort him. She asks her son point-blank, “Are you scared?”

“No,” he replies. But he then clarifies a concern about “Bombs. Bombing our house. I am afraid we won’t hear the alarm and get caught up in it.”

“He is very patriotic,” beams his mother. Online classes resumed this week. Georgii has spent time making plasticine figures, building a Legos set assault rifle, and watching the History Channel’s “Forged in Fire,” in which contestants compete to manufacture bladed weapons.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Georgii Gattsuk (left) joins citizens of all stripes filling sandbags with Black Sea sand at the Odessa Yacht Club, for use in defensive positions in an expected Russian assault on Odessa, Ukraine, March 5, 2022. His mother, a doctor, is among the many Ukrainian parents with children who have decided to stay despite the looming threat.

“I am optimistic in my life, but this is complicated,” Dr. Gavryliuk says of her fluctuating emotions. A hopeful high point has been the city of Mykolaiv, 80 miles east of Odessa, whose defenders have blocked Russia’s westward advance for more than two weeks.

“I was happy, I felt joy” to hear of Mykolaiv’s defiance, she says. “That’s a very tender feeling, how good that is.”

But low points include frequent scenes of Russian bombing of civilians, especially the large maternity hospital struck last week in the besieged city of Mariupol.

“I feel powerless when this happens. I feel we should not have mercy for them,” the doctor says of the Russian military. “I have no words for this.”

Also buffeted by events is Kateryna Zadorozhnaya, who at the sound of every air raid siren gathers her mother and daughter, crosses the street in the city center, and descends to the deep makeshift bunker beneath the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral, a Ukrainian Orthodox church (Moscow Patriarchate).

Below ground, safely settled within an ornate gilt religious sanctuary, three families with four children keep blankets on hand for sleeping on the carpets. During a recent air raid siren, the children played with toys and on smartphones.

“Our lives have become a life of being here, or at home – we sleep in our clothes,” says Ms. Zadorozhnaya stoically. “We have everything prepared.”

“A lot of people decided to not leave,” says the mother. The siren ends, and she starts packing up a backpack and putting snow boots on the children, for the long walk back up the stairs. “It’s my country. We live each day as it comes,” she says.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Families with children shelter during an air raid siren in an underground sanctuary beneath the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral, a Ukrainian Orthodox church (Moscow Patriarchate), amid expectation of an imminent Russian assault on Odessa, Ukraine, March 7, 2022.

That stoicism has limits, though. Back at the memorial military park, Renata Badiul says she is staying for her family.

“I can go, but I don’t want to,” says Ms. Badiul, with the hulking Soviet Malyutka (Little One) submarine behind her. Her 11-year-old brother, Arsen, is “a person who is very nervous,” she says, but they can’t hide the news from him – or that so many of his friends have gone.

“Goodbye, my friends!” Arsen says with a faux comical wave, in a bid to lighten the mood.

“He knows everything,” says Ms. Badiul. She adds that, if she were a man with a family, she “would not ask; I would make them go abroad. You don’t know what would happen to them.”

Later, beside the hull of the same submarine, grandfather Oleg pushes a buggy with his 13-month-old granddaughter, Alisa, and brushes off uncertainties.

“If we were afraid, we would leave the city a long time ago,” he says, looking down at the child wrapped in a thick yellow jacket, as darkness and cold descend. Asked if Ukraine will achieve victory, he answers without hesitation, “Of course.”

“There is a Russian saying,” he adds. “If you are afraid of wolves, you should not be coming to the forest.”

Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP/File

The exterior of the CalEnergy Elmore geothermal power plant is shown near the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, July 15, 2021, in Calipatria, California. Plants like this one bring up the hot brine that contains lithium, but the technology to filter lithium from brine is just now being developed.

As the United States seeks to wean itself from fossil fuels, attention is turning to California and its vast reservoir of lithium – an essential component of rechargeable batteries used for electric vehicles, mobile phones, and to store energy from wind and solar power. 

The world is clamoring for lithium. So much so that its price rose more than 400% in 2021. Now several companies are working to extract lithium from Southern California’s Imperial Valley. There, deep below a large shallow lake called the Salton Sea, lies the world’s biggest reservoir of brine that contains lithium. The brine is in ancient geothermal areas that predate the existence of the sea, which was created by an engineering accident in early 1900s efforts to divert Colorado River water for irrigation.

Known as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” California has the potential to more than meet demand in the U.S., which relies heavily on a vulnerable international supply chain that includes China. 

How important is lithium to the future of clean energy?

Demand for lithium is expected to skyrocket. By 2045, California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, is mandated to have a completely renewable-energy electrical grid, which will require more large lithium batteries for electricity storage. Additionally, the state will no longer allow the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 – a huge impetus for automakers to switch to electric vehicles that need lithium batteries. 

Almost all of the components of these batteries can be substituted, but lithium is irreplaceable because of its light weight, writes research scientist Michael Whittaker, in an email to the Monitor. 

“As battery demand grows exponentially, so does the demand for lithium,” says Dr. Whittaker, describing the metal as “essential to the future of clean energy.” The materials expert is the director of the Lithium Resource Research and Innovation Center at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

Most lithium today is mined in Australia, Chile, China, and Argentina. It’s extracted either with hard-rock blasting and acid dissolution that leave behind toxic materials or through vast, desert-land-consuming evaporation ponds. 

What is the potential role of California in lithium production? 

The appeal of extracting lithium from the Imperial Valley – dubbed Lithium Valley – is that it would avoid the supply chain issue and its negative environmental effects, including transport, says geochemist Michael McKibben, professor emeritus at the University of California, Riverside. 

He sees “very little environmental problems” associated with the direct extraction of hot, geothermal brine in the Salton Sea area, where the brine is already being pulled up at 11 existing geothermal power plants operating in the valley. Lithium extraction could be added to those operations.

The power plants drill down and bring up the hot brine. Steam from the brine turns turbines that produce electricity. The brine is then injected back down into the earth to refill the reservoir. It’s a renewable form of energy whose main byproduct is water vapor. Lithium would be filtered from the brine before it’s returned to the reservoir.

The brine “would supply all of the U.S. needs for the foreseeable use of lithium,” says Dr. McKibben. “We could become an exporter. If we produce at the maximum, the U.S. could end up dominating the global lithium market.” 

What are the impediments to developing California’s lithium?

The biggest hurdle is that the technology to filter lithium from brine is just now being developed. Three companies involved in geothermal power generation in the Imperial Valley are actively working on piloting lithium extraction and scaling it up for commercial use. The state and federal government are also supporting this lithium effort. 

One company, Australia’s Controlled Thermal Resources Ltd., expects to start producing lithium in 2024, and is backed by investors including General Motors. Another, Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables, is being helped by a $6 million matching grant from the California Energy Commission to start a pilot extraction facility that, if successful, would put it on a path to commercial production by 2026. A third company, EnergySource Minerals, is already piloting lithium production and plans to scale it up soon.  

Timing is important, says Dr. McKibben, because “the auto manufacturers want that lithium right now, and they would like it to be free of international supply chain issues.”

Questions remain about the community in which this work would be done, say both Drs. McKibben and Whittaker. Imperial County, largely agricultural, is the poorest county in the state. Can it supply a workforce to build and operate more geothermal plants (necessary to meet the state’s 2045 electric-grid mandate), lithium extraction operations, and lithium battery manufacturing; expand a road and rail network; and put up more housing – all sustainably? 

The community, struggling with unrelated health issues from the receding Salton Sea, has mixed feelings about it. A local nonprofit that advocates for disadvantaged groups “applauds” state and federal efforts in the valley to address climate change. But the path to that green economy “begins and ends with achieving greater environmental justice for frontline communities,” said Luis Olmedo, director of Comite Civico Del Valle, in a statement last month.

Editor’s note: The information about Berkshire Hathaway has been updated.

Life in America was not easy. “It was crowded,” Meidan “Abby” Lin says.

In March 2016, Ms. Lin; her husband, Yin Zheng; their young son, Yuchen; and Mr. Zheng’s mother left Fuzhou, China, a bustling coastal city at the mouth of the Min River, for another port half a world away on the Charles River in Boston.

They shared their first apartment in Boston’s Chinatown with another family. During nights in that cramped space, Ms. Lin started dreaming of a place she could call her own. But Boston’s soaring real estate prices seemed to put that dream out of reach. Mr. Zheng works at a restaurant. Ms. Lin works at home.

Then a friend told Ms. Lin about the Chinatown Community Land Trust. The organization was just getting its start, but maybe it could help.

The group was selling apartments at discount prices, and Ms. Lin jumped on the waitlist. But there was only one apartment big enough for her family. “I didn’t think we were able to get it,” she says. All she could do was hope.

Community land trusts, many of them recently founded, are pursuing a novel solution to the nation’s affordable housing crisis: They’re buying their own properties to preserve them as affordable housing in perpetuity and give residents more say over what happens in quickly changing neighborhoods. 

That mission has gained new urgency over the past year as homeowners reap the rewards of a red-hot real estate market while renters are hit with steep rent hikes, deepening the divide between the housing haves and have-nots. Estimates show home values in U.S. metropolitan areas increased a record-breaking 18.8% in 2021. Rents were up by 19.3% over the same period.

“As neighborhoods change and gentrify really fast, the idea of having community control and having more say about how neighborhoods are changing and who’s going to be able to live in the neighborhood over time, from an affordability perspective, I think becomes really important,” says Beth Sorce, who works with community land trusts nationwide at the Grounded Solutions Network, an affordable housing advocacy group.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

People walk by a brick row house (on the corner) owned by the Chinatown Community Land Trust on Feb. 9, 2022, in Boston. The building has three affordable apartments, one of which is owned by Ms. Lin's family.

“Breathing space”

Community land trusts have been around for decades, but the trend really began to accelerate after the 2008 recession. In 2019, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics counted 215 land trusts in the U.S. and estimates that there are more than 250 today.

Basically, land trusts raise money from donations, grants, and government funds to buy property. Then they lease the house or apartment to a buyer well below market value, but the trust retains ownership of the land.

This way, occupants typically get an ownership stake in their homes. They build equity over time, but at a rate that is often capped at 1% or 2% a year. The trust, which is governed democratically by residents and neighbors, can decide to whom the dwelling can be sold and at what price, usually through a covenant in the lease. This ensures the property remains affordable.

The land trust idea was imported to the United States by civil rights activist Charles Sherrod in the early 1970s from the kibbutzim of Israel. Mr. Sherrod saw land trusts as a way for Black Americans to buy agricultural land in the South.

“We don’t always talk about community land trusts as tools of justice, but they are,” says Andre Perry, a housing policy expert at the Brookings Institution.

Dr. Perry’s own research shows that an “intrinsic value of whiteness” persists at almost every step of home buying from the appraisal to the sale. Minorities, but especially Black people, must pay more and get less. 

By taking property out of the traditional market, land trusts reduce the discrimination baked into that system and empower communities to actively fight it, Dr. Perry says.

When Susan Saegert, a professor of environmental psychology at the City University of New York, compared homebuyers and renters with land trust homebuyers in several U.S. cities, she found that the land trust buyers were more likely to be minorities, especially single mothers. Moreover, she found that they received all the social benefits of homeownership – things like stability and a sense of home – without as many costs.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The street leading to the Chinatown gate is bustling on Feb. 9, 2022, in Boston. The gate was a gift to the city from Taiwan in 1982. Real estate in the area is very expensive, but in 2019 the Chinatown Community Land Trust secured two row houses, seven units in total, that they began refurbishing.

One of the most striking findings was in survey data from Minneapolis, Professor Saegert says. Freed from the stress of constantly worrying about the next rent hike or eviction, land trust homeowners there reported they had more time to pursue their passions.

“They have breathing space,” Professor Saegert says. “They can now imagine a better life than before.”

Innovation needed

In California, justice is what drives Jacqueline Rivera and her fellow housing activists in San Jose. In the heart of Silicon Valley, where even high-paid tech employees struggle to find housing, development was pushing out vibrant Black, Hispanic, and immigrant neighborhoods.

In community conversations Ms. Rivera and her colleagues held around the city in 2018, land trusts kept coming up. Ms. Rivera grabbed hold of the idea, and by 2020 she was heading up the South Bay Community Land Trust.

Success has not come easily, though. 

By definition, land trusts do not make profits, and fundraising is the biggest challenge they face. To buy their first property, a fourplex in downtown San Jose, they need to fundraise at least $1 million, on top of the half million dollars they need to pay professional staff and make the organization run. Speed is a problem, too. Developers snap up properties with cash in a matter of days, while the land trust moves “at the pace of community,” Ms. Rivera says.  

Yet, in order to disrupt traditional real estate, land trusts “still have to play in the real estate game,” she adds.

Advocates stress that land trusts are just one tool in a broader approach to the affordability crisis, but it could be a more effective one with government help. Ms. Sorce, of Grounded Solutions, says state and local governments should invest money in land trusts and change appraisal policies so land trust properties aren’t paying taxes based on their speculative value.

With or without such help, land trusts must innovate to succeed.

“When we think about community land trusts, so many times we think about just the homeownership level,” says Sheldon Clark, who recently served as president of the board of the Douglass Community Land Trust in Washington, D.C. “And that really just doesn’t cover the housing needs that we have.”

Douglass has units it’s maintaining as permanently affordable rentals and other properties set up as cooperatives. They’ve also helped tenants take advantage of a District of Columbia law that entitles them to buy their unit if their landlord plans to sell.

Really, land trust leaders say, homeownership is just one aspect of their focus on what Mr. Clark calls the “big C” in community land trusts: the community.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Lydia Lowe, director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust, poses in tiny Tai Tung Park in front of a fish mural in Chinatown, on Feb. 9, 2022, in Boston. Golden carp symbolize wealth and prosperity in Chinese culture. The Chinatown Community Land Trust is fighting to save Chinatown’s legacy.

Douglass organized food drives during the pandemic and helps connect residents to credit unions, as many are unbanked. In Boston’s Chinatown, the land trust helped save a local park.

Lydia Lowe, the Chinatown Community Land Trust’s executive director, strides down the narrow streets of the neighborhood she’s fought for since the 1980s with pride and determination. She points out low-income apartments she’s worked to save from developers on Johnny Court and buildings the land trust is eyeing near the Ding Ho takeout place on Harrison Avenue. 

Ms. Lowe has needed plenty of determination since the land trust’s incorporation in 2015. “We couldn’t get anyone to give us property because they’re sitting on a gold mine,” she says. In 2019 the land trust finally secured two row houses, seven units in total, and set about refurbishing them.

Finally one day in September 2021 the three-bedroom walk-up on Oak Street was ready. After their long wait since moving from China, Ms. Lin and her family opened the door and walked in. They could hardly believe what they saw: three cozy bedrooms, a living room with big windows, and a spacious kitchen.

Most of the apartments on Oak Street in Boston are priced from $600,000 to well over $1 million, according to Zillow. Chinatown Community Land Trust sold Ms. Lin and Mr. Zheng their apartment for about $220,000. Ms. Lin said homeownership in Chinatown would not have been possible without the land trust.

“I’m here with my husband and my kids. I have my own family. That’s all that matters,” Ms. Lin says. And six years after coming to America, it finally feels like her family has a home.

Staff

The selections this month cover a range of genres, from a thrilling novel about secret maps and a coming-of-age love story to a nonfiction look at Russian émigrés in Paris after the 1917 revolution.    

1. The Great Passion by James Runcie

James Runcie evokes the rigors and rewards of studying with Johann Sebastian Bach during the 1720s. The busy composer brings Stefan, a bullied teenager and talented singer, under his wing, providing purpose and a sense of home. Runcie vividly depicts the teacher-pupil dynamic and the all-consuming demands of a creative pursuit. In soaring language, he portrays music’s ability to rouse, heal, and awaken wonder.  

2. Groundskeeping by Lee Cole

Lee Cole’s novel sheds light on America’s social and political divisions through a coming-of-age love story. College groundskeeper Owen, a Kentuckian with deep roots in the South, and accomplished Alma, a Bosnian immigrant on an academic fellowship, find solace despite their different backgrounds.  

3. Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

Karen Joy Fowler’s “Booth” offers an absorbing tale of the family of Junius Booth, one of the most famous Shakespearean actors of his time – whose sons included John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. Her focus is on the circumstances that produced this man, and how his heinous act affected his close-knit, pro-Union, mostly abolitionist family. But like the best historical fiction, “Booth” helps us recognize connections between the past and present.

4. Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo

“Glory” depicts the anguish, absurdity, and grind of life in a fictional African autocracy. Each well-drawn character – from the ancient despot and his sycophants, to the rapacious successor, to exhausted citizens – is an animal. The engrossing allegory delivers a powerful emotional punch, along with keen political and social commentary. 

5. The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

Peng Shepherd’s captivating thriller begins with the death of an esteemed cartographer, who years earlier inexplicably fired his daughter, Nell, from the New York Public Library after she uncovered a 1930 map. Nell’s investigation unveils secrets about her family’s past and the map’s allure. 

6. Read Dangerously by Azar Nafisi

A prolific reader and gifted Iranian American writer argues that careful reading of challenging literature helps us make sense of our chaotic and turbulent times. A meticulously reasoned, timely, and welcome reminder about why we read. 

7. Woman by Lillian Faderman

Lillian Faderman charts the changing meaning of “woman” from the 17th century to the present. She illustrates historical cycles of repression and resistance with a wealth of examples, demonstrating that women of all races and classes have chafed against oppressive notions of what a woman ought to be.

8. After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport

One of the effects of the Romanov dynasty’s fall in 1917 was a flood of Russian refugees into Europe, including the arrival of aristocrats, artists, writers, and intellectuals who landed in Paris at the height of the city’s creative ferment. Helen Rappaport tells their stories with marvelous skill and empathy.

9. Julia Morgan by Victoria Kastner

Victoria Kastner pulls back the curtain on architect Julia Morgan, the first woman admitted to Europe’s finest school for architecture, the first woman licensed to practice in California in the early 1900s, and the creator of roughly 700 structures, including Hearst Castle. It’s an inspiring portrait, highlighting the grit and grace that Morgan possessed.

10. In Pursuit of Jefferson by Derek Baxter

In Derek Baxter’s winning debut, the attorney and amateur historian follows the itinerary suggested by Thomas Jefferson in an unpublished travel guide, “Hints to Americans Traveling in Europe.” Along the way, with humor and heart, he grapples with the founder’s complicated legacy.

AP

Personal trainer Antonia Kalantzi shops in Athens, Greece, which, like much of the world, faces a cost-of-living crisis.

When central bankers huddle at economic crossroads, sometimes words speak louder than actions. The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates a quarter of a percentage point yesterday for the first time since the start of the pandemic to address inflation. The Bank of England made a similar adjustment today– its third in recent months. The European Central Bank, meanwhile, says it will gradually buy fewer bonds. For economists wanting bolder efforts to tame soaring prices, it has been a disappointing week.

But what may matter more than the numbers was an acknowledgment that, as the Fed put it, their “economic forecasts are necessarily imperfect descriptions of the real world.” In other words, amid the uncertainties of the pandemic and war in Ukraine, central banks are out of silver bullets.

That transparency matters. It can bolster flagging public confidence in the institutions that shepherd economic stability. More importantly, it may help break the “inflationary mindset” or “psychology of inflation” by invigorating companies and individuals to seek solutions through innovation and personal agency.

“Few are talking about the role innovation could play in this business cycle,” observed Callie Cox, an investment analyst at eToro, in a 2021 blog post. “We’ve had to re-think how we live, work, and interact with each other. And that collective re-thinking has led to a renaissance era of sorts – one that could potentially lead to productivity gains for U.S. companies and an extra boost for the economy and markets.”

Inflation in the United States, at 7.9%, is at its highest rate since 1982. A Quinnipiac University Poll survey found last month that 27% of respondents saw inflation as the country’s most urgent issue, while 59% said the economy is worsening. In Britain, where inflation is at a 30-year high of 5.5%, a Bank of England quarterly survey found last week that the public’s outlook on inflation and wages is more pessimistic than at any time since 2008.

How the public thinks about inflation can have a spiral effect. When prices rise sharply, as they have now, consumers may start spending more rapidly to avoid even greater costs ahead. That hasn’t happened yet. But as higher inflation persists, the risk grows that the public will become more focused on the short-term consequences. The result is that inflation can become self-sustaining.

Prices at the pump and grocery checkout lanes, however, may obscure more optimistic indicators. Productivity has grown by an average of 2.3% per year since 2018. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity grew by 6.6% in the last quarter of 2021. Wages have grown 2% annually during the past two years. Those figures illustrate the opposite of what happened during the high-inflation 1970s, when productivity fell sharply and wages stagnated.

This reflects vigorous efforts by businesses to become more efficient, such as in the growth of online car sales and the estimated tens of billions of dollars saved as more people work from home. Changes like these in the way businesses operate and people work “provide reason to believe that the uptick in productivity growth over the past three years may continue,” wrote Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, last week.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell describes his approach to inflation as “humble and nimble.” As central banks adjust their policy knobs to restore a right balance to prices, wages, and growth, those qualities hold a lesson. Stability starts on the supply side of ideas, which everyone can access.