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November 4, 2024
Again, Tariffs Didn’t Make American Manufacturing Great
…that America “in the 1890s was probably the wealthiest it ever was” because of its tariff system. First, per capita GDP is, conservatively, seven times higher today than in 1900. That Trumpian…
September 11, 2024
After Decades of Competitive Admissions, Getting into College Has Finally Become Easier
…roughly 1,400 public and private nonprofit colleges that grant mostly bachelor’s degrees or higher, the median institution reduced its admissions rate by six percentage points between 2002 and 2012. Admissions…
April 19, 2024
The New Deal’s Failed Kibbutz in the Desert
At the height of the New Deal, with the Social Security Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Civilian Conservation Corps already enacted, the Roosevelt Administration’s Farm Security Administration…
February 12, 2024
Millennials Are Doing Better than You Probably Think
…calculating the percent change in median income from each generation to the next. The goal: to gauge economic mobility by determining whether each generation as a whole has surpassed the…
January 9, 2024
Post-Pandemic Recovery for America’s Prime Age Labor Force: A Tale of Two Sexes
…stay, in Fed-speak, “at or near full employment.” Even so, there were important divergences in employment trends within the overall civilian workforce. As an aging Western society, America’s civilian 55+…
December 8, 2023
Graduate Student Lending in Desperate Need of Reform
…from the US Department of Education, but they were constrained to reasonable levels. Since limitless credit became available to graduate students in 2005, graduate student debt has soared: The median…
November 30, 2023
A Valuable New Perspective on America’s War on Poverty
…This relative measure adjusts yearly thresholds in line with median income changes. “The dramatic reduction in poverty by 2019 based on President Johnson’s absolute 1960s standards suggests that policymakers might…
November 3, 2023
The Biden AI Executive Order: Dark Brandon or Uncle Joe?
President Biden’s executive order this week on artificial intelligence (AI) brings to mind his split media personality, which consists of the avuncular “Uncle Joe” and the more Machiavellian “Dark Brandon.” This bifurcated…
October 5, 2023
Do 60 Percent Of American Workers Have Insecure Jobs?
…at least $40,000 in 2022. Not too different from American Compass. Incidentally, the median female worker in this group earned $45,000. American Compass has selected an initial criterion for job…
September 25, 2023
A Bad Bipartisan Housing Bill: Connecting the Dots on the Helper Act
…to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, it takes 5.6 times the median income to purchase the median priced home in 2022. This is up from 3.1 times in 1990….