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November 4, 2024

Again, Tariffs Didn’t Make American Manufacturing Great

Nationalist/populist conservatives, including the Republican nominee, claim that US economic history supports their views of trade protectionism. Donald Trump says “tariff” is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” and 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…

By James Pethokoukis

April 9, 2024

The Child Tax Credit: My Long-Read Q&A with Kevin Corinth

The Child Tax Credit is a tax benefit available to many American families for the purpose of reducing their federal income tax liability. It’s specifically designed to help offset the cost of raising children. The CTC of today, however, differs starkly from its pre-pandemic structure. Many economists, including Kevin Corinth, think that the post-pandemic changes were a step…

By Kevin Corinth | Jim Pethokoukis

April 5, 2024

What’s Wrong with the US Economy? Anything?

Economists were expecting 200,000 net new jobs added in March. Instead it was 50 percent more. Unexpected strength, but maybe not so unexpected, really, for an economy that continues to deliver surprise after surprise. It’s been a great run lately for economic optimists: real wage gains, faster labor productivity, and gobs of jobs. A tight summary…

By James Pethokoukis

February 12, 2024

Millennials Are Doing Better than You Probably Think

“Each generation is worse off than the one before.” It’s one of the primary tenets of the notion that American capitalism has failed and that we live in the final days of “late capitalism.” But have things really been all downhill since the Boomers became adults? Maybe not, according to the new study “Has Intergenerational…

By James Pethokoukis

January 12, 2024

When It Comes to the State of the American Economy, Let’s Keep It Real

Here we go again. An oft-repeated economic claim on social media is that most Americans lack the means to cover a $400 emergency expense. More evidence that most of us in “late capitalist” America live paycheck to paycheck. Indeed, another common claim on social media is that nearly 80 percent of US workers live paycheck…

By James Pethokoukis

November 30, 2023

A Valuable New Perspective on America’s War on Poverty

I suppose if you’re someone who thinks American capitalism has failed and unironically uses the phrase “late capitalism,” there’s probably no changing your mind. So I guess this post is meant for folks who have concerns about the American economy yet also have an open mind about new information. For this group, I have a…

By James Pethokoukis

September 12, 2023

Please, Gen Z Aren’t “Doomed to be the First Generation of Americans Who Will Grow Up with a Lower Standard of Living Than Their Parents”

One could easily fill all the waking hours in the day—and non-waking hours, too!—with pointed responses to all the bad economic opinions expressed on social media. That said, I like to dip in every now and then with a humbly offered counterpoint. This week’s 9/11 anniversary, for example, meant the recycling of this passage from…

By James Pethokoukis

August 22, 2023

Is Paid Leave a Pro-Growth Policy?

Some pro-growth public policies seem super obvious, like attracting more high-skill immigrants or reducing the federal paperwork needed to build clean energy facilities and infrastructure. Paid leave, whether mandated by Washington or funded by new taxes on rich people and large companies, might seem like another obviously good thing. Rarely do I ever hear about…

By James Pethokoukis

August 21, 2023

Four Shocking Truths about the American Economy! (Well, Shocking to Some.)

I recently wrote a brief essay, “Generative AI and Economic Growth,” for Exponential View, the great newsletter by Azeem Azhar. And I knew one particular passage would be sure to raise eyebrows: A lengthy and fundamentally solid expansion would allow the economic progress of the pre-pandemic period — falling inequality, rising real wages across the income…

By James Pethokoukis

August 3, 2023

Does Money (and Economic Growth) Buy Happiness?

Sure, economic growth may allow us to buy more stuff, buy cooler stuff, help us to live longer, and give us the resources to solve big problems such as global poverty and climate change. That’s fine, I guess. But do the higher incomes that come from economic growth make us, you know, happier? Do they,…

By James Pethokoukis