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August 11, 2025

Beware Graduate Programs Masquerading as “Professional” to Increase Student Debt

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) included long-overdue limits on federal loans to graduate students. While graduate loans have been effectively unlimited, going forward, most students will be capped at borrowing up to $20,500 per year, or $100,000 in aggregate. This policy change should hold down student debt burdens—and make it harder for graduate…

July 30, 2025

It’s Not Surprising That No-Strings Attached Cash Didn’t Help Kids

A recent study put to the test an idea that has become increasingly influential over the past decade: To help kids thrive, one of the best things you can do is to give their parents cash with no strings attached. This idea was the impetus in 2021 for the one-year replacement of the existing Child Tax Credit—which…

July 23, 2025

Over 1,000 Colleges Could Lose Access to Federal Student Aid

Students are not the only ones who enjoyed a reprieve during the nearly five-year pause on federal student loan payments. Colleges also got a break from a rule that bars them from the federal student aid system if their former students’ loan default rates are too high. Now that student loan payments have resumed, however,…

July 18, 2025

The Misunderstood Gains of Modern America

An unfortunately popular myth peddled by populists on both the left and right is that America has been in steady decline since the 1970s. To hear them tell it, the country has become a rigged game: stagnant wages, hollowed-out jobs, and lives made harder by rapacious, elite-driven capitalism. But a more honest accounting of the…

July 17, 2025

Reasonable Panic

Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick is quietly launching the next wave of food automation through his new venture, CloudKitchens. He recently revealed a 60-square-foot machine that assembles 300 custom bowls per hour, cutting labor costs by as much as 60 percent. The system handles everything from ingredient dispensing to delivery handoff. And this is just the beginning. Kalanick envisions…

July 2, 2025

Congress Could Rein In Graduate Student Loans

Congress is on the verge of eliminating Grad PLUS—the program which extends effectively unlimited taxpayer-funded loans to graduate students—and imposing caps on graduate loans for the first time since 2006. On Tuesday, the Senate passed a budget reconciliation bill ending the program, which has fueled tuition hikes, exploded student debt, and padded the budgets of wealthy universities….

July 1, 2025

Irresistible Force, Meet the Immovable Object

Some important new numbers are out on the future of the US labor supply, highlighting how a confluence of factors—demographic aging, economic growth, and restrictive immigration policy—are conspiring to create historically tight labor markets in the coming years. The impacts of these trends on businesses and consumers will be pervasive, difficult to manage, and annoying. Americans, I…

July 1, 2025

More Information Sharing Means Fewer Taxpayer Losses to Fraud

Last month, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) introduced a resolution of inquiry objecting to the Trump administration’s development of a “centralized database” that “compiles American citizens’ personal information across federal agencies and departments.” The resolution states that personal information includes “confidential taxpayer, identity, wage, child support, bank account, student loan, health, medical, financial, or other information.” Left unsaid…

June 30, 2025

America’s Six Million Home Shortage: Why California Is at the Epicenter

A growing body of research estimates that the US faces a severe housing shortage, with missing homes numbering between 3.8 million and 8.2 million. Using the midpoint—approximately six million missing homes—new AEI Housing Center analysis shows where this shortage is most acute and why about two million missing homes can be traced back to California and its neighbors….

June 23, 2025

Boston’s Backward Housing Policy: More Demand Will Only Exacerbate the Supply Crisis

Boston’s housing policies keep treating symptoms while ignoring the disease. Last month, the city proudly unveiled its Co-Purchasing Housing Pilot Program, offering $50,000 in zero-interest, deferred-payment loans to help lower-income households cover down payments and closing costs on multi-family homes. The idea is to allow multiple individuals to pool resources and purchase homes together. It sounds…