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May 22, 2024

Missed Opportunities in the Proposed Farm Bill

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson’s proposed Farm Bill reauthorization, The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024, heads to committee markup today. The Farm Bill is a tough reauthorization normally, and even more difficult in a tightly divided House. While there are provisions that would improve the program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) needs…

May 21, 2024

Did AI Just Pass the Turing Test?

A recent study by UC San Diego researchers brings fresh insight into the ever-evolving capabilities of AI. The authors looked at the degree to which several prominent AI models, GPT-4, GPT-3.5, and the classic ELIZA could convincingly mimic human conversation, an application of the so-called Turing test for identifying when a computer program has reached human-level intelligence. The results were telling:…

May 20, 2024

Indivar Dutta-Gupta and Scott Winship on the 60th Anniversary of LBJ’s “War on Poverty” on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal”

Indivar Dutta-Gupta and Scott Winship talked about the 60th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” speech and the war on poverty.

May 16, 2024

Critiquing Bastian (2022, 2023, 2024, and forthcoming):On Child Tax Credit Reform and the Sensitivity of Single Mothers to Work Incentives

Abstract In 2021, Congress passed and President Biden signed a major, but temporary, reform to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Among other reforms to the credit, the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) made it available to non-workers on the same basis as workers. Attempts to make this reform permanent foundered, in part, due to opposition…

May 15, 2024

The American heart is closing to marriage and family. Can red states change that?

The American heart is closing. The signs, including dramatic drops in dating, marriage, and childbearing, are all around us.   The falling fortunes of marriage and family across the nation can be traced back to cultural shifts (e.g., elite messaging celebrating “me-first” over “family-first” thinking), economic changes (e.g., young men’s eroding position in today’s workforce), and technological shifts (e.g., the ways in which social media discourages…

May 14, 2024

Biden Can Follow FDR and Dump His VP

Almost exactly 80 years ago, a Democratic leader from the Bronx huddled privately with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As told in the powerful new book by historian David Roll, “Ascent to Power, How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt’s Shadow and Remade the World,” Ed Flynn and other leading Democrats were concerned that his vice president, the far Left…

May 14, 2024

Understanding Trends in Worker Pay over the Past 50 years

Key Points Executive Summary Doomers on the political left and right agree that economic growth has failed to translate into higher wages for American workers, with some claiming that pay has barely risen in 50 years. Such sentiments have been buttressed by flawed analyses that, comparing apples to oranges in a variety of ways, have…

May 13, 2024

The American Dream Is Alive and Well (and the Problem of US Inequality Greatly Exaggerated)

Don’t listen to the populist naysayers: The U.S. economy continues to deliver jobs, higher wages and upward mobility for those who need it most. What do former President Trump and Bernie Sanders have in common? Or Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Nobel Prize-winning Clinton administration economist Joseph Stiglitz and billionaire investor Ray Dalio? Among many other prominent elected officials, commentators, public…

May 13, 2024

The Biden Administration Crossed a Line in Its Rule on Gender Health Care and Foster Children

What is the best way to support a child diagnosed with gender dysphoria, that is, a child who believes their body doesn’t match the person they really are? A couple of weeks ago, the Biden administration put through changes to Title IX rules, forbidding discrimination based on gender identity, which would mean, among other things,…

May 13, 2024

Do Mothers Have “Societal Support”? Does It Count if It Comes from Neighbors?

It is an annual tradition, for some reason, for folks on social media to dump all over Mother’s Day. Some on the fringe decide it’s sexist or cisnormative or something to believe only women can be mothers or that mothers are special. The abortion lobby hates the idea that womanhood is associated with motherhood. But last year, I stumbled across an anti-Mother’s…