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April 23, 2024
How do people working in the child-welfare system determine what is in a child’s best interests? Meeting the child in question might seem a good first step. A new report from the California legal advocacy group AdvoKids, however, found that the lawyers representing foster children in court often fail to perform this basic task. In…
April 22, 2024
The anti-Israel demonstrations at Columbia University, among other colleges and universities, may be, for many involved, simply about venting anger or rage. But at Columbia, they do make a specific demand: that the university divest its endowment from firms involved in the Israeli economy. A December 1 document signed by 89 student groups—ranging from the Young…
April 22, 2024
On April 22, AEI and the Ethics & Public Policy Center hosted a discussion on the legacy of Richard John Neuhaus and Peter L. Berger’s 1977 book, To Empower People: From State to Civil Society. The book explored the importance of “mediating institutions” such as family, church, and community to a healthy social fabric. AEI’s…
April 21, 2024
Concern about media bias — specifically politically liberal bias — has moved center stage thanks to the cri de coeur by National Public Radio’s Uri Berliner in the Free Press. The network’s business editor, who resigned in the aftermath of his speaking truth to power, wrote that “politics intruded” on a wide variety of coverage, from Covid to “Russiagate,”…
April 19, 2024
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 (FSA), veered from reform to the outright radical: the establishment of an American version of a Soviet collective farm. The largest of nine such projects…
April 18, 2024
Hunger in the US is rising at an alarming pace – or is it? Last year’s annual report on food insecurity in the US led lawmakers to believe hunger is on the rise, and, unsurprisingly, federal lawmakers are using rising levels of food insecurity to advocate for expansions to federal government programs. Unfortunately, policymakers are conflating hunger and…
April 18, 2024
In a campaign season dominated by the past, a central economic topic is missing: growth. Rapid productivity growth raises living standards and incomes. Resources from those higher incomes can boost support for public goods such as national defense and education, or can reconfigure supply chains or shore up social insurance programs. A society without growth…
April 18, 2024
The American experiment is in trouble. Deaths of despair — due to suicide, drugs or alcohol poisoning — have surged in recent years. Reports of happiness have plunged. Millions think the American dream is out of reach. Polarization in Washington goes from worse to worse. That’s the bad news. The good news is we are seeing more evidence that America’s…
April 17, 2024
Abstract Homelessness is arguably the most extreme hardship associated with poverty in the United States, yet people experiencing homelessness are excluded from official poverty statistics and much of the extreme poverty literature. This paper provides the most detailed and accurate portrait to date of the level and persistence of material disadvantage faced by this population,…
April 17, 2024
The Wyden-Smith tax bill, which combines an expanded child tax credit (CTC) with a variety of business tax breaks, has been in limbo in the Senate for the past three months. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to bring up the bill if there’s enough support, but so far, these votes have not been forthcoming…