March 17, 2025
Progressives Are Starting to Come Around on the Importance of Marriage and Fatherhood
Progressives and conservatives rarely agree. But there’s a growing consensus about this one data point: America’s men are not OK. This isn’t exactly a political phenomenon — although men are changing politically, too. Last summer, economist Tyler Cowen detected a “vibe shift” in American culture, noting people were drifting rightward. Among his 19 reasons for the shift,…
March 17, 2025
Trump Should Put an End to Rent Control
We are in a time when what would have seemed to be unimaginable domestic policy changes — from the abolition of the Department of Education to cutoffs of federal support for universities — are on the table. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is involved in this creative destruction — having pulled back a Biden-era program called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which tied federal assistance for…
March 14, 2025
A Historic Opportunity for Higher Education Reform
Once a sleepy policy area on the national scale, higher education is now a central issue making headlines in the overall political discourse. Believe it or not, the education policy divides between mainstream Democrats and Republicans used to be trivial. For example, 10 years ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) proposal to lower student loan interest rates to 3.9…
March 13, 2025
Two Charts Show Why a Trade War Over Fentanyl Doesn’t Make Sense
Following a month-long pause, President Trump last week reimposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, only to pause many of them again two days later. Different reasons have been offered by the Trump Administration for the tariffs, but in recent days the President’s advisers have honed in on one reason in particular: Fentanyl is being shipped across our borders with…
March 13, 2025
The Return To Student Loan Repayment, In Four Charts
In March 2020, the federal government enacted a “temporary” pause on student loan repayment, which the Trump and Biden administrations extended a grand total of eight times. But as of October 2024, loan repayment has officially resumed—meaning borrowers who miss payments will face consequences such as negative credit reports. As of September 2024—the latest month…
March 13, 2025
Trends in Net College Tuition and Financial Aid, 1990–2020
Key Points Introduction College costs are out of control—or so the narrative goes. In recent years, a counternarrative has emerged that argues, correctly, that the meteoric rise in the sticker price of college is misleading. Net college tuition, or tuition after financial aid is applied, has risen far less quickly than sticker price tuition and…
March 13, 2025
Housing Roadblocks: Paving a New Way to Address Affordability
Thank you, Chairman Scott and ranking member Warren. Thank you, committee members. I am gratefuland honored to have the opportunity to speak to you today. I am an economist who has spent much of the last quarter-century studying what has gone wrong withAmerica’s housing markets. Initially, I worried mainly about the high costs and limited…
March 12, 2025
Why Alabama Needs The Success Sequence
“The American Dream is beyond my reach.” This is increasingly the view that many young men and women take regarding the long-held belief that anyone can succeed in the United States. In fact, over half of young adults today believe the American Dream is no longer within their reach. What many of them do not know is that…
March 12, 2025
Stop and Go
Automated driving is picking up speed. Several years ago there was a bit of a moral panic about the prospect of automated freight transportation replacing human truck drivers. These concerns were, in part, about the prospect of automating yet another large and important industry that was dominated by noncollege, male workers. The issue faded from…
March 11, 2025
The American Dream in Ohio depends on stronger Buckeye families
The “American dream” is a “better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of every rank,” wrote the historian James Truslow Adams over a century ago. Yet with ordinary Americans succumbing to “deaths of despair” at alarming rates, rates of happiness hitting record lows and way too many men and women stuck in poverty across generations, it’s probably no surprise…