April 30, 2025
The Student Loan Bubble Is about to Pop
At the outset of the covid-19 pandemic, federal student-loan borrowers won what appeared to be a reprieve. That five-year pause on payments and interest accumulation is now shaping up to be a curse in disguise. Last week, the Trump administration drew criticism for announcing that the Education Department would resume involuntary collections next month. But the squeeze…
April 29, 2025
Good Jobs, Strong Families: How the Character of Men’s Work Is Linked to Their Family Status
Introduction Over the last half century, the U.S. economy has shifted, moving away from manufacturing and towards being an information and service economy. The mid-1980s, for instance, were punctuated by news of the closures of major steel manufacturers, including Homestead Works, Aliquippa Works, and Duquesne Works in Pittsburgh, PA, and Republic Works in Youngstown, OH….
April 28, 2025
Letter to the Editor: Sugary Treats Shouldn’t Be on the SNAP Menu
Allysia Finley is right to question the logic of allowing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, beneficiaries to spend billions of government dollars earmarked for nutrition on sugary beverages and candy (“Do Food Stamps Make People Fat?,” Life Science, April 21). Critics maintain that government-mandated SNAP restrictions would threaten personal freedom. But SNAP is an…
April 28, 2025
You Autor Know
Along with many other controversial issues in 2025, Americans are at odds over the merits of tariffs. Underlying this debate is a more specific one—the impact of increased trade with China over the past 25 years on American manufacturing employment. Advocates of tariffs hope they will bring back blue-collar jobs, to which they ascribe special…
April 28, 2025
House Republicans’ Proposed Repayment Plan Fixes Vexing Student Loan Problem
Congressional Republicans are undertaking a massive budget reconciliation effort involving significant reforms to the federal student loan system. House Republicans introduced their proposal on Monday, which would sweep away the maze of nearly a dozen different loan repayment plans and create just two: a standard repayment plan and an entirely new income-driven repayment (IDR) plan. In addition…
April 25, 2025
What’s holding women back from starting a family?
Media influencer Brett Cooper did something last year that most people her age won’t: she got married. “It’s the most grounding experience I’ve ever had,” she told a crowd gathered at the University of Virginia for the National Marriage Project’s spring conference, cosponsored with the Wheatley Institute. Cooper is 23 and had celebrated her one-year anniversary…
April 25, 2025
Trump Administration Announces Plan to Get Borrowers Paying Student Loans Again
The U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday that it would resume involuntary collections of defaulted federal student loans on May 5. The announcement means that borrowers who have loans in default could see their tax refunds seized or wages garnished. While many borrowers and advocacy organizations will oppose the move, resuming collections is necessary to incentivize loan repayment….
April 25, 2025
A baby bonus is the wrong response to declining fertility
The Trump Administration is reportedly considering ways to reverse declining fertility in the United States, most notably a $5,000 “baby bonus” for any mother who gives birth. The administration is right to worry about the fertility rate, which has been on a steady decline since 2007 to the point where the number of new babies…
April 24, 2025
AI “Slop” Comes for Job Interviews
We have all gotten used to the idea that generative AI can help bad writers become better (or at least appear to be better) than they are when left to their own skills. This has resulted in some challenges for hiring managers struggling to cope with the tsunami of applications and cover letters that make…
April 24, 2025
Musk’s High-Tech Polygamy Is a Dead End
Elon Musk told a conference in Saudi Arabia last year that his listeners “should view the birthrate as the single biggest problem [we] need to solve. If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity, and all the policies in the world don’t matter.” In this way, he spotlighted his commitment to the pronatalist cause—the idea that…