August 7, 2023
The Right Way to Fix Public Broadcasting
The kabuki theater of Washington budgeting has again featured the lightning-rod issue of public broadcasting. Last month, a House Commerce subcommittee voted to zero-out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), whose funds go to NPR and PBS; just six days later, its Senate counterpart voted to maintain the funding. Both critics and defenders of the system will…
August 5, 2023
Rent Control ‘Shabbifying’ NY’s Housing As Owners Feel the Squeeze
Perhaps cowed by tenant protests, the Rent Guidelines Board has backed off rent increases of as much as 16% (for two-year leases) for the city’s 900,000-plus rent-regulated apartments. That property owners should be limited to modest hikes (2.5% for one-year leases), even as their costs of fuel, taxes and repairs go up, ignores the fact that inflation…
August 4, 2023
The Racial Wealth Gap: Myths and Realities
The racial wealth gap has become a central component of claims of systemic racism and one of the core justifications for reparations. The main focus has been on housing market dynamics. Supreme Court Justice Jackson made reference to the racial bias of 1940s federal housing policies in her dissent on the college affirmative action case….
August 3, 2023
Philanthropists Discover the Value of “Sunsetting”
This year, the William E. Simon Foundation is closing its doors, or “sunsetting,” in the parlance of modern philanthropy. Since it was founded in 1967 by former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon and his wife Carol, the foundation has given away almost $300 million to the causes that mattered to them—faith, family and education. It…
August 3, 2023
Another Pandemic Legacy: Removing the EITC’s Work and Earnings Requirement
Since its origin in the 1970s, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has been the premier federal program promoting and rewarding work by low-income adults. As displayed below, taxpayers have devoted rapidly growing resources to the EITC since the 1980s. Overall, between 1975 and 2022, the EITC cost taxpayers a total of $1.8 trillion, which…
August 3, 2023
Fight Crime, and Poverty, with Civil Society
Maryland’s new Democratic governor, Wes Moore, has to play to his party’s increasingly left-wing base, but he also knows that problem No. 1 in much of the state is rising crime. Prince George’s County, in particular, has a much higher crime rate than the national average, and crime has been rising since the COVID lockdowns, which were extraordinarily…
August 3, 2023
Does Money (and Economic Growth) Buy Happiness?
Sure, economic growth may allow us to buy more stuff, buy cooler stuff, help us to live longer, and give us the resources to solve big problems such as global poverty and climate change. That’s fine, I guess. But do the higher incomes that come from economic growth make us, you know, happier? Do they,…
August 3, 2023
Expanding Economic Opportunities Through Evidence-Based Sector Training
Read the PDF. Introduction The Workforce Futures Initiative is a research collaboration among the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Project on Workforce at Harvard Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. The initiative aims to develop concise and actionable reviews of existing research for federal, state, and local policymakers. Since August…
August 2, 2023
The Best Predictor of Happiness in America? Marriage
Americans who are married with children are now leading happier and more prosperous lives, on average, than men and women who are single and childless. Is that statement surprising? In an age that prizes individualism, workism, and a host of other self-centric “isms” above marriage and family, it may well be. But the reality is that nothing currently predicts…