July 12, 2023
New York Rent Control: Could the End be Near?
Those who care about housing policy and the future of New York City will be paying close attention this fall to see if the Supreme Court decides to take up a serious challenge by apartment owners to the Big Apple’s big blunder: rent regulation. At stake is a law which regulates rent prices and tenant rights for…
July 10, 2023
Reforming the EITC to Reduce Single Parenthood and Ease Work-Family Balance
Sixty years ago, in 1963, 94% of American children were born to married mothers. Today, the figure is only 60 percent. This decline signals a fundamental disruption in the long-standing stability of the traditional family, the foremost institution shaping each generation of children. Using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, I find that in 2021, 40% of…
July 8, 2023
Why the End of Affirmative Action Is Good for Black Science Students
“Corporate diversity in the crosshairs.” That was a typical headline after last week’s Supreme Court decision declaring the use of racial preferences in college admissions unconstitutional. Panic has set in among the chattering classes about what will happen to “workplace diversity” as a result of the ruling. Not only do observers fear that the court — whose majority…
July 7, 2023
The 21st Century Decline of Economic Freedom
From 1850 to 2020, industrialized economies went from roughly $3,000 per capita to $40,000 per capita, inflation adjusted. This was also a period of expanding economic freedom, as documented in the new analysis, “Economic freedom, 1850–2020: New evidence” by economic historian Leandro Prados de la Escosura. There are two important things to note about that…
July 7, 2023
With Affirmative Action Gone, We Should Focus Admissions Policies on Poverty
If history is any guide, Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard won’t mark the end of the struggle over the constitutionality of race-conscious policies. It won’t even mark the beginning of the end. Most likely, it will just be another in a long series of inflection points. To borrow from one of the…
July 6, 2023
The End of Affirmative Action Calls for a Renewed Conservatism of Opportunity
Only about 40 percent of adults in their late 20s have a bachelor’s degree, and that’s true of only 25 to 30 percent of blacks and Latinos in that age range. Just 20 to 25 percent of black and Latino men ages 25 to 29 have a bachelor’s degree. Most college graduates attend schools that are minimally selective. All…
July 3, 2023
Child Welfare’s Ideological Enforcer
University of Houston professor Alan Dettlaff is the founder of upEND, a movement dedicated to abolishing child protective services and foster care because of their alleged systemic racism. Dettlaff is active on social media, where he spends his time attacking rigorous academic research, encouraging social media mobs to insult others in the field, and even demanding…
July 2, 2023
New York’s Quality of Life Budget: Focus on Improving Conditions for Everyday People First
With no little fanfare, the City Council passed legislation requiring New Yorkers to separate their food waste for composting. Unmentioned amidst the claims for environmental progress was the fact that, even in a less aggressive plan included in Mayor Adams’ budget, the city would have to add 158 collection trucks to its sanitation fleet, at a…
June 30, 2023
Democrats Call Biden’s Economy “Savage” in Attempt to Revive Child Tax Credit
With unemployment near record lows and President Joe Biden running for reelection, some Democrats recently offered an unexpected take on the U.S. economy: It stinks, especially for low-income families. During a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) thundered that parents are currently “scraping by … in this savage economy,” burdened with “some of the lowest…