November 22, 2024
A Side Effect of the Booming Job Market: Wage Inequality Is Way Down
Lessons of the post-COVID economy. When voters tell you what they are concerned about, believe them. Exit polls from the presidential election the show that the economy ranked first among voters’ concerns at 32 percent, almost three times more than the next closest issue, immigration. A plurality of voters—45 percent—said that their financial situation was worse than…
November 21, 2024
A Local Option for Natural Gas Fracking
The 2024 election was a referendum on a wide range of issues, but there’s no doubt that increasing domestic fossil-fuel production—“energy dominance,” as Donald Trump now calls it—was on the ballot and won. Kamala Harris backed away from her past calls to ban fracking but nonetheless lost Pennsylvania, where voters seemed to doubt her sudden…
November 15, 2024
JD Vance is Right: Reduce the Power of Big Foundations to Help Charity
In his 2021 campaign for Senate, JD Vance, now vice-president-elect, minced no words in expressing his disdain for two of America’s largest private, philanthropic institutions: the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundations. Both are, he said, “fundamentally cancers on American society but they pretend to be charities, so they benefit from preferential tax treatment.” Their endowments, he continued,…
November 14, 2024
The Rotting of the College Board
n 1947, the College Board opened an office in Berkeley, California. Previously, from the turn of the century onward, the organization had been administering entrance examinations for schools in the Northeast, and in 1926 it created and began using the original Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT. The Board’s western expansion after World War II was…
November 14, 2024
Florida, the Forgotten Education-Reform Star
Around the turn of the millennium, Florida was widely regarded as a pace-setter in education reform. Led by then-Governor Jeb Bush, the Sunshine State implemented an outcomes-driven agenda focused on prioritizing literacy, holding schools accountable, and expanding school choice, among other agenda items. The success of these reforms garnered national attention, with significant gains seen in student performance,…
November 13, 2024
How Trump Might Fulfill His Higher-Education Campaign Promises
Donald Trump has won a decisive election victory and will take office next year as the 47th president of the United States. As of this writing, his party will hold at least 52 seats in the U.S. Senate and will probably control the House of Representatives. The results should afford President-elect Trump plenty of opportunity to enact…
November 10, 2024
The Risks of Nonprofit Local Journalism
The decision of Washington Post owner/Amazon founder Jeff Bezos not to allow the paper’s editorial board to endorse a presidential candidate has stirred disappointment cum outrage among the paper’s readers — some 250,000 have gone so far as to cancel their subscriptions. Bezos, with the deepest of pockets, was once viewed as the Post’s savior — now he’s the devil in…
November 9, 2024
NYC Safe Injection Sites Reduce OD Deaths—but Not in the Worst Neighborhoods
There is a glimmer—the slightest bright spot—of good news about drug overdoses in New York. The city’s Health Department reports that overdose deaths in 2023 declined compared to the previous year—but they fell just one percent, from 3,070 to 3,046. A close look at that number reveals not only is it tiny, but that an important indicator…
November 5, 2024
Never Let a Crisis End
New York City’s perennial housing crisis—the city has regularly declared a housing “emergency” since 1971—is back on the city council’s agenda, with two proposals to address it. On the surface, the two plans, one championed by Mayor Eric Adams, the other by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, seem complementary; both promise more housing. But a…
November 1, 2024
Latest Student Loan Cancellation Proposal Could Be Biggest Yet
The Biden administration unveiled its fourth major student loan cancellation scheme last week. While the administration’s past three cancellation plans have suffered defeats in the courts, officials apparently hope that things will be different this time. The new plan offers loan cancellation to borrowers experiencing “hardship.” If you’re wondering what “hardship” means, so am I. It is…