May 6, 2023
SNAP Needs a Healthy Overhaul
In the coming months, Congress is expected to reauthorize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the country’s largest food assistance program that helps poor families afford groceries. Amidst ongoing debt ceiling negotiations, Republicans have focused on SNAP’s work provisions, proposing expansions to work requirements and identifying employment as a program goal. These efforts are crucially important…
May 5, 2023
Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription
Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond’s previous book, Evicted, offered a compelling account of poverty in America. Illuminating and thought-provoking, its ethnographic accounts of deep struggle spurred new research and increased policy focus on the links between poverty and housing instability. Though it didn’t get everything right, it was an important book. Sadly, Desmond’s latest offering, Poverty, by America, provides little of…
May 3, 2023
Work-for-Welfare Gains Traction Among Republicans
Last week, U.S. House Republicans included expanded work requirements for Medicaid, food stamps, and cash welfare benefits in their legislation to extend the federal debt limit. As employers continue to struggle to find workers, states, too, are trying to prod benefit recipients on the sidelines of the economy back into work. Republican members of the Wisconsin assembly recently approved a…
May 2, 2023
In Next Recession, Don’t Let Uncle Sam Be Uncle Sucker Again
Following recent bank failures, expectations for a recession have revived. If unemployment rises significantly, Congress will likely re-open its stimulus policy playbook — including by extending unemployment benefits. Yet given an increased focus on containing federal spending, there could be constraints on how much Congress provides. How can policymakers best target future federal aid? They should start by ensuring…
May 1, 2023
Here’s How Hochul Can Salvage Her Goal of More Affordable Housing in NY
Notably missing from the budget the Legislature is passing is a proposal Gov. Kathy Hochul had marked as a top priority: spurring cities and towns to build 800,000 new housing units. It wasn’t fundamentally a bad idea. You don’t have to be an economist to know that if housing prices are too damn high, increasing the…
May 1, 2023
Closing Young Minds
Roger Brooks describes himself as a “loyal supporter” of Durham Academy. A member of the class of 1980, he has donated money every year to support the 1,200-student North Carolina private school. His father was chairman of the board of trustees in the 1970s. When he left New York to move back to his hometown…
March 31, 2023
AI and the Future of Work: Preparing the Workforce for an AI-Driven Economy
AI is best positioned to augment the workforce, not replace it. The U.S. Chamber’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence Competition, Inclusion, and Innovation report outlines recommendations for preparing the workforce for the continued integration of AI tools across our economy. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the “end of work” have been greatly exaggerated – more…
March 27, 2023
Here Are the Kinds of Jobs Chat AI Is Likeliest to Affect
A new analysis estimates that a fifth of all U.S. jobs are in the category most vulnerable to disruption. Researchers at OpenAI—the company behind ChatGPT—and the University of Pennsylvania came out last week with a first look at the potential labor market impact of chat technology. If these initial “guesstimates” hold up, we might be looking at…
March 24, 2023
How Religious Faith and a Sense of Agency Corresponds with Mental Health
“Sisterhood is powerful.” That was an early slogan of feminism, but it’s hard to imagine it being used to describe young women today. In fact, as a number of scholars have recently noticed, the mental health crisis being experienced by many teen and young adult women may have something to do with how little power…
February 14, 2023
Microsoft Is Getting Ready to Eat Google’s Lunch
The new Bing Chat appears to be an existential threat to Google’s search dominance. You’ve heard, endlessly, about ChatGPT, but you may not have had a chance to look at its “child” Bing Chat, a Microsoft product in its testing phase that I got access to around midnight the night before last. Think of ChatGPT as…