January 12, 2024
Congress Shouldn’t Expand Welfare in Return for Corporate Tax Cuts
Bipartisan negotiations to revive the Democrat-favored 2021 Child Tax Credit in return for Republican-favored business-tax cuts are heating up. The business-tax cuts could be helpful in principle — if they focus on encouraging future investment and don’t add to the deficit. But under no circumstance should Republicans agree to turn the Child Tax Credit into a welfare…
January 12, 2024
Get Ready for AI-Driven Skill Democratization
For decades, automation has been a rough road for middle-skill workers. These jobs used to provide plentiful, family-supporting employment opportunities for those with only a high school education or even less. Robotics and, to a lesser extent, trade dramatically reduced the number of middle-skill jobs leading to what economists called a “polarized” labor market: many high-skilled and low-skilled…
January 12, 2024
What is the Utah “Family Miracle”?
I’ve written before about the “Utah Family Miracle,” referencing the fact that no state in America has more families headed by married parents than the Beehive State: “In 2021, 55% of adults in Utah (ages 18-55) were married and 82% of its children were living in married-couple families. This compares to a national average of 45% of…
January 11, 2024
Tax Credit Nation — Politicians Are Casting New Spending As ‘Tax Cuts,’ Hiding Their True Cost
With the national debt soaring past $34 trillion, liberal politicians hoping to expand the federal leviathan face a conundrum. How can they convince Americans wary of the effects of runaway government spending—painfully evident in recent elevated inflation and interest rates—to nonetheless support even greater expenditures? As President Biden and others demonstrate, one way is to cast new…
January 11, 2024
To Better Promote Work, Stop Subsidizing More Benefit Collection
Never shy about lampooning government dysfunction, Ronald Reagan famously said that if you want more of something, subsidize it. But even the Gipper couldn’t have imagined today’s growing zeal to subsidize getting more people on government benefits, which undermines work and leaves too many on the sidelines of the economy. Welfare programs achieve that dubious distinction…
January 10, 2024
By the Numbers: Here’s How the New Federal Financial Aid Formula Harms Families with More Than One Child
The old federal formula for higher education financial aid is dead. The new formula creates winners and losers. Specifically, the new formula harms middle-class families with more than one child in college at a time. It’s not that the new formula doesn’t take family size into account at all—it does, barely. The issue is that the new formula calculates the total…
January 10, 2024
Even Congress’s “Tax Extenders” Are About More Benefits
Congress’s long list of unfinished business for the new year includes “tax extender” legislation, which is normally considered before lawmakers adjourn for the holidays in December. The fact that this legislation has lingered into January isn’t the only oddity. In an era of already rapidly rising spending, the more troubling anomaly is much of that supposed…
January 9, 2024
Let’s Expand the Child Tax Credit a Little Bit
A bipartisan group of senators is trying to hash out a deal on extending some of the Republican tax cuts from 2017. If Congress does nothing, the child tax credit will drop down to $1,000 per child from its current level of $2,000. Some lawmakers want to expand the child tax credit massively. Others don’t. There’s a middle course that involves moderately growing…
January 9, 2024
The Success Sequence for Unmarried Mothers
As covered on these pages before, the success sequence—graduating high school, working full-time, and marrying before having children—has been proven to be an effective way for young people to avoid poverty. Research consistently finds that young people who follow these life steps have poverty rates dramatically below those who do not follow these steps. In a new study, I show that…
January 8, 2024
How to Actually Triumph over Poverty
On this day in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared an unconditional war on poverty in America during his State of the Union address. Six decades later, the nation has made tremendous strides, including a sizable reduction in the poverty rate as Americans enjoy an improved standard of living. Yet we have not won the war. Success…