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November 1, 2023
The Ultimate Social Capital: A Story to Save the Union
…and nationwide consensus narrative in U.S. history. This effort saw the segregation of the federal government, the triumph of Jim Crow in the South, the erection of most of the Confederate…
October 27, 2023
What Happened to the American Dream?
…from medicine to nuclear power. The recent book by the Reaganite economic writer Jim Pethokoukis, “The Conservative Futurist,” makes an extended version of this argument, tracing our era of stagnation…
October 25, 2023
The Freedom to Choose
…seeking social and economic freedom outside the Jim Crow system.In the post-World War II era, the dense, highly associational urban communities of our cities dispersed into suburbs and exurbs. In the 1960s and 1970s, women joined the workforce,…
September 12, 2023
Please, Gen Z Aren’t “Doomed to be the First Generation of Americans Who Will Grow Up with a Lower Standard of Living Than Their Parents”
One could easily fill all the waking hours in the day—and non-waking hours, too!—with pointed responses to all the bad economic opinions expressed on social media. That said, I like…
August 22, 2023
Is Paid Leave a Pro-Growth Policy?
Some pro-growth public policies seem super obvious, like attracting more high-skill immigrants or reducing the federal paperwork needed to build clean energy facilities and infrastructure. Paid leave, whether mandated by…
August 21, 2023
Four Shocking Truths about the American Economy! (Well, Shocking to Some.)
I recently wrote a brief essay, “Generative AI and Economic Growth,” for Exponential View, the great newsletter by Azeem Azhar. And I knew one particular passage would be sure to raise…
August 8, 2023
Bad Hoosiers
…Blacks from the South seeking both work and freedom from Jim Crow. The war heightened social tensions as white Protestants laid claim to an Americanism that excluded Catholics and Jews….
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…
August 1, 2023
How the Middle Class Is Faring: My Long-Read Q&A with Jeremy Horpedahl
…leave a review. Pethokoukis: Before we dig into the data, I want to take a moment to talk about public perception about how America’s been doing over recent decades. There…
July 25, 2023
Why Is Economic Growth Good?
As the saying goes, there are no stupid questions. In that generous spirit, it’s certainly legitimate to ask why a continually growing economy is a good thing. Why does GDP…