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October 25, 2023
The Freedom to Choose
…is a good example: Frohnen asserts that the COVID-19 “lockdowns” were a gross infringement on liberty and commerce by government, a view that is, at a minimum, debatable. Here’s my recollection of events. When…
October 24, 2023
Roanoke Atones for Urban Renewal—Artistically
Discussions of the ill effects of public housing, urban renewal, and urban freeways usually focus on big cities: the Chicago-lakefront hellhole called the Robert Taylor Homes, now-demolished; Robert Moses’s Cross-Bronx…
October 12, 2023
Blue States Are Getting More Federal Money Than They Should
…modern U.S. government, having been negligible in the pre-New Deal era. In FY1930, for example, total grant-in-aid outlays were 0.109 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), whereas in FY2018 grant-in-aid…
September 26, 2023
Voter Suppression, New York Style
…(he eventually switched to Independent and finally, after leaving office, back to Democrat in 2018). New York is one of only seven states with a completely “closed” primary system. Republicans cannot cross…
September 20, 2023
Do Two Parents Matter More Than Ever?
…by Kathleen Ziol-Guest at New York University explored the link between family structure and “educational attainment”—or how many years of schooling children complete across America. From the late 1960s, when family breakdown…
September 15, 2023
Why Industrial Policy Fails
…from retaliating and intervening to boost their own favored industries. Consider the Trump tariffs, which then-Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross defended as a case of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs….
September 15, 2023
What Does a Good Economy Look Like?
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve written one column arguing that the economic situation for working class America is now better, relative to a decade ago, than some pessimistic populists make…
August 24, 2023
Baby Boom Or Bust
…up here. The streets are easier to cross, the blocks are shorter. As I study the homes and take in the neighborhood, I start to imagine my wife and I…
August 21, 2023
Four Shocking Truths about the American Economy! (Well, Shocking to Some.)
…eyebrows: A lengthy and fundamentally solid expansion would allow the economic progress of the pre-pandemic period — falling inequality, rising real wages across the income spectrum — to kick back…
August 10, 2023
The Real Reason People Leave Religion
…So when I came across Jake Meador’s recent article in the Atlantic, “The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church,” I dropped everything to read it. Meador wonders…