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 4, 2024
To Fix Their Housing Shortage in 2024, Cities and States Should Turn To Market
States and cities considering housing supply reforms in the new year to combat worsening affordability should unleash the free market rather than rely on the Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulatory solutions. HUD’s recommendations tilt towards heavy-handed government interventions that lack thorough analysis and proven results. A particularly egregious example is HUD’s latest assessment of…
January 2, 2024
Billionaire-Built Cities Would Be Better Than Nothing
A company backed by Silicon Valley’s most powerful investors, including the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, assembled a land empire outside San Francisco and announced a bold vision to build a brand-new city — and was immediately castigated by the world’s urbanists. Critics describe the effort by the company, Flannery…
December 31, 2023
Forget Eric Adams’ Flawed Housing Plan — Let’s Make ALL NYC Neighborhoods “High-Opportunity”
New York City residents are facing the ill-effects of drastic, across-the-board budget cuts affecting the most basic city services. It would hardly seem to be the right time for the Adams administration to undertake an expensive new housing program with the city’s own funds. Yet that’s exactly what the Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced last week….
December 21, 2023
Our Policies to Address Homelessness Are Failing
Official data released last Friday show that 2023 was the worst year ever recorded for homelessness, and it’s not even close. The 12 percent rise in homelessness quadrupled the previous record for a single-year increase. Our homeless population is now the largest it has ever been. Policy-makers must wake up to this national crisis. Our…
December 18, 2023
No Excuses Now for NYCHA
Progressives have long claimed that the only problem with New York’s largest collection of slum housing—our public housing projects—has been a lack of federal funding. Former mayor Bill de Blasio liked to blame the decline of what was once the nation’s best-managed public-housing system on someone who left office in 1989: Ronald Reagan. Now, thanks…
December 18, 2023
Kids aren’t for everyone. But it’s better for everyone if you have them.
If your social media habits are like mine, then every few weeks you run across a video celebrating life without children. A recent TikTok introduced viewers to a couple of “DINKs” — double income, no kids. They boast about how they can go to workout classes on the weekend, plan European vacations, “get into snobby hobbies like…
December 18, 2023
The State of Democratic Capitalism: 2023
How to assess the health of democratic capitalism in the United States? Fundamentally, it is very strong. The marriage of democratic politics and a free-market economy continues to strengthen each, with free markets generating the employment opportunities and prosperity that lead to widespread support for our political system and the rule of law, strengthen democratic…
December 14, 2023
The Myth of the 1%
The skewing of income toward the top 1% of earners has become a central issue in American politics, with both Republicans and Democrats proposing higher taxes on the rich. But new research finds that it may not be true, suggesting that policymakers would do better to focus more on helping the working class. WASHINGTON, DC—For…