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July 26, 2024
Two Cheers for Shrinking Black-White Opportunity Gaps
The latest in a series of important reports on social mobility by the research group Opportunity Insights is out, and it’s another conversation-changer. Across a variety of outcomes in adulthood…
May 30, 2024
The Truth about Trends in Worker Pay
Time was, only progressives made outlandish claims such as that hourly wages have been stagnant for more than half a century. But with the rise of populism on the right, “doomerism”…
May 14, 2024
Understanding Trends in Worker Pay over the Past 50 years
Key Points Despite numerous claims to the contrary, the pay of American workers has tracked productivity trends—for at least 95 years. The pay of the median worker, however, after rising…
December 11, 2023
Has Inequality Made Americans Poorer than Bulgarians, Russians, and Filipinos?
A recent column by John Burn-Murdoch in the Financial Times presents statistics side-by-side showing that “the wealthiest Americans are the richest people in the developed world, but America’s poorest are…
October 5, 2023
Do 60 Percent Of American Workers Have Insecure Jobs?
American Compass has a new survey out in which it finds, among other results, that “only 40 percent of workers have secure jobs.” This is the latest attempt by the…
September 15, 2023
What Does a Good Economy Look Like?
…2024. Let’s start with a chart from Scott Winship at the American Enterprise Institute (where I am a nonresident fellow), who is a longtime skeptic of the more dire populist diagnoses of…
June 24, 2023
Family Affordability in America: A Story of Decline or Achievement?
On June 22, AEI’s Scott Winship and Angela Rachidi were joined by Oren Cass of American Compass and Idrees Kahloon of the Economist to review the evidence on family affordability…
June 22, 2023
The Cost of Thriving Has Fallen: Correcting and Rejecting the American Compass Cost-of-Thriving Index
Abstract The Cost-of-Thriving Index (COTI), developed by American Compass Executive Director Oren Cass, asks whether families can afford a middle-class lifestyle. It compares the costs of five goods and services…
June 21, 2023
The Bad Math Behind Economic Doomerism
It’s a big week for American Compass, a think tank founded in 2020 that fancies itself as the “pre-eminent alternative to the Old Right’s market fundamentalism.” On the heels of its new…
June 14, 2023
Better Data Means Better Policy
“Did you adjust for inflation?” An occupational inconvenience of doing economic research is that you are routinely asked by disbelieving non-researchers whether your numbers have taken into account the rising…