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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”
…will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The…
August 21, 2023
Four Shocking Truths about the American Economy! (Well, Shocking to Some.)
…market income is a comprehensive measure of living standards that considers the impact of taxes and social transfers on people’s economic well-being — increased by 7 percent from 1990 to…
July 21, 2023
Why Freedom Conservatism Matters
…on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, some younger conservatives warned that the Republican Party was neglecting the domestic concerns of its increasingly non-college voter base. The “Reform Conservative” group, writing…
June 28, 2023
Is ‘Bidenomics’ Even a Thing, Really?
…standards—or is something else? To govern is to choose. To govern wisely is to acknowledge the existence of trade-offs and opportunity costs. For example: Regulations that preserve coastal views for luxury homeowners…
June 22, 2023
The Cost of Thriving Has Fallen: Correcting and Rejecting the American Compass Cost-of-Thriving Index
…group fell by 7.5 weeks. These improvements aside, we reject the COTI approach as inadequate for assessing changes in living standards. While Cass’s estimates imply that male earnings have fallen…
June 21, 2023
The Bad Math Behind Economic Doomerism
…unattainable standard of living for sole breadwinner families after three-and-a-half decades of costs outpacing income—come from Cass’ report from earlier this year, “The 2023 Cost-of-Thriving Index.” Indeed, Cass argues more broadly that…
June 14, 2023
Better Data Means Better Policy
…The Census Bureau’s decision to begin using a more accurate inflation measure was not just apolitical, it was also the correct one. It will reveal that living standards in the…
February 13, 2023
The Eerie Familiarity of California’s Boom-Bust Cycle
…hire from the ranks of the recently unemployed are being constrained by the capital shortage. Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson believes the layoffs will ultimately help redistribute tech talent away from cryptocurrency and…
January 3, 2023
Systemic Disadvantage
…reanalyzed it with two additional controls: number of loans with only one buyer — a rough stand-in for families with a single head of household — and Equifax Risk Score,…
December 15, 2022
The Myth of Income Stagnation
…about inequality? Here, the CBO computes the size of the gap between higher- and lower-income households using a standard statistical measure that accounts for the entire distribution of income (the…