September 18, 2023
There’s an Easy Fix That Would Solve Our Housing Crisis: Light Touch Density
We’re living through one of the greatest housing crunches the U.S. has ever known. It’s resulted in record numbers of homelessness and entire generations certain they will never become homeowners, that critical milestone of the middle class. But there is a simple solution to the problem. The answer to our housing crisis is to legalize…
September 18, 2023
Biden’s Latest Student-Loan Plan Is Another Disaster
Late last month, President Biden and his Department of Education announced the launch of the “SAVE” Plan, a reform that expands existing income-driven repayment (IDR) programs to the tune of up to $550 billion. Now, it’s been reported that as many as 4 million borrowers have signed up for the plan, many of them enrolled automatically. Last week, Senator Bill…
September 15, 2023
Why Industrial Policy Fails
With Democrats and Republicans alike supporting a shift from free markets toward government planning, the United States has clearly entered a new era of economic policymaking. Yet all the reasons why such strategies generally fail to make good on politicians’ promises are as valid as ever. WASHINGTON, DC – Industrial policy is all the rage…
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 it sound, and another arguing that the eating-away at American wages because of inflation explains some important measure of President Biden’s political difficulties. I think both of…
September 15, 2023
Putting This Year’s Poverty Numbers in Context
On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released its latest income and poverty estimates covering calendar year 2022, including two assessments of poverty in America. One, called the Official Poverty Measure (OPM), focuses on earnings and cash-like government benefits, such as Social Security, unemployment, and welfare checks. A second, known as the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), also…
September 14, 2023
The Privilege Hiding in Plain Sight
The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, by Melissa S. Kearney (University of Chicago Press, 240 pp., $25) Imagine you are twelve years old and your public-school teacher asks you and your seventh-grade classmates to stand side by side in a line. The instructor lists a series of personal attributes and…
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 to dip in every now and then with a humbly offered counterpoint. This week’s 9/11 anniversary, for example, meant the recycling of this passage from…
September 5, 2023
Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Address the Trade Deficit
Last month, the Washington Post reported that former president Donald Trump plans to enact a 10 percent tariff on all imports if reelected. After facing sharp criticism, Trump defended his proposal in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. He argued that the trade deficit is a “loss” for the US economy and that his tariffs would be the “best way” to…
September 1, 2023
Paying People to Have Kids Can Only Do So Much When You’re in a Spiraling Baby Bust
“Frankly, whenever elections come up politicians tend to unveil grand measures aimed at resolving the birthrate issue,” Choi Seul-ki, a demographer in South Korea, told the Wall Street Journal. “But cash is a limited incentive in changing people’s outlook on life.” Indeed, South Korea has spent more than $210 billion in the past decade in an effort to…
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 Washington or funded by new taxes on rich people and large companies, might seem like another obviously good thing. Rarely do I ever hear about…