Your odds of “making it to the top” might be better than you think, although it’s tough to stay on top once you get there. According to research from Cornell University, over 50 percent of Americans find themselves among the top 10 percent of income-earners for at least one year during their working lives. Over 11 percent […]
Researchers at the MIT are publicizing that they have fixed the incandescent light-bulb with a brilliant improvement. They have wrapped the interior filament in a crystal glass that both bounces light and contains heat. It recycles energy in a way that addresses the main complaint against Edison’s bulb: It burns far too much energy for […]
Politicians speak often about income inequality. But that doesn’t mean they are well-informed. Indeed, they propagate four myths about the issue. Most often, those vying for elected office describe income inequality as static — as though the people who make up each income group do not change. The “top 1 percent” or the “top 10 percent” […]
There’s plenty of reason for free marketers to be skeptical of proposals, like the ones emanating from Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and hinted at by Republican Donald Trump, that would create a single-payer healthcare coverage system in the United States. But, if only because these proposals have resonance with the public, they’re certainly worth […]
Remember when complaining about the price of gas was all the rage? The public discourse was awash in pseudo-psychology, hand-wringing about “peak oil,” and an array of conspiracy theories to explain why oil cost so much. There was much ado about corporate “greed” (the cause of all life’s problems), hissing about “speculators,” nationalist chest-thumping about OPEC, self-proclaimed experts warning that Earth was out […]
Documents leaked to CNN from inside the Islamic State show that the terrorist insurgency/quasi-state is undergoing massive budget cuts, cutting salaries for its fighters and staff by 50 percent across the board. ISIS soldiers earn between $400 and $1,200 a month, plus a $50 stipend for their wives and $25 for each child, according to the […]
In a December 15 tweet, Senator Bernie Sanders intimated that graduating from college decreases the likelihood that you will go to jail: Sanders has long supported dubious measures for making college more affordable and hence accessible to all, and this may be why: he believes that “no college” is a path to jail. Mike Rowe, […]
Based on my writings, some people may think I’m 100 percent against higher taxes. But that’s not exactly true. In some cases, I like punitive taxation. Or, to be more precise, I sometimes take pleasure when punitive tax policy backfires on bad people. Here’s an example. An interesting article in Slate, authored by Adam Chodorow […]
Tyler Cowen caused quite a stir with his e-book, The Great Stagnation. In properly assessing his work it is important to state explicitly what his argument actually is. Median real income has stagnated since 1980, and the reason is that the rate of technological advance has slowed. Moreover, the technological advances that have taken place with […]
With roughly a year left to his presidency, President Obama chose to speak to America’s next five to ten years rather than report on the state of the union, which is his constitutional charge. In many ways, he brought his presidency full circle on Tuesday evening, offering language more reminiscent of candidate Obama than the […]
The recent “occupation” of government-owned lands in Eastern Oregon by disgruntled ranchers’ motivated Quoctrung Bui and Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times to produce an edifying essay on January 6th. It was aptly titled “Why the Government Owns So Much Land in the West.” Curiously, the NYT essay fails to mention one of the most significant, […]
Hiking the minimum wage killed almost as many low-end jobs as did the economic collapse. This is University of California-San Diego Professor Jeffrey Clemens’ conclusion from his just published supplement to his landmark 2014 study. He says that federal minimum wage hikes from 2006 to 2009 accounted for 43 percent of the decline in employment among […]
Too often, the message students get in college is that government is the answer to all social and economic problems. This happens in classes on history, sociology, politics, literature, and even in economics. You can graduate having heard only one narrative: the market has failed, so it must be replaced by all-controlling government bureaucracies. FEE president Lawrence […]
Raffi Melkonian asks — as relayed by my colleague Tyler Cowen — “When can median income consumers afford the very best?” Tyler offers a list of some of the items in the modern, market-oriented world that are as high-quality as such items get and yet are easily affordable to ordinary people. This list includes iPhones, books, and […]
Amazon is suing thousands of “fake” reviewers, who, for a fee, have posted positive reviews for various products. These pseudo reviews violate the spirit — and possibly the functionality — of Amazon’s largely self-governed rating system. Customers rely on reviews to guide their own choices, and a wave of sponsored reviews can mislead them into […]